Fleet Feet Demo
April 15, 2009 § Leave a comment
Me and some troupe mates did a demo at Fleet Feet tonight at their annual Diva Night. It was much more crowded than I expected. I thought it would be a dozen women in a shoe store doing Diva-esque, female-bonding type things. Turns out, it was actually around 80 or 90 women, lots of demos and shopping and food…
Our demo started late due to a malfunctioning cd player. The microphone was also not working, so I think only about 5 people heard what we were telling them about the style of belly dance we were performing. We danced a Turkish Rom piece to Rompi Rompi.
Seeing the reactions to some things when an audience is not accustomed to belly dancing can be interesting. At one point in the choreography, we do a couple toxims (hip figure eights) and claps our hands together and trace the same movement with our hands. From some of the ladies reactions you would’ve thought we’d just done pelvic thrusts across the floor toward them a la male stripper style. They seemed to enjoy the demo, it’s just funny when there’s an unanticipated reaction.
I did have one of the worst costume malfunctions I’ve had in awhile. My ring hooked on my belt fringe and would not release. I ended up just sliding my ring off and left it hanging from the fringe. Aside from a couple of audience members who were staring at it dangling there for the rest of the demo, it was a good quick fix. In fact, by the end of the song, I forgot it was there.
After performing we did a mini demo class. Only about 5 women actually tried dancing. There might’ve been more if the mic had worked so more of them knew what was going on, but what can you do? We passed out a lot of fliers, and we were all in all well-received so hopefully we’ll get some new students or even some future gigs.
JadeDancer.com 
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