Sa’diyya from Texas in New Hampshire

I got out for my first workshop since October (Amar Gamal). Sa'diyya's workshop brought up to Nashua New Hampshire, my hometown. I brought my little man to visit his grandparents, who kindly watched him as I took the latter half of the workshop, the drum solo. I already knew I enjoyed Sad'iyya's teaching style from Combination Nation Vol 2. She also had the respect of my friends Badriya and Najmat. In fact, many respected Boston-area dancers made the trek up to New Hampshire – and that speaks volumes. Due to the location, I also had the opportunity to see dancer-friends from Vermont and New Hampshire who I rarely see. Nashua has come a long way. When I was a little girl and even as a young adult, there were no bellydancing classes to speak of in the area. I wasn't able to start studying bellydance until I moved to Boston in my mid-twenties.

Sad'iyya did something that is the mark of a good workshop instructor. She created tracks of her music for each section of her choreography, allowing us to easily start from the middle or end when we were working on those parts. She also had tracks that slowed the music down. She was pretty good at keeping the workshop at a level that everyone could follow, while also adding in notes of additional things you could do if you already had the foot and hip work, like hair accents, facial direction, and "style".

We got to see the whole performance at the end. She is quite the athletic dancer! She had an impressive ending pose that would take me a while to master, and I mean, a while with a bench press machine! I wanted to ask what she does to work out in addition to dance. Her style combined both Egyptian dance and jazz and ballet stylings. She is a real original, not just a good dancer – but a creative dancer.

It was perfect serendipity that one of the workshop vendors was a natural soap maker. My parents do love special soap, and I was able to bring them back a nice gift to thank them for watching my son, who apparently did quite well without it, with a brief crying fit when he awoke from his nap without me there.

I also brought my costumes for sale. While I didn't make any sales (and personally I'd rather not sell a costume to someone who won't be completely happy with how it fits), I did get to see how they looked on other people – and that's always fun. But with my costumes, it's always the issue of either the top being too small or too big for the person I'm selling it to! In particular, I have a crazy Joharah costume that I bought when I was pregnant, with a top that is larger that you can believe 'til you see it, and then hips that I can just barely fit into today. So if you see a dancer that looks like she should be dancing to "pumpkin" instead of "manga", let me know – do I have the bra for her!