Over the weekend, we had a vending table at the Fabulous Fall Festival hosted by BABDAMA, a local Bay Area belly dance event-hosting organization. This was the first opportunity for us to share our new book Becoming a Belly Dancer: From Student to Stage. We took a stack of pre-release copies to this event to share with the ladies and gentlemen who took the time out of their busy lives over the past two years to join us in the studio for photos for our book. Many of these dancers we hadn’t seen in a few months, so it was great to reconnect, share the finished book, and hear about the adventures they have been having since we met for photos!
I brought my book rack, Sara brought the books, Alisha brought her camera, Poppy brought additional awesome, and we spent the day hanging out and watching a fabulous show. We had a great view of the stage and enjoyed watching a fun mix of students and teachers, life-stylers and pros, troupes and solos, recorded and live music. There was something for everyone.
During the course of the day, folks came by to check out our new books. Along with Becoming a Belly Dancer: From Student to Stage, I also had copies of my new book, Zills: Music on Your Fingertips, with photos by Alisha Westerfeld and Illustrations by George Goncalves. You can see a copy of it lying on the table next to my coffee.
We got a lot of great feedback about Becoming a Belly Dancer. What struck me was how much time people would spend flipping through the book, nodding and smiling to themselves. Several people mentioned how much the book resonated, and how they have lived through the phases of development that their dancing progressed through.
Another piece of very positive feedback concerned the variety of models. We asked our friends, students, event hosts, and local professionals we work with on a regular basis to join us in this collaboration. Our models included women and men from all walks of life, from students to pros, from young to older, from thin to curvy, from pale to deeply colored. The belly dance world is so diverse and creative, by the time we were finished we had nearly 50 dancers had participated!
Models like Basinah above, stopped by to pick up their copies and Sara took their photos holding a book opened to one of the pages featuring their photograph. It was pretty hard to pick just one sometimes! Basinah came to about half a dozen photo shoots and consequently, there are dozens of images scattered throughout the book. But she loved this dramatic pose with veil.
At the last minute, I was asked to substitute for a fellow dancer who was under the weather and couldn’t make it, so I had the opportunity to perform in their gala show. I was so glad Sara was on the ball while I was putting on makeup and getting ready because she captured many more dancers picking up their books!
Thank you to all our friends and models. If we haven’t gotten your copy of Becoming a Belly Dancer: From Student to Stage, yours is waiting for you! Also, we have two days left of our fundraising Kickstarter to help us get the final funds together to help us make that hurdle from manuscript to printed book. If you’ve already pledged, thank you! If you are thinking of picking up a copy of this book – now is the time – because it’s probably $10 cheaper than the final MSRP will be when it appears on Amazon.com.
What a great event – What a great weekend!
Now I’m back to processing the thousands of photos we took on our UK Belly Dance Book Tour!
More Pictures and Posts to follow.
Until then, Happy Costuming!
Dawn Devine ~ Davina
November 14, 2016
