[Billion Belly March info]
[Belly Dance Convergence Week] [Calendar-at-a-Glance]
[registration form]

Mon, 08 May 2006

DANCE CHOREOGRAPHIES


I dreamed up and taught the remote/out-of-town-dancer dance choreography to Jennette, Lisa, Christine, Laura, Nikolai, Laura Rose, Faze, and Tiffany. We taped the DVD in one long night. Itıs being edited while I type this and will be ready after we get back from the Hawaii Retreat. We are excited about bringing back some of last yearıs dances and adding new moves.

So far we have these dances in our line up with different groups doing different dances to each.

We will put up written dance notes on line after May 9th.

HOPES AND GOALS
We truly think dancers will enjoy learning and dancing these short little choreographies. It excites us! It will take practice to look good and we have 6 weeks, and we are very confident.

REMOTE DANCE PROJECTS
So far we have 2 dancers who have signed up to learn the remote dances from PA and VA. who are coming to Seattle to join us! Yahoo! We have lots of dancers saying they are coming from CA, HI and elsewhere also.

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Billion Belly March Committee Meetings


We've had 3 good committee meetings with volunteers and supporters in March/ April so far. People are manning their posts. Morale is good and we are getting excited to see things take shape. Mostly we are gearing up. We havenıt made any big push yet.

POSTER
Page Clark (graphic designer and fabulous dancer named Noor) designed a great poster to promote the our dance group in the Parade and Belly Con! Plus we have some black and white flyers for dancers to pass out to students and friends out of town. We need the Belly Con, dance class flyers next.

WEB
Debra Reese is doing our web design at present. She has been putting up the classes and schedules as we get them finalized. We have classes linked from the calendar and a parade page that links all the other aspects and the classes.

CLASSES We have a couple registration forms. One for specific parade classes and a regular registration form that can be used for any class. Both work (.I hope itıs not too confusing). Dancers are signing up early and are even taking more than one parade class! They say they love the exercise and get a chance to be even better. A lot of dancers are calling about costumes early as well. Itıs really cool!

The classes for Belly Dancer Convergence week AKA Belly Con are almost fixed in place. Itıs not been easy to get in touch with everyone but, when we do, everyone has been very nice and supportive. We have an incredible and diverse line up of all-star dancers from right here in Seattle !

MUSIC
Erik Brown and the Drum ensemble has been rehearsing all of April (so far we have about 14 drummer, 2 zorna players and Don the bag pipe player). They are ready and excited to accompany us for classes.

BACK-UP LOCATION FOR PRACTICE
Hooray! We have the alternative location for classes should it rain on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday during Parade sessions. That is a relief and allows us to schedule classes in the studio if need be.

BELLY CON
I am so excited about the class line up Raks Serpentine, Kitiera, Laura Rose, Madam Habib, Sabura, Erik Brown, Tina Sargent, Sharon Moore, Eisa Gamal, Zaphara, Dahlia Moon, Michael Beach, Brothers of the Baladi and a couple others we are waiting to hear from, and me, too!

FLOAT
Soon as we get back from the Hawaii Retreat, we need to do a mock up of the float idea. Magi Erlandsen, Cory, Ed, Ken, Marry and a few more painters are on board with ideas for the art design but would love more volunteers come May.

PR
Shannon Hall wrote up a letter to NPR and sent it off. It was a difficult letter to write because there are so many aspects to this project and we didnıt want the letter to be too long. Not easy! We needed to cut it down. She is working on other outreach and promotion to get our public awareness message out about belly dance and how important it is to women. That is the goal: Greater Belly Dance Awareness. It is a very good thing that women are belly dancing all over the world! It is a very good thing that so many belly dance events are happening every week in every city. It speaks to itıs diversity when there are so many identifiable styles of belly dance to choose from. Belly dance is for every woman any age, shape or color. Itıs for the house wife, the sports enthusiast, the therapist, the beauty queen and grandmothers too! Itıs absolutely remarkable!

Laura Rose, Dahlia and I worked on hand-made invitations to send out to our invitational section of the parade.

Dancers are manning the email and the phones talking the parade up and we have volunteers for our home stay program lining up.

EVENTS
Shows, Parties, a Salon, and Shopping Bazaar. Belly Dance, Ethnic Dance and Drum workshops and a Parade!

E mail
Tiphany Overzat is overseer of e mail! BillionBellys@yahoo.com as well as Billionbellies@yahoo.com

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BELLY POWER ART PROJECT


We have $100 donation given to us for art supplies from Mark Dalton and 1 belly photo on itıs way already for our BELLY POWER ART PROJECT.

DON'T BE SHY! SHOW US YOUR PRIDE! SEND US YOUR BELLY PHOTO!

We have some cool ideas for how to use these photos in a very artistic and dignified way! We promise.

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Billion Belly Background


Last year (2005) after the Fremont Solstice Parade, my dancers and I realized we had reached a critical mass (or is it the 100th Monkey thing?) with 100 bellies in the parade. We felt powerful, big and somehow different for this experience. Each year we have gotten progressively larger and this is due to dancers returning each year. For some dancers the only belly dancing they do for the whole year is in the parade. Each year women decide they want to learn to belly dance as a result of seeing us in the parade. Each year our group has gotten larger.

First 5, then 7,12 . . .28 then 35, 45, 60, 80 until we became 100 strong. Each year we set a theme and we make each movement in the parade meaningful to us. Each dancer gets to make her own statement about style of costume but we show our solidarity each year by uniting ourselves in a dance and a color theme.

The dedication is like no other belly dance event I have ever participated in. Why?

Because a parade is about pride, and women take their belly dance very seriously. Belly Dance is for all women. All ages, sizes, shapes, colors and belly dance gives them a sense of personal power, beauty and strength. We want the media to get it right this year!

This blog is a journal of process and progress of the Billion Belly March 2006. Our theme "Show our Presence to the World"

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