Labor Day weekend is indeed a busy one for me. My son, Ian, was born on Labor Day weekend 9 years ago, come the 4th. Since then, Labor Day weekend has not only been the “end of summer”, the “celebration of the birth of Ian”, but also an opportunity to dance, dance, dance!

Last year, I was very pleasantly surprised to be invited to perform at Schaumburg Fest. It’s quite a bit event, so having the opportunity to showcase some of my hard-working students, as well as my friends, was really a blessing. We did such a great job (there were a lot of “Wow…that was a lot different than I expected” and “I had come because I thought it might be funny, but you guys are actually really good” and “That was really classy!!” responses last year that left me wondering what people actually DID expect…) that we were invited back again this year.

Although the entire show was not video-taped (I’ll go for that next year), it was a huge success and my friend was kind enough to shoot a video of my solo performance. I’m working on getting a photo gallery on the blog, so once I do, you can see pics of my fabulous friends and students, as well!

Enjoy!!

I always love dancing at the Hafla in the Square. It’s a great environment with really truly wonderful people.

This month’s hafla was especially special for me. First and foremost, one of my bff’s, Julie aka Akasha, debuted (actually TREYbuted) as a solo dancer. She also soloed as an improvisational dancer (not easy to do on your first time out) and with a poi veil, none the less.

The hafla was very small this time, since the weekend also housed the Midwest Belly Dance competition. At 44 years old, I am just glad that everything still moves the way I intend it to, or at least for the most part, so I’m not into competing. I did a bit too much of that in my younger days and throughout my various careers. Anyway, the hafla audience consisted of the people dancing, 3 dancers who normally dance but were not dancing, miscellaneous spouses and companions. All people that I knew and felt really comfortable with.

I had been having a couple of sort of rough days after being on the receiving end of a tiff with a person I had thought was my good friend. I had also been working my butt off trying to put together the Labor Day show for Schaumburg Fest, as well as my Labor Day show for Mt. Prospect, and figuring out what I was dancing to at the Shimmy for the Cure in Elgin coming up this Sunday evening. So…I decided to just let my hair down a bit and have some fun. Which I did. And I’m even going to let you watch me having that fun.

Hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed doing it. Sometimes, you just need to let off some steam by being yourself.