A BURLESQUE SPOOKTACULAR!
Presented by Dream Events, Inc. 
When: October 2, 2009; 2 shows: 8pm & 10pm
Where: Burlesque Babes; 282 SW 43rd St., Renton, WA 98057
October Spooktacular! Come see Luna Fey perform her Lilith Act (aka the gargoyle act) at the Burlesque Babes stage in Renton. I’m excited about performing for the first time at this venue, I’ve heard so many great things about shows here. Get excited for Halloween! Luna Fey has a few spooky surprises in store…
Real quickly (& posted haphazardly from my iPhone), I have a performance on Saturday at Broadway Performance Hall. This is a Khaleeji Fusion piece choreographed by Dahlia and performed by our intermediate/advanced class.
You can find more info here and there’s also a link to brown paper tickets.
Address: Broadway Performance Hall; 1625 Broadway, Seattle WA 98122
A Luna Fey show in October and one khaleeji fusion act in September! Not a lot of details at this point but I have some dates.
First: breaking news! I just was asked to perform my gargoyle act for the October Spooktacular on October 2nd. I will post show details when I get them.
September 12th (barring any changes) I will be performing a Khaleeji Fusion piece with Dahlia Moon and my intermediate/advanced classmates.
The tiki theme shows were fantastic! 
I ended up modifying my act a bit for the Rendezvous shows (including a big tiki god mask) and I’m pretty happy with the result. I only got the veil caught once! The Tarts are taking September off so the next cab act will be sometime in October.
In the upcoming months our choreography class has a performance scheduled for September (a khaleeji fusion piece by Dahlia) that both Erin and I are in so…very exciting! More on that later. Possibly going to have a second performance with Raqs Steady Eddie (still up in the air as of yet) so I will also follow up with any more on that when I find out.
Before I was a belly dancer I was an “amateur” burlesque and cabaret performer (a few shows here and there). I went by the persona: Luna Fey (the little moon pixie) and on August 19th I’m returning to the Rendezvous to perform with the Tempting Tarts in a tiki-inspired cabaret act. This is a 21 and over venue so please no kids! Enjoy the freaky tiki fun and order up a mai tai as the girls shake their grass skirts!
I’m back from a wild end of July vacation and I’m totally wiped. I just finished up the “More Than Belly Dance” class series with Dahlia and it’s the first time I’ve gotten my hips moving in several days. I feel like a couch potato! We worked on some really muscle and core intensive moves so it was a glorious nourishment that I so, so needed! She’s offering a choreography class this next session so I will dive right back in to some serious work. I have some new goals in mind, and some things got put off (like my costume project) because of vacation and family stuff. I’m having a strong desire to spend about 24 hours in yoga class until I get myself back into the bodymind that I had before my wacky vacation and subsequent foodlust. Terpsichore, I need you baby!
Very quickly, I want to share a link to a lovely blog post by Mellilah (a local dancer and instructor and friend of Dahlia Moon) called So You Want to be a Professional Belly Dancer (Performing and Teaching). I found it very informative and it touches on a lot of subjects and questions that I’ve been wondering about.
PS: I’ve been love LOVE loving the “More than Just Belly Dancing” class I’m taking with Dahlia this session. I highly recommend taking it if you get the chance (if she offers it again in the future, which hopefully she will) as it has made the idea of performing so much more approachable, and Dahlia is so forthcoming with her wisdom it is beyond amazing.
Yesterday Erin & I went to the Mediterranean Fantasy Festival in West Seattle. This was my first time at the festival, though I had heard of it last year and managed to miss it. I bought a new silk veil; my first. Photo to the right 
(The image does not do the color justice. It is a beautiful mulberry color that appears more rose pink when the light hits it.) There were so many dancers, I think that when we were not shopping the booths we caught performances from Aziza, Azar, and Mirabai.
There were so many great vendors. If I had been far more frugal in the prior weeks I could have easily allowed myself to buy way too many beautiful things. There were so many skirts and veils and beautiful jewelry. I was convinced that I absolutely needed this beautiful (and huge) necklace with black/green stones but I held back.
We also got some huge chicken kabab pita bread sandwiches that I could barely get my mouth around, and yes we took pictures because we are dorks. 
The festival goes on today as well, but I’m kind of wiped out. Friday we went to Navya Lounge for House of Tarab and performances by Delilah and Aziza.
Aziza is fantastic, and we got to see her perform at Medfest too. She is beloved around Seattle as an instructor and performer (more on her website linked above & below).
I’ve got some clicky links for you out of my adventures this week:
-Mishu and The Silk Dragon (Boutique Clothing and Dance Apparel)
- Lady Silk Designs (The vendor I bought my veil from)
- Babylonian Ensemble (Group that puts on Mediterranean Fantasy Festival)
I highly recommend that if you can go today, please visit the festival. They can accept cards as payment as well (which was such a mind-blowing thing for me. I’m not used to paying tent vendors with my credit card!)
So over the past ten months I’ve been marking my weightloss progress (from diet & dance) with belly photos. Disembodied belly photos! I have Powerbelly, Yoga, and MyFoodDiary.com to thank. Here they are from October 2008 to present, July 2009 (I lost just over 18lbs total):
I know they aren’t very big shots, but we don’t need to go over every little minutiae, heh. I’m not embarrassed about my stomach but I’d like to reserve some detail from the internet’s eyes thank you!
If you can get over the sheer horror of observing your stomach it’s pretty cathartic and I think it helps motivate you. It’s good to be proud of your progress and yourself! I like to observe this as a study in how dance can shape your body. It would be interesting to compare a belly dance belly to a straight gym/aerobics/crunches belly.
Last night was the Variety/Burlesque Tartopia show at Helmet Head. Here’s a shot of my ragdoll costume for my cabaret act “Defective Dolly”. It was a bit chaotic but lots of fun. We had a great crowd! Lots of hootin’ & hollarin’, as it should be. I met Roxy Ruby & Jezebel Vandersnatch, two very lovely ladies who are so very talented and wonderful! And of course my awesome friend Morgan LaMay performed her Liberty Bell act. I also talked with Kitty Baby about doing a tiki volcano-sacrifice act for a show in July, so more on that later! Here are some photos from the show (more after the jump):
Antares’ rag doll “Defective Dolly”
I had some great advice from Dahlia Moon in regards to keeping venue/billing/persona in line: if you’re not performing a belly dancing piece then don’t bill yourself as a belly dancer for that piece. If you are billing yourself as a belly dancer then you have to represent! Makes sense don’t you think?
I already gave my billing as “Antares” for my cabaret act at Helmet Head. Antares is who I am as a belly dancer. While the piece incorporates belly dancing moves, it is not going to be a traditional belly dancing act. For someone getting started this seems like a pretty easy confusion to make. But her advice is that it is best to keep your personas aligned. It’s about keeping a place for the traditional form of belly dance . And a way to funnel the energy is to keep a special name for your belly dancing self.
I’m sure that not everyone follows this path of thought. There are plenty of dancers who use only one stage name. I think that it can be confusing for your fans if they aren’t sure what to expect from your act, but then again that might be your thing.
I think it’s fine to have a name for yourself as an artist. I chose Antares because it has a personal fit for who I am. Whether or not it becomes the name for my traditional belly dancing persona is yet to be determined I suppose, sometimes things fall into place and I’m just getting started!
