Catching up with myself

That about sums ups the last month for me. On the upside I did get to reveiw some pretty awesome dance performances, on the downside I've struggled with getting out of bed to get to them. Feeling curled up is not conducive to much, but I'm learning to use it!

Why do people think appropriating the work of other cultures is acceptable? And if they must do so why don't they have the grace/skill to at least do a half decent job of it? Take for example the dance performance 'Borrowed Light'...

borrow the concept from the Shakers, borrow the dance from the Japanese, borrow the music from the Boston Camerata and tour the world and take it by storm. It wasn't awful but it wasn't great either. The best things about the performance was the music and the costume design. Which when you're touting it as a dance performance is not generally held to be a good thing. Sigh.

In other news, my belly dancing class is going really well. Huda (that's the teacher) is really fun and short and fat and an amazing dancer. And she is a total geek about dance so I feel very much at home in her class. Why is it that belly dancing is portrayed as something that women do to make themselves more attractive to men? And that the correct way of doing that is to be stick thin, white and blonde? And if you're not any one of those things you strive to make yourself fit as much as you can (so i'f you're not white the least you can do is make sure you're not also fat... shock horror). Efface yourself: that seems to be the policy for survival. I digress... The point is that if anyone were to look at the history and tradition of belly dance they would find that it has very little to do with being either white (!!) or thin or for the edification of men.