Lisa Zahiya Workshops

OMG Lisa Zahiya is amazing. She's beautiful, passionate, and incredibly skilled. I learned so much, my brain hurts. Here's hoping I can remember it all for future use.

Belly Funk

Lisa described this as her personal bellydance style. It's a fusion of popping, locking, old school hip hop, bhangra, and whatever else catches her fancy. We worked on how to pop and lock our bellydance moves, decomposing fluid motion into stutter-stop points. Her decomposition of basic 3- and 4-point motions into 6 stop points simply blew my mind. She also taught and drilled us on waving through our arms, and a little bit on tutting as well.

Drum Solo

We drilled shimmies so much. Lisa went around the room banging on people's knees to see whether we had good strength and balance in both legs. There was also a really fun combination, which had a lot of interesting Lisa-touches like the Michael Jackson hop-skip.

Bollywood

This session focused a lot on precise hand movements. We went through several mudra, including the flag, the lotus, and the thing that always reminds me of a peacock. Then she taught us two short combinations, which were surprisingly difficult for all their apparent simplicity.

Hip Hop Fusion

By the time we got to this workshop, my feet were killing me. We did two short combinations, to different pieces of music, and she asked us how they felt. It really underscored the different attitudes that hip hop can carry, everything from happy-bouncy to grungy-angry. At the end, we put the two combos together and did the whole thing through a couple of times.

Weekend with Mohamed El Hosseny

I went to this weekend workshop taught by Mohamed El Hosseny when it came through my town. :)

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/event.php?eid=237399078291

I pre-paid for the whole weekend, but had to miss the Friday evening technique class due to a family emergency. In retrospect, that wasn't such a terrible thing. I was totally wiped out after just 2 sessions, and I think 3 would have been too much for me to handle.

Saturday we spent learning an intense fakarouni choreography. By the end of the class, I was sore and aching, breathless and pouring sweat. It felt really good! His dance style is so powerful and passionate! It's especially difficult for me because in general I dance very softly, with gentle fluid movements. Infusing my dancing with that much strength and emotion was really hard for me (in part because I am weak).

We didn't finish the choreography -- the song was 6 minutes long -- but he did show us the rest of it. It looked so incredible! Someday, maybe I will get a chance to finish that song.

On Sunday, I was still sore and stiff from Saturday's exertions, but no less excited for the workshop. We learned pieces of 3 separate choreographies. My favorite was the Saidi, which was amazingly sexy and liberating, and no less powerful for being joyous. We also spent some time doing haggala and baladi. I really enjoyed the music for the baladi, which was Pink Floyd's The Wall, as covered (really, reinvented) by some very talented Egyptian musicians.

I got Hosseny to sign my CD, and also received a signed certificate of completion for doing at least 2 out of 3 of the weekend intensive workshops. Yay! :D

Overall, the weekend was so intense and inspiring. I saw so many beautiful dancers, and Hosseny himself was absolutely incredible. I fell a little bit in love that weekend. :) I want to dance forever, and never stop.