March going into April has been a very
exciting few weeks for me. I started March on a completely different continent,
training in Las Vegas, returning to the UK on the 5th, just a few
days before I was due to get married to my long suffering boyfriend (and now
husband) Dan. Lucky for us the sun came out, it wasn’t too cold and it all went
off mostly without any hitches. We spent the day exactly as we wanted –
surrounded by friends and family and just having a nice and relaxed day.
Wonderful! And before you ask me about married life, no it doesn’t feel any
different, yes I have legally changed my name but will be keeping my maiden
name as a stage name and no we haven’t been on honeymoon yet!
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| With Tribal Prague organisers Martina & Katka |
In fact, we’re not sure when exactly a honeymoon will happen
seeing as there aren’t many dates something’s not occurring already before the
end of the year! We may have to plan our official getaway for next year (we’re
thinking of heading to China or somewhere equally as far flung from Britain!),
but in the meantime we spent the weekend following our wedding visiting Prague
for the Tribal Prague festival. I purposefully planned it so that I would be
spending some free time with my new husband exploring the city and just hanging
out. He never minds coming along to events with me, but being newlyweds I couldn't just abandon him like I usually do!
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| Kisses from Kami & Martina - lucky girl! |
Tribal Prague was a fun festival to be a
part of. I performed at both shows, where the headline acts were MartinaCrowe-Hewett and Kami Liddle. Both are amazing teachers and performers and it
was an honour to share the stage with them. It was especially a dream for me
because Kami was one of my first Tribal Fusion teachers and I have studied with
her a lot over the years, and she’s always been one of my favourite dancers. It
was a great opportunity for me to catch up with friends from across Europe such
as Nakari from Austria, Rustiqua and Marta Bedriova from Slovakia, Maria Fomina
from Ukraine, and to meet new faces (or at least meet them in person instead of
on Facebook!) like Inga Petermann from Germany and the lovely Tribal Prague
organisers Martina Viewegova and Katka Havelkova.
The shows were full of incredible
performers from all over Europe. I didn’t get to see everyone due to being
backstage for much of the first half of each show, so I’m looking forward to
seeing videos. Highlights included Giuliana Angelini (Germany) - this girl is fierce!; Tribal Jam
(Russia) who performed a great piece to a cover of Lady Gaga's Bad Romance; Maria Fomina, Rustiqua; Krisztina Teglas (Hungary); and of course
Martina and Kami in addition to dancers from all over the Czech Republic. So
yes, I’m excited to see everyone else’s videos so I know what I missed! Peering
through stage wings doesn’t quite capture the full effect either!
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| Performing at the show Photo by JiSe |
For my own performances I used my
choreography to Dan Cantrell’s Wayward Machine, and the following night an
improvised piece to Lost & Found by Amon Tobin and Intro by the XX. It was
also an opportunity to wear my new Medina Maitreya costume and Snake Church
skirt – gifts from my husband – for the first time. I feel that the
performances went well – I won’t know for sure of course until I see video, but
for the first time in a while I came off stage with thoughts about my
performance, rather than no feelings at all about how it went, so that can only
be a positive thing! I sold quite a few bits of jewellery at the festival too, so it was wonderful to see so many performers on stage sporting my work!
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| Beautiful Prague at sunset |
Prague is a beautiful city, and I had a great
deal of enjoyment with friends there. I would love to return to Tribal Prague –
it is a lovely little festival with a great community feeling and very kind and
generous organisers. It was a nice touch to give each performer a single rose
during the show finales, and it’s those little touches you remember in years to
come.
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| Alexis & Nakari with Martina & Kami |
No rest for the wicked though! The following week
it was down to Brighton for some training I had booked for myself last year
with the amazing Donna Mejia. I did workshops with Donna in Brighton last year
and got so much out of them. I then did more with her at Tribal Con and learned
even more, so I could not pass up the opportunity to study some more. She
delivered a two day intensive, which she had total freedom to create what she
wanted with. Ordinarily I will not take workshops that have no description of
what we will be doing on the day (incidentally there was a description but it
was the same for each day with no specifics), however having taken several
workshops with Donna last year I knew I couldn’t be disappointed. She is so
very knowledgeable about the human body and dance, and once again I left with a
ton of knew information to process and feeling inspired. Her dance combinations
were heavily based in her background in African dance, which was challenging to
do in the classes. I know I will not use the combinations in any dancing I do,
however there were several moves in there that interested me and I will be
working on perfecting that I might sneak into a dance somewhere! The only problem
for me with Donna’s workshops is that she is not here long enough! We got four
hours per day – I’d like to do that with her every day! The stretching and conditioning we did each day made me
feel tall and strong and flexible, like a proper dancer, and I felt energised
and happy. I don’t know if this is do to with the change in attitude I had to
practice thanks to Zoe or whether it was something Donna managed to extract
from me, but I really felt like I belonged to the dancer category after all
that stretching!
The best part of the weekend for me was the
Supernova show. It was a small cast but a huge show! My favourite pieces were
Samantha Emanuel and Tjarda van Straten’s new duet, Hilde’s performance to
Happy Feet (!) and Anasma’s Prince Charming. We were also treated to a duet
between Anasma and Tjarda, another solo from Anasma, solos from Tjarda,
Samantha, Susan Frankovich, and of course Donna and Ela Rogers and ATS with
Philippa (Moirai) and Charlotte (Ter’zim) – there was also a special collaborative
performance between Hilde, Donna and Ela which was a pleasure to watch.
All in all a busy few weeks! This past
weekend I taught a hip work drills workshop, attended by some wonderful women
who worked very hard with me and were looking damn good at their hip work by
the end of it. We had some great moments of realisation together, breakthroughs
on muscle usage and aha moments on certain movements, and they all enjoyed
laughing at my guilty pleasures scattered in my playlist, such as Outkast and
Justin Timberlake.... I do not feel ashamed despite their mocking of me!
This weekend I have a weekend off where
we’re spending some time with family and perhaps cleaning our house after the
wedding madness, before going off on my travels again! This time I’m off to
Tallinn, the capital of Estonia for Infusion Tallinn where I will be performing
solo and again dueting with Yahna. The guest star for this show is Samantha
Emanuel so it’s sure to be a great show! I’m not taking workshops so I will be
enjoying Tallinn with my husband instead (last time we went it was covered in
snow, so will look a little different I think this time!). If you’re going to
be there I will have some items of jewellery with me for sale, and I think I'll be teaching Jaana's class on the Monday which is going to be fun! |
| Just one of many goodies |
That reminds me – I also opened a shop this
week on Etsy to sell my jewellery. Selling through facebook was going well but
I wanted somewhere more formal that I can more easily keep track of stuff so
Etsy seemed a logical choice. And I’m still taking custom jobs so just get in
touch if you want something made! My Etsy shop is located at
alexissouthall.etsy.com - there's not much there at the moment because almost everything has sold! But bookmark the page as I will be adding new pretties later in the month. Just received a huge batch of cut steel and beads and shells, etc, so lots of planning taking place at the moment!
I’m looking forward to the year ahead – 2012
began looking to be very quiet but it has soon filled up! Regardless of this, I
am making time to practice every day and can already see an improvement in my
work utilising information from Zoe’s classes in Las Vegas.
My next workshop will be guest teaching at
Dawn O’Brien’s Drills & Thrills Intensive in Walsall on Sunday 20th
May (email Dawn to join). I’ll also be travelling some more this year for teaching and/or performing
in Italy, Germany, Hungary and Slovakia in addition to my UK dates.
Hope you’re enjoying the brief summer sun
we’ve been having here in the UK, and if you’re living elsewhere I hope some
sun was shining down on you too this weekend!
Happy dancing, until next time!
A x
