816 Dance Photos, 4 of 4

[Later Edit - Yes, this is Daughters of Ishtar, not Alchemy.]

I think this might be the Alchemy Dance Theater, but then again it might be Daughters of Ishtar (help?) Whatever. The have the prettiest cholis (tops). They look like they might be made from sari silk.


At one point (before the rain) I was looking at some belts one of the vendors had, and she asked if I was a dancer. I laughed and said "Once upon a time, 30 years ago." She (a youngster) said "Wow! I bet the dance has changed a lot since then." I said yes, it has.

It has probably changed more in the past 40 years than in the preceeding 2,000 years. Movies and tourism have had their effect.

There are subtle things. When you look at the photo above, the ladies are doing a hip (lift and) thrust, and the way they are doing it looks very nice. But back in my day, isolation was all. We would not have leaned the upper body like that. We would have got the same hip extension, but we'd keep the shoulders parallel to the floor, and the rib cage perpendicular to the floor. When we did hip movements, the upper body was kept out of it. Nowadays, there's more flow.


Willow was supposed to dance early in the evening, but when she was asked if she'd like to dance, she declined. So, near the end, when she decided to dance after all, I'd used up all my film. These are photos 25 and 26 on a 24-shot roll. As often as I have seen her dance, I never had a camera with me before, and this time I did, and I was still caught short. And they are terrible pictures. Oh, well, photos never do her justice anyway. You have to see her move.

This is an example of how NOT to photograph a bellydancer - catch her in the middle of a belly roll.
Her floor work is incredible, but she was dancing on a squishy sopping carpet, so no one expected her to go to the floor, but suddenly she leaned back, and we all held our breath, and whoop! She did a turkish drop right into the wetness. Audience pleaser to the core.