Tribal Happenings & TribalFest with April Erzetich 2012

Tribal Corner
Tribal happenings plus Tribal Fest California 2012! by April Erzetich

Bellydance Oasis Issue 44. 2012

I have been busy travelling of course but also promoting my new DVD Devis Inspired Combinations. It must be the year for Aussie Tribal talent to release DVDs! The lovely Acushla from Adelaide & Jacqueline from Wollongong N.S.W are also in the process of releasing their DVDs & I know that I will be getting my order in from these two talented ladies! All 3 of our DVDs focus on new Tribal combinations which I know is always popular. I think we will all be busy this year trying to assimilate all the new & exciting material in our bodies!

Apart from starting classes for the year my belly dance year kicked off with the amazing Jill parker. Hosted by the lovely Kurvy in Sydney, Kylea in Adelaide & Belinda in Byron. I only managed to get to one of the days in Sydney but I really wished I could have attended more. Once again Jill delivered fantastic workshops. I love her style of dance & teaching. These days she is largely Oriental/Folkloric rather than Tribal but of course she is coming at it from a Tribal background & so her style sits well within my body. Myself & Ghawazi Caravan were also excited to be part of the show Vaudeville Vagabonds where Jill was the special guest. Kurvy had hand picked many Sydney artists to portray a wide variety of styles which gave for & interesting & varied show. Jill of course was a knockout.

Next was The Belly dance Evolution Festival held in Newcastle N.S.W. This festival is in its second year & was a great event. There was a wide variety of teachers & performers on offer. There were a lot of participants from northern N.S.W as it is just that little bit closer than Sydney for them, so it was nice to see so many ladies that don’t get the opportunity to attend workshops & a great varied show enjoying themselves & learning at the same time.

The weekend after I was off to Whittianga, N.Z were I was hosted by Margy Morris & Tracey Miller my usual hosts for N.Z & dear friends. I had a lovely time sharing with ladies that came from all over N.Z. A lot of what we focused on was new steps from My new DVD & a good time was had by all complete with a fun little performance & dinner at an Indian restaurant. There were lots of great improvised performances including fusion with a traditional Maori influence!

Home for a few days & then I was off to Tasmania to spend some time with the Miasma girls. I also love visiting these Gals. Not only are they an amazing tribal duet they but are lovely hosts & live in a beautiful part of the world. As well as the weekend of workshops there was another impromptu dinner performance night which had a lovely casual vibe & was heaps of fun. I even got up & did some improve with the students of Ekstasis!

So then I was home to rehearse with the very talented Jrisi Jusakos & fantastic band Mashas Legacy. I had never performed with them before & after one rehearsal we put together a great show at The Shir Madness Festival held in Bondi Sydney. This is a Jewish music festival but it is not limited to just Jewish music. There were some amazing talent at the festival. It is held every year in March & is worth a look if you live in the area.

Next I was off to Adelaide hosted by the lovely Mira Fallon. I had never been hosted by her before but I had a really wonderful time getting to know her & all her ladies. The show that Mira put on was of epic proportions with so much talent from Adelaide & surrounding areas with one group travelling 6 hours to perform & attend the workshops. Acushla & I were also able to perform our duet again which was lovely.

I managed a bit of down time before we were off to the Sydney Middle Eastern Dance Festival & the release of my DVD. Leonie once again put on a great event & I have to say that I loved it all being at the one great venue. Everything was there for you. All workshops, performance, stalls as well as food & drink! Perfect!

This takes me to Tribal Fest, Sebastopol, California. This is the first, largest & well known Tribal festival in the world. The last time I attended this festival was in 2004 & my how things have grown! I was also very thrilled & honoured to have been invited to teach 2 workshops this year both of which sold out at the end of last year! I had fellow Ghawazi Caravan member April Erzetich come along with me so it was nice to have the company both in my workshops & on stage. I managed to attend 3 workshops before I came down with the flu. Kami Liddle, Mardi Love & Samantha Emmanuel. All 3 gave amazing workshops but I think for me Mardi’s was my favourite as the way she moves resonated with me the most but I would seriously recommend any of their workshops. In fact we have Samantha Emmanuel at our very own Tribal & Trance Festival later in the year so you should really check her out.

Anyway April has loads more to tell you about Tribal Fest & in the mean time if you have any thing in the way of Tribal to let the hoards know about please drop me a line. I know that Kami Liddle came to Melbourne in January. I would love to hear about that experience. I am sure she was amazing.

TRIBAL FEST 2012 BY APRIL ERZETICH

Well it was that time of year again, Tribal Fest 12 in Sebastapol, CA!! The Mecca of Belly dance saw such a large collective of dancers and people alike make the pilgrimage to Sebastopol to feast their senses on 5 days of market shopping and workshops to fine tune those “skills that pay the bills” and 3 days of performance. This year the approximate 25hrs of performance saw people gracing the stage from 22 different countries!!!! Didn’t we see a broad spectrum of talent and interpretation. The variety as you would expect, consisted of ATS, Tribal fusion, Burlesque-style theatre, gothic theatre, Indian fusion and Bollywood, Contemporary fusion, Industrial, hip-hop, Clown Belly-
esque fusion (yes that’s right), a large insert of yoga poses into dance, a little bit of con-fusion and a whole lot more that I didn’t even see!

I was privileged enough to be assisting Devi with her two workshops that she was invited to teach. We broke down and drilled some of Devi’s moves on the FCBD Volume 9 DVD and had alot of good feed back. The sold out workshops introduced us to some lovely new people and it was great to see ATS enthusiasts wanting to fine tune the new moves,or learn them from scratch.

On the performance side there was a lot of stand out acts my favorite being the 19 year old Illan from France. The moment this boy started to move on Friday night in his ‘Imajaghan’ performance I was captivated. He had all the sharp complexity of movement you would expect to see on Rachel Brice as well as the graceful lines and leaps
of a ballet dancer.

His partner in this performance did an awesome job too, but he stole me. Belly dancing since he was 11yrs of age Illan won the trip to TF12 in a competition! How lucky. Three times he graced the stage over the weekend grabbing a standing ovation at each. His performances were graceful, powerful, fluid, entertaining and left
me thinking his is like Rachel Brice as a boy. My thoughts were confirmed when Illan and Ms Brice paired up for a duo match made in heaven on Sunday evening, a you tube clip not to miss but unfortunately you tube doesn’t re-lay soul or stage presence. Watch out for this boy. My hunch is he is going to be the next big thing.

While Illan stole the show for me I should mention other amazing artists. Ariellah of course provided an amazing dark performance, Portico dance Company directed by Samantha Riggs lifted the mood with  Bollywood Banjara style beats and Kami Liddle joined Sam in mens outfits to add an extra element, Tjardan of Holland graced the  stage
with a modern interpretive yoga infused dance joined later on Sunday by Smantha Emmanual to provide another poetic performance. Rachel Brice and Datura with 9 in all on stage grabbed us with a grounded  ATS/ Bal-Anat feel to their performance, Anasma, {AKA Catwomen} brought her hip-hop liquid fusion to the stage with freakish feline grace and yes she even licked herself!! Colleena shakti graced us with Devine gestures and spins, Tamarind turned the wheel with some cool new ATS moves, FCBD’s hips punched the people with the power only FCBD bring,
Intrepid Bodacity brought to the stage Donna Mejia, the first global  tribal fusion lecturer from the University of Colorado and her amazing strong feminine flamenco and flowing grace, Bal Anat showcased a folkloric fun-fare, Australia was represented by Shanne Spiralbody ,nice job and the awesome girls from Ghawazi Caravan with their hot  Flamenco fusion- definitely a high light (he he). Doumba made a return to the stage after six years with African style bouncing and Jill Parkers Fox glove sweet hearts joined forces with Olivia Kissal of  Zafira Dance Company  to bring us an emotive theatrical story telling  performance. The one and only Mardi Love’s charismatic elegance and
cheek captured us all and the event was wrapped up with Zoe Jakes’ Theatrical fusion ensemble The Bhoomi project!
The Bhoomi’s all star cast entertained us with artistic endeavors of the unusual kind as well as that sharp, fast spinning isolation awesomeness that we can expect of Zoe closing it all with a hot-pant clad brigade of people getting their booties in the air and daggering, something which I have heard has drawn some controversy.

The amazing week was ended with everyone saying their farewells in the magical glowing light of the solar eclipse. All in all I had an awesome time coming away with fond memories and new blingified fancies, new friends and a lot less money in my bank account.

 

.until next year…….