Saturday, May 5, 2012

Hot Soup Duet

Last night's show was amazing!! Over fifty bellydancers and an audience of well over a hundred turned out for Dancing Into The Light, our spring bellydance showcase cohosted by yours truly alongside the inimitable Chaya Leia and Sahina. Christina and I debuted the piece I choreographed, which we've been working on since early January: The Hot Soup Duet! What kind of a name is that? Well, it's set to a song called "Tchorba" by the ah-MAY-zing French fusion/klezmer/gypsy/jazz band Les Yeux Noirs. Tchorba means "soup" and is also the name of the album from which the song is taken - an album that mixes music from all over Eastern Europe and down through France to serve up a sound something like Django Reinhardt fed to a band of violin-wielding Yiddish maniacs. "Soup" seems appropriate not only given the marvelous mixture of stuff in their songs but also the heady broth of influences in our duet: from 1920s vaudeville style a la the Mira Betz/Elizabeth Strong piece "Joie de Vie" to the exuberance of dancers at a traditional wedding to contemporary fusion bellydance, this piece is a stylized, jazzy, joyful tribute to that fabulous and aromatic stew, the wonder of transnational fusion.

Oh, and it's hot. And here it is:

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