deelybopper

Will do - thanks Liz!

Eve

ok - long shot. Any spare tickets for Saturday nights show?

lizaj

Thursday is now sold out but I believe that some reserved tickets for sat have now been released. Contact the Bluecoat direct.

Eve

Cheers, just called I'm on a call back list so fingers crossed.

fatinah

woohoo tonight is the performance night yay i am so excited!!

Caroline_afifi

I would just like to say what a great dance weekend we just had at the Bluecoat Arts centre for the Liverpool Arab arts festival. The performances sold out and the feedback has been amazing. The whole theatre had a boogy on Saturday night and the atmosphere was fantastic.

The seminar day was not very well attended.. no surprise there then.

The ones who did come really really enjoyed it and thought it was truly excellent.

Shira presented her talk with film extracts about the attitudes towards dancers in the Egypt. All I can say is it was a fabulous presentation and perhaps the best I have seen. The reasons being it was very accesible to all and did not try to be pretentious or over academic. It was skillfully constructed, extremely clear and concise and thoroughly entertaining.
I applaud her on a marvelous piece of work.

I hope that in the future more people make the effort to attend seminars and presentations in their areas as they are really missing out on some valuable learning.

For those who can make it, there are two subtitled films coming up which will enhance your knowledge of Egyptian cluture. Tonight at the Fact centre is Ein Shams (2007) with a presentaion speech before hand by special guest Jack Shaheen (creator or Reel Bad Arabs and father of composer Simon Shaheen)
Next week is the big film and perhaps the last by the great director Yussef Shaheen, the film is called Heya Fawda (Chaos).

fatinah

Firstly...what a great weekend...I went to the palm house day and then to the show on Thursday night and had a great time at both.

I don't think its a case of people not making the effort. I think thats a bit unfair. I know a few local bellydance students now who have mentioned they would of liked to of attended but could not afford to do everything. The show was £14 and the confrence was another £30. Obviously people would rather watch the dancing. I couldnt afford to pay for everything and I know alot of others couldnt too. £44 quid doesnt sound much but its a big chunk out of some people's budget each month when they run a mortgage, kids, bills, dance classes.

deelybopper

I was one of those! I thought it was an excellent day- thankyou so much for putting it together. I was sooo disappointed by the lack of interest. I agree that Shira's presentation really stood out because of it's clarity - really good work that. I enjoyed the others too, tho' didn't always agree with the points made - but that's the point of things like this. Debate!!! As long as it's constructive debate...

I really hope you get funding to repeat it, and perhaps extend it - and if I can be helpful in any way in that happening let me know!

ETA - sorry I couldn't make the performances

deelybopper

I think it's a question of priorities - I've been to an awful lot of workshops/performances in my BD lifetime, and I do a huge amount of thinking about the kinds of subjects discussed at the conference...so much that sometimes I think it would be kinder to everyone to just chop my head off So, for me, the main thing was the conference, and it *was* disappointing that not a lot of people went. It's not at all obvious to me that people would rather go to the performances - I'd rather have gone to everything, but circumstances and finances wouldn't allow, so I had to make a choice.

I totally agree that £44 is a lot out of your budget, but conferences are usually a lot more than £30! I *personally* feel that if you're going to take middle eastern/arabic/belly dance seriously, you owe it to yourself to try and do some of the 'talky' stuff to get some cultural background / context and learn about different perspectives. YMMV.

deelybopper

Caroline, I don't want to flog a dead horse if you'd rather not, but...why was it no surprise to you?