The theme of the round robin book I had in November for the Altered Book Club was "Women and Friendship". After getting that board book that I spoke of in my last post out of the way, and with only a couple of days left before the meeting, I was at a loss as to what to do. I was the next to the last person to have this book, so it seemed like everything that could be said already was said. I looked through some old cards I have and found the Hawaiian dancers on the right. They made me think of when a group of us friends decided we would do Tribal Belly Dance back about 15 or 16 years ago. We decided we would teach ourselves -- with videos from Fat Chance -- and then found a dance instructor who was more into folkloric middle eastern dance (rather than "cabaret") to work with us. It was mostly about having fun, dressing up in "gypsy" eclectic style clothes, wearing turbans and crazy jewelry, henna and fake tribal tattoos.
The spread came together when I found this image on the Graphic Fairy website, of this group of women friends splashing and dancing.
Some of our dance forms looked a lot like these Hawaiian dancers -- or like dancers from Minoan culture -- we did a lot of lines and circles and a multi-armed Shiva kind of form, dreaming ourselves into a mythic matri-centric culture of women birthing, nourishing the village, dancing around the village well beneath the moon, dancing for ourselves alone and for each other. We played and played, and when it was play it was fun.
I found some phrases from some magazines, "Between Friends" and "life happens", and tied the pages together with some butterflies cut from a napkin, and wrote "Between friends life happens when you dance together".
2 comments:
What a lovely story which in turn created an interesting theme for your altered book. Thanks for sharing. Dropping by from the Graphics Fairy.
I LOVE THIS......! ''Some of our dance forms looked a lot like these Hawaiian dancers -- or like dancers from Minoan culture -- we did a lot of lines and circles and a multi-armed Shiva kind of form, dreaming ourselves into a mythic matri-centric culture of women birthing, nourishing the village, dancing around the village well beneath the moon, dancing for ourselves alone and for each other. We played and played, and when it was play it was fun.''
If there is any kind of dance I wanted to take lately it is Tribal Style Dance. I don't like belly dance, but your description of it is precisely why I loved it, including the dressing up, the dancing for ourselves and for each other. I never got round to doing it...classes here too pricey. Can't wait for the new communities to form with smaller villages of cozy colorful personalities. Mine would be a cross between a Renaissance Faire and Cirque du Soleil meets the Fairy People of the High Court LOL
Post a Comment