Being a professional solo dancer,other then dancing with my students on a occasion I do not get a chance to dance with other professional dancers. Recently, I became part of a professional belly dance group, “The Mystic Jewels.” The experiance was wonderful and I not only learned alot about myself, but I learned alot more about the other dancers that were involved and formed a bonding relationship with both of the women in the troupe.  The troupe came about when Athena Nile came up with an idea where other dancers come together to not just perform but collaborate with one another.  Myself and another girl jumped at the chance when Athena was taking volunteers!!  The experiance was so wonderful and I miss both Athena & Erica!!  I not only gained new ideas, but new friendships as well.

When you are in part of a troupe, naturally some things happen there is one person who stands out as the leader and the others along with the leader work together to make things happen; sharing ideas, what is working or what is not working. This group was a collaborate effort and each one of us came up with different ideas and because we each also dance a different style we walked away from our first choreography and first performance that was very unique and very individual, which you would not normally expect with a group choreography. We created a ballet/belly dance performance. Since we were performing at a fusion show we could not do cabaret or egyptian style dancing so we intertwined ballet with belly dance and our costumes consisted of leotards and a skirt wrap donned with pink tights.  When we put on our leotards and pink tights with matching skirts each one of us commented on how we actually felt like ballarina’s.  We all felt very girly and laughed and giggled as we were fooling around doing leaps and peorette’s.  I am looking forward to dancing with these girls again in the near future!