May Madness!

May has been a quiet month on the dance front really, until this past weekend. If you follow what I do you’ll know I had a pretty ridiculous weekend last November which involved flitting between The Netherlands and London for workshops, a wedding and a performance! This weekend was not quite as bad, but even more exhausting!

Last Friday I made the trip to Rome for the Tribal Fusion Express show. I had a very tiring day! I left home at 4:30AM for the airport where I was greeted with a huge queue for security, and had my bag pulled out for a search, meaning I had to run across the airport to get my flight. When I got on the plane I discovered that there was basically no leg room and was destined for a DVT inducing experience!! No, really, my knees were pushing into the seat in front – not good for someone with an ongoing knee problem. And then, the guy next to me decided he needed to puke as we came into land. Lovely.

Getting through passport control, I discovered I had missed the bus into Rome by one minute (seriously!) and the next bus would not leave for over one hour. I was starting to get hungry, having not eaten since the night before and considered waiting at the airport with a coffee and something to eat. Weighing up the cost, I figured I would just pay extra to get the train and eat at Sciahina’s apartment, expecting to be there in no time. I took the train to Termini and then the Metro to the correct stop. And then I waited. And waited. For almost one hour!! Eventually I was picked up (a mix up it seemed), tired, ravenous, hot and sweaty. Just enough time to grab the last few slices of bread and last bits of cheese to make a sandwich before going to the theatre for tech rehearsal.

Photo: Shadi Khries

After some gelato and pizza, the afternoon went in no time to the beginning of the show. As we had to stay backstage all night, peeking behind the curtains in between costume changes was the order of the day. I performed an improvised solo to a song by Modeselektor and Thom Yorke and reprised the duet with Jaana. I think both went ok... We’ll see from the videos when they arrive! The best part of the crazy trip there was spending time with fantastic friends – Sciahina, Jaana, Violet Scrap, Vesna Zorman, Lamia Barbara, Daria Bertogna and sooooo many more wonderful dancers. On Saturday we took a workshop on pops, locks and shimmies with Eliran Amar from Israel, and it was interesting to hear his different approaches to movements that we have been doing for years. He also taught a short drum solo choreography that had some challenging layering involved.

Photo: Violet Scrap

After another gelato, and bidding my friends farewell and onwards to Termini station where I almost missed my bus to the airport! The rest of the journey was relatively stress free, just long – I got home at 5AM the next morning after setting off at 7PM GMT+1. But the lack of sleep was all worth it to be able to spend (albeit not much) time in the Eternal City with some of my favourite people in the whole world. It was an honour to share the stage with such incredible dancers in a show with a brilliant concept (a train travelling across Europe, meeting dancers from different parts of the world at each stop). Thank you so much Sciahina for inviting me! I just wish I could have stayed longer.

So you might wonder – why did I have such a flying visit?! Well, on Sunday I was guest teaching a workshop in Walsall for Dawn O’Brien’s Drills & Thrills Intensive. She hosts these monthly and the focus is on deepening your practice through conditioning and drilling. I deliberated for some time over what to teach at this workshop, knowing that Dawn works the regulars that attend hard... I often struggle with the balance between conditioning and dance in workshops I teach, knowing that the conditioning is a fundamental part of achieving precision and proficiency in this style of dance, but also wanting students to leave knowing how to apply that to the pay off – dancing. As this workshop series is called Drills and Thrills, I felt it was acceptable that I could focus more on the conditioning and drilling than teaching combinations. We had three hours together and we spent a significant amount of time conditioning the body for dance, literally from head to toe. I introduced some little gems of information that I’ve picked up along the way that not everyone teaches, so I hope that it was helpful to everyone! I certainly enjoyed it after sitting on my backside travelling most of the weekend – stretching and moving was exactly what I needed. Staying in bed, no matter how tired I was, would have done nothing for me.

I often wonder what people that attend workshops expect. I frequently read comments on Facebook that I interpret as not feeling like it was a good workshop unless they woke up the next day unable to move (and I’m probably completely misinterpreting that). But I can identify with that – when I was in the early years of my learning I loved that feeling of not being able to move the next day (and if I’m honest, that good pain, where you feel like you worked really hard does still appeal to me). These days though, I’m more interested in deepening my practice and extending my movement vocabulary – learning exercises that will target the muscles more deeply without necessarily killing me, and seeing how these logically enhance my dancing, not just doing them for the hell of it. Learning movements from different forms of dance that can easily translate into bellydance, or existing movements that I hadn’t thought of using in that way before. Understanding how different people use movements in different ways, and learning conceptual stuff that I can apply to my improv and choreographies. And coming out of workshops feeling less like ‘oh, that’s gonna hurt tomorrow’ and more like ‘wow, my body feels amazing!’ – maybe that just comes with time? I got all of this stuff recently in workshops with Zoe Jakes, Amy Sigil and Donna Mejia and could immediately apply to my practice and my performances. And maybe this change in attitude has also come from needing to take more care of my body thanks to injury and getting older – I can’t do some of the things I could do 6 years ago when I first started!

So I’m interested to know – what do you look for in a workshop? What sparks your interest? Why do you go to workshops at all? Haha, these are the questions that keep me awake at night!!

Show in aid of Compton Hospice

On a non-dance related note, I also had the pleasure of seeing Amon Tobin's ISAM 3D live in Brixton this month - very much worth going to see - a really wonderful show!


Next month is going to be a busy one! I’ll be at Hannover Tribal Festival at the beginning of June – I’m helping to judge the competition and have donated a prize to perform at Infusion Emporium and take a workshop of choice with either Deb, Illan or Vesna! Then we have Hilde Cannoodt and Chaos Carousel up in Wolverhampton on 9-10 June, teaching and performing – workshops and show tickets still available, and remember it’s all for charity!! Then I’ll be back over in Germany, teaching and performing at Tribal Summer Camp, Offenburg in the beautiful Black Forest. I can’t wait to meet everyone there!

As usual, workshop and performance dates are listed on my website at www.alexissouthall.com and I have a special day of workshops coming up on Sunday 1^st July focusing on new and interesting layering and a choreography class with added zing – advanced level conceptual applications for making your choreo’s more engaging and interesting for the audience, and for yourself - all inspired by recent USA studying (oh, how I miss 8 hour dance days!).

Hope to see you all on the road this month!

A x

April Showers bring forth May Flowers....

I’ve had a very busy but enjoyable couple of weeks in the world of dance. It’s not long since I last blogged, though it feels like a lifetime ago! I think this is partially because I spent a chunk of this time out of the country, visiting Tallinn for Yahna’s Infusion Tallinn weekend.

Puppet Museum silliniess

The weekend was based around workshops with Samantha Emanuel. I didn’t take any workshops (Sam actually banned me from attending...!), though I performed in the show and spent a significant amount of time exploring, eating good food and good cake, and drinking hot chocolate with my husband! (Well it was kind of cold there!) When I go abroad I tend to eat very little – a substantial breakfast, and then nothing until evening. I felt like all I did in Tallinn was eating!

Our first day there we were treated to a night time city tour by local dancer Kaidi. We heard dozens of tales and terrors as she guided us around Medieval Tallinn, involving tragic love stories, secrets, peeping toms, cat eating mermaids, creepy old men, curses and my favourite tale – the marriage of the Devil in the 13^th Century. It all happened in Tallinn!

Jaana & Alexis' duet

The following day was the show, and what a great show it was. Dancers from all over the Baltics, Finland and Russia, and of course two Brits... ;)
I was greatly impressed with the very high standard of the performances, from countries where Tribal Fusion has not been established for as long as it has in the UK and where dancers have probably had fewer opportunities to study with the top teachers (we have no idea how lucky we are here in the UK!) – these ladies kicked ass. Not just great technique but innovative approaches to their dances too. It was such a pleasure to see so many great performers. My performance was an improvisation to a song I used in Budapest last year, and Yahna and I once again performed our duet, which seemed to be very well received. I really enjoy dancing with Yahna, and I enjoy hoisting my British sense of humour on her – she takes it very well!! I’m looking forward to reprising the duet in Rome in a few weeks time, and hopefully we will finally get some decent footage of the performance that we may be willing to share with you all!

The famous hot chocolate... and CAKE!

We spent a lot of time in either Pierre’s Chocolaterie or Cafe Josephine, where they serve the best hot chocolate I have ever had. We went there every day, and even as we vowed on our final day, as we waved goodbye to Sam at the airport, that we would not go back to Pierre’s, we somehow ended the day back there once again! If you ever go to Tallinn, I highly recommend it!

It wasn’t all about food and chocolate though! On the Sunday evening we visited the puppet museum and the four of us (yep, that included my husband...) went to Jamila’s bollywood class, and were treated to a performance of Bharatanatyam which was simply amazing. And on our final day, after a trip out of Tallinn to some of the mansions on the outskirts of the city, to the coast and to the Tallinn TV tower (where we conquered, at least momentarily, some heights fears!), I was guest teacher for Yahna’s intermediate class. So I did get to do some dancing, even if I was banned from the workshops! After dinner at a medieval restaurant where we got to see sword fighting (!), more chocolate and a good night’s sleep, it was back the UK we went, albeit on a very long journey home – no direct flights meant a 4 hour stopover in Frankfurt-Hahn, possibly the most boring airport I’ve ever had the displeasure of being in. It actually took us all day to get home to Wolverhampton. Needless to say we were knackered the following day :/

Devon - what a view!

Next it was down to the beautiful Devonshire countryside for Samantha Emanuel’s birthday celebrations! We drove down with Dawn O’Brien on Saturday afternoon from the rare sunny Wolverhampton through the rain, wind and grey clouds to Chagford. Sam was hosting a hafla in the Barefoot Barn yoga retreat followed by workshops with the amazing Bozenka on Sunday.

Gorgeous Bozenka

Birthday Grrl!

The hafla was simply awesome, in the extreme sense of the word. Not only did we get Sam and Bozenka performing, but also the best fusion dancers the UK has to offer. Impossible to choose a favourite because the standard was so high. And it was so much fun to see so many of my favourite people in one place. Compare Michelle was hilarious as usual, and I left feeling very inspired by my dance sisters. I performed a new piece I’ve been working on since I returned from Tribal Massive. It was not at all in the state I wanted it to be in just yet, but it looked great for a first performance. I’m pleased with how it went. I still have a stack of work to do on it before I present it to the Internet – I need to finish the choreography and keep adding the conceptual layers I learned at Massive that will make it a really effective and beautiful dance. The performance is actually a themed piece that I am preparing for Budapest Tribal Festival’s Zodiac show in September. I got the role of Pisces and so it has lots of water related movements in there. The second I heard the song I am using I knew I wanted to use it for this Pisces dance... and by coincidence the artist has a water related name too! The song reminded me of the feeling of being immersed under water. I hope that it came through, at least a little, in this first run of the dance.

My performance at the Hafla

Bozenka’s workshops were a wonderful treat. Not entirely ‘cabaret’, however they were a little different from what I have focused so much of my training on so far. Returning to the roots through Ghawazee movements, playing finger cymbals and dancing together were all on the agenda. I’ve been thinking for a while that I would like to create a dance while playing zills, and having seen a beautiful dancer in Prague performing with them this thought reoccurred to me. After Bozenka’s workshops I feel sure that it is something I should do – I only ever dance with zills for ATS and so it would be nice to be able to do them while dancing tribal fusion too. Another goal for 2012 then!

Bozenka is a wonderful teacher, and her breakdown of using zills and movement together was fantastic. I also took some hip movements from the Ghawazee class that I’d like to incorporate into my movement repertoire for fusion. And got ideas for my cabaret alter ego (yes, I do perform cabaret too, just not anywhere near as often!). All in all an excellent weekend – I just wish we’d gotten more than 4 hours with her! Topping the day off with an amazing homemade chocolate cake by one of the workshop participants was the perfect way to end the weekend.

Bozenka's workshop group

Final update for this blog – I finally began my first series of weekly classes on 24^th April. I am so pleased with how it is going so far. They are only one hour long, and it is only for 6 weeks, as so many classes in Wolverhampton closed down in the past 12 months so I wanted to test the waters before committing a large amount financially to studio rental. However, I have a good number of students and they are all working very hard. It is so great to be able to train with other people and to share the best of the things I have learned over the course of my own training in terms of conditioning and approaching your training in a positive and difference-making way. I get to show them all the things I wish I’d known at the start of my own Tribal Fusion training. I never understood how satisfying it would be until now. I have a really wonderful group that are working hard and have told me that they’re enjoying it! So I think I’m going to carry on and make it a more regular thing, having seen that it is possible to run an independent class in this city without losing money.

That’s it for this month! My next workshop is on 20^th May, where I am guest teaching Dawn O’Brien’s Drills and Thrills Intensive – 3 hours of Tribal Fusion training – conditioning, strengthening, drilling and dancing! Email Dawn at stardawn@blueyonder.co.uk to join us!

And next up on the dance calendar is our weekend of workshops and show with Hilde Cannoodt & Chaos Carousel in Wolverhampton on 9-10 June. Places still available on all workshops, and we have plenty of show tickets to sell – all proceeds of the show, plus raffle, will go to Compton Hospice(registered charity 512387) so please come along and support the charity. It is one which is close to our hearts as they provided a lot of help and support to my husband’s grandfather during the last few months of his battle with Parkinson’s Disease. A very worthwhile cause, so please do support it, and get a great evening of entertainment to boot. Tickets and info here: www.alexissouthall.com/page19.htm

On sale at Etsy now!

And a little reminder of my Etsy shop! I listed some brand new items for sale last week so be sure to check them out!

Hope to see you all on the road this summer (if it ever stops raining!). I will leave you with the first of two videos from Tribal Prague. This is my Friday night performance – a choreography from last year. I’m still waiting on the second video (and dying to see it!) so will post that when I get it too.

Until next time!

Alexis x