A little inspiration...or coercion

There's a Hafla (bellydancing dance party) this Saturday. It includes open floor dancing and performances by various members of the dance community. My dance troupe had planned to work up a choreography and perform, but for various reasons everyone (except me) wasn't sure they'd be in town that night. I decided to design a solo, dancing to a rock song rather than the traditional Middle Eastern music most people use. Life, work, and a lack of inspiration got in the way and I never much worked on a choreography. I announced at last week's practice that I wasn't going to perform. That got the rest of the troupe riled up and they forced me to perform what little I had and improv the rest right that minute for them. Well, it went better than expected and everyone liked what I did, even though I couldn't remember what I'd made up after it was done. It inspired me to finalize a choreography and sew several new costume pieces. I did a dress rehearsal at practice last night and felt pretty good about it. No, I felt great. I'm so glad now that I let myself be coerced into working up a solo. Now comes the last few days of practice, where people catch me singing and dancing to myself in my lab coat at work, and my car stereo plays nothing but The Song while I shimmy in my car seat. Oh, and the frantic last minute costume sewing, from which I'm taking a brief break and really have to get back to. That's one problem with never using patterns to sew, it takes a lot more time and effort to figure out how you want some pieces to look. Hopefully I'll be able to tape the performance so you all can see it. Who knows, maybe it'll even be YouTube-worthy. Of course, my standards are a fair bit higher than some of the tripe you see posted.