Walk like an Egyptian...

So I did it! Sunday was the Hafla (belly dance party), we all got to dress up, do a dance each (in our groups), shop, eat, drink and be merry. Then there was an open floor afterwards for lots of dancing. These are some of the girls from our class, along with our picnic and wine glasses *lol* Well, you need some dutch courage if you're dancing in front of a couple of hundred people! We're all well inebriated by this stage :-) My outfit consisted of a fitted top with flowing 3/4 length sleeves, which I cut off to below my boobs, and then glued jewels and stitched sequins to it. I had a flowing black skirt already, and had some red/black two-toned sari material in my stash, which was just big enough to make a panel for the front and one for the back. I threaded the panels onto some elastic and sewed red, black and silver sequins to the bottom edges. I put this on over my skirt, and I had a black and silver coin belt over the top of that. I had a dangly jewelled belly ring and lots of Indian silver jingly anklets and bracelets. It's quite nice to dress up and go really over the top sometimes *lol* We decided to have a session in February where we all met at Jo's house and brought stuff from our stash, and made outfits for the Valentine Hafla, which will be more of a belly dance and burlesque night. If anyone ever saw any of Channel 4's Faking it programme, there was a girl who faked it as a burlesque dancer and then carried on, and she'll be performing. I actually won a prize in the raffle, a voucher for a professional photo, so I had that done and will be getting that in the post at some point!

This is Lynne, our teacher and the one who organised everything. The night was to raise money for MacMillan's Cancer Relief Fund, a brilliant charity which provides nurses and support to cancer sufferers. Most of the dancers are her students, except for some of the guest performers. She's here in her American Tribal style outfit, dancing to Jimmy Hendrix:-)

A tribal drumming performance. Some of the photos get a little blurry from here - my camera doesn't take brilliant action shots, especially at a distance!

The nights only male dancer. He may have had a bit of a belly on him, but boy, he certainly was supple; at one point he bent over backwards and practically touched the floor.

One of the groups was too big for the stage and overflowed to the dance floor.

A swirling dervish!

So yeah, it was a good day. It's a shame that we've now broken up for Christmas and won't be dancing together again till the beginning of January. I still don't like performing on a stage, but the buzz afterwards is good!