There is nothing quite as fun as sharing my books with the members of the team that helped take the book from concept to completion. Unfortunately, there are so many models, and everyone is so busy, that we’re still tracking down the folks who have helped us out! Last year, I finished and published two books, “Zills: Music on Your Finger Tips” and “Becoming a Belly Dancer: From Student to Stage.” Between the two books, we worked with nearly 50 different models and getting copies of these two books out to our beautiful models are taking a bit of time! Fortunately, we have friends who are helping us out by attending lots of events and helping us distribute books to our far-flung team.
Shalimar:
Ambassador of the Dance
Belly dancer Shalimar has graciously made space for a tiny box of books in her trunk and recently attended a belly dance event, has managed to meet up with not one, but two of our models! Shalimar is a great connector of dancers and musicians, restaurants and dance events. She performers throughout the greater Bay Area on a regular basis and is always fun to watch. The best way to follow Shalimar’s dance journey is to follow her page on FaceBook.
Malia:
Instructor, Performer & Legend
Back in 2013 when working on the book, The Cloth of Egypt: All About Assiut we invited dancer, performer, and collector of vintage assiut, Malia. She has a dreamy vintage assiut robe and an amazing coordinating vintage assiut piano shawl. My co-author and photographer, Alisha Westerfeld, aka Zemira, and I invited Malia to join us in the assiut project, and we had the best time taking photos of her amazing ensemble.
The most difficult part of that magical evening was picking an image or two for Cloth of Egypt. The image at left was so good, I used it in our one-off behind the scenes magazine, Costumer’s Notes.
When I started working on my finger cymbal book, Zills: Music on Your Fingertips, I shared some of my favorite images with my team of collaborators. One of the images was from this photoshoot, but sadly, Malia wasn’t wearing finger cymbals the night of the shoot. Illustrator George Goncalves took it completely in stride and drew a gorgeous image of Malia and added a set of cymbals. His illustration of Malia turned out beautiful and compelling and I was thrilled to use it in the book.
Alica:
Bay Area Pro Belly Dancer
Author Sara Shrapnell invited me to join her production team for the seminal text, Becoming a Belly Dancer: From Student to Stage. She reached out to dozens of dancers in the greater Bay Area that represent the full breadth of diversity of our ever expanding belly dance community. Professional belly dancer Alica Greer, made the voyage out to an East Bay dance studio to pose for photos. Photographer Alisha Westerfeld also snapped some action shots of Alica that also made it into the book. In the photo to the right, she’s showing off a photo of her taken at a local event. I really enjoyed working with Alica and look forward to seeing her perform and collaborating with her in the future.
Each project I work on teaches me something new. Last year, I learned that I really love the process of collaborating with groups of talented writers, photographers, dancers, and illustrators. Writing can be a lonely business with lots of hours spent in front of the computer, hanging out in libraries conducting research, or working in the sewing studio on samples to photograph. Working on not one, but two teams, really showed me how fun and exciting collaborative projects can be. So I’m very excited to be diving into the layouts and design of Amabella Magazine which we will be releasing in the coming weeks.
Happy Dancing!
Dawn Devine ~ Davina
July 8, 2017
