Category: General

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Assiut/Assuit Belly Dance Costuming DIY General

Becoming A Belly Dancer: Kickstarter Premium Assiut Bras

Hello Gang!

Last fall, the team I worked with to produce our epic book, “Becoming a Belly Dancer: From Student to Stage,” hosted a super-successful Kickstarter campaign to help us take the project from the document stage to the finished product.  We were thrilled with the outpouring of support from our community of friends, students, and fans.  Our team put together a selection of treats for various different levels from book bundles, to assiut hair ornaments, book bags to custom costumes.

Two Assiut Belly Dance Bras

Our “Top Tier” premium included a custom designed, made-to-measure assiut bra.  I had a gorgeous scrap of assiut that would make four spectacular belly dance bras.  When our month-long campaign closed, we had two dancers sponsor us at the top tier!

Poppy Maya Designed a Glam Assiut Bra

Poppy Maya, our cover girl, is a professional costume maker, so we decided to each do one of the bras.  As it turned out, we had one “Glam” style bra and one “ATS-Tribal” style bra.  I have a huge stash of tribal jewelry parts and pieces, so I took on the design and construction of the tribal style bra.  Poppy made this gorgeous geometric assiut bra for our very happy dancer.  Look at how lovely that modern assiut bra looks paired with faux assiut leggings designed by Melodia.

Tribal Assiut Bra

My tribal dancer, Inara from Oxnard, California sent me a simple design brief.  She wanted beautiful assiut bra, with metal and coin embellishments. Fantastic!  That’s exactly the kind of bra that I LOVE to make!  After a quick inventory of my assiut pieces, I did a couple of rough sketches.  Here is a quick snapshot of my rough drawing. I choose to add a lot of coins via a pair of removable coin and chain drapes so she would have loads of flexibility in her look.

To maximize the metal of the assiut, and without covering it with loads of coins, I decided to divide each cup with a verticle row of shield-shaped metal embellishments. While I know she loves the coins, I really wanted the jewelry components to frame the assiut.

 

Belly Dancer Inara wears a custom assiut bra by Studio Davina - www.davina.us

 

It took us a few months to arrange a photo shoot with my favorite photographer, Alisha Westerfeld, but when we finally were all together in the same room, the results are lovely.  Above, you can see the details of the assiut.  Below, we went for a totally different dark fusion look.

I’m very grateful for these two ladies who helped us take our dreams to the next level by supporting our Kickstarter campaign.  I’m so proud and happy of these two designs!

Happy Costuming and Delicious 
Dawn Devine ~ Davina
July 21, 2017

 

Belly Dancer Inara wears a custom assiut bra by Studio Davina paired with a skirt and head by Melodia | www.davina.us

Categories
General Publications

I was Interviewed about Zills on the Belly Geek Podcast!

Davina with zills: Now and then

Last spring I had the fantastic opportunity to join Nadira in of the Belly Dance Geek for a fun interview about my latest book “Zills: Music on Your Fingertips.”   I had soo much fun geeking out about the ancient history of finger cymbals and their role in dance today.

Right:  Davina with Zills – Now & Then

Nadira’s podcasts are essential listening here for belly dancers of every style.  Since discovering her site, and joining the clubhouse, I’ve spent many a thoughtful hour listening to her interviews.  She selects some of the most well-respected dancers, instructors, and scholars working in our community today.  I was so pleased to be included in such an illustrious group!

Geeking Out about Finger Cymbals

To hear my interview about finger cymbals with Nadira, follow this link.

https://www.bellydancegeek.com/2017/03/geek-out-with-dawn-devine/

Zills: Music on Your Fingertips

In this day and age in the world of belly dance, our greater, global community is quite widespread.  There is no one single space for dancers to go to for quality information.  As an author, I’m always pleased to find out about new dancers and their projects.  In the more than 30 years that I’ve been involved in this world of belly dance, there has never been one single place where all dancers go for information.  I know there are hundreds of thoughtful dancers with interesting blogs, videos, podcasts, magazines and more.

Do you have a favorite belly dance resource?  Do you have a blog you think I should check out?  Let me know by dropping me a line at davina@davina.us.   I would love to see what dancers around the world are doing.

Have fun catching my podcast interview – and poking around Nadira’s website to listen and watch more!

Dance Well – Be Well – Costume Frequently,
Dawn Devine ~ Davina
July 16, 2017

 

Categories
Assiut/Assuit General

Is that Gloria Swanson wearing Assiut?

Erich von Stroheim (1885 - 1957, left) as Max von Mayerling, and Gloria Swanson (1899 - 1983) as Norma Desmond in the final scene of 'Sunset Boulevard', directed by Billy Wilder, 1950. (Photo by Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images)

Hello gang!

Recently on the assiut discussion group over on FaceBook, several of us carefully analyzed the shawl worn by Gloria Swanson in the role of Norma Desmond in the seminal film, Sunset Boulevard.  In the scene where she dramatically descends the stairs “Alright Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my closeup.”

Although at first glance the shawl draped over her shoulder appears to be made from assiut, it’s most likely one of its close metal embroidery relatives.  It could be a Turkish, tel kirma style shawl, or it could possibly of Indian origin and is covered with badlah stitches.  But not matter what this shawl was made of, it’s strikingly beautiful and flashes with a myriad of metal stitches in the same manner of assiut or tulle bi telli from Egypt does.

The dressers at the famed wax museum, Madame Tussauds draped their version of Norma Desmond in a shawl of modern cream assiut that catches the light with the same metallic gleam.  You can find her today standing at the base of replica stairs, alone and poised with her claw-like hand and that classic mad expression forever fixed in her eyes.   Stop by for a visit next time you’re in Hollywood!

Now – I think I have to get ready for a close-up of my own!
Dawn Devine ~ Davina
July 10, 2017

Categories
General

Beautiful Dancers, Gorgeous Models, & Fabulous Friends

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

 

 

 

Categories
General Publications

Facebook – Come Join the Conversations!

Hello, Gang!

I recently was sent an email that asked the question,

“Why don’t you allow comments on your blog posts?”  

This isn’t the first time I have had this inquiry, so I thought I would take a moment to share my thoughts on the subject.  But first, let me begin with a little history of my website.

Davina – Online since 1996!

When I first started my website in 1996.  It first appears in the archives of the Wayback Machine in 1999 under my then domain davina.org. I couldn’t get the .com top level domain because someone had already purchased it, so I “settled” for the .org.  My website was to serve as a home for articles about belly dance costuming, sharing news about where I was heading to teach dance and costuming workshops, and my free belly dance costume ‘zine called “Costumers Notes.” I knew that websites were going to be the “Next Big Thing.”  I never knew quite HOW big it was going to be!

Davina .org and .us – a brief history

The image bar at right traces the major moments in the development of my website over the nearly 20 years it’s been in existence!  At the top, is the oldest image of a page dated from 1998. I had many fits and starts before I settled in on this lovely *ahem* brown and goldenrod hand coded website. My skills were minimal, my site tragically ugly. The few images on my site were quite tiny and widely spaced throughout the site.  We all have to start somewhere!

In 2001, the site got a makeover. After talking to a lot of people at belly dance events such as Rakkasah, Wiggles of the West, and Desert Dance Festival it became clear that I needed an easier to read, less painful to look at site, so the colors were adjusted to a less difficult, yet still rather garish, color combination, as you can see in the second image.

In 2003, we nabbed Davina.us and we started using Adobe GoLive as our layout tool (3rd down in the image bar). That same year, I moved the Costumer’s Notes ‘zine to its own domain. (Right at bottom.) Two websites created not quite twice the amount of work.  I started a mailing list, and was sending text only.

By 2011, I found juggling two websites to take far too much of my time, so I brought Costumer’s Notes back onto my website (Image 4.)  By this point, I had more than 4000 pages total between the two websites, and I knew that I needed to leave GoLive (now abandoned by Adobe,) and head over to the “Blogging Side.”  Because of the sheer amount of content, I resisted the change.

2013 the “Davina: The Blog” Begins

After much soul-searching, I decided to take the plunge.  I was working on the development of the book, The Cloth of Egypt: All About Assiut and it was clear that I wanted to upgrade the appearance of my site.  It’s taken a while to get out of the “article” writing mode and develop my blogging voice.  I’m not quite sure I’m there, but with every post, I’m getting closer!

So when I started the blog in 2013, I already had a pretty lively direct interaction with folks on FaceBook.  We also experienced a pounding by spammers who were filling my “comments” section up, and I found myself spending a lot of time managing the comment portion of my blog.  Something had to go give, and I needed that time back!  So I shut off the comments here, and I now encourage folks to either email me directly or to join the ongoing conversation on Facebook.

Facebook Groups – Join the Conversation

Now, in 2017, I’m still choosing to have conversations and direct interaction over on the community-driven Facebook.  At the moment, I split my time between three main groups, making regular posts, participating in conversations, and sharing lots of images.  Aside from my main page which has a mix of coffee cups, nerdy memes, and historic fashion, these are the groups where you can catch me!

Assiut Group

With over 200 members and an active and vocal community of collectors, fans, and researchers of our favorite fabric.  If you like my book, The Cloth of Egypt: All About Assiut, then this is the group to join! Gotta buy it now?  It’s available on Amazon.com.

Becoming a Belly Dancer – Bonus Group

The latest group we’ve started is hosted by the authors of Becoming a Belly Dancer: From Student to Stage.  This new and growing community is a place to come to share information about our favorite subject, Belly Dance!  If you are thinking of picking up a copy of this amazing handbook for belly dancers, this is the perfect place to ask questions directly from the authors. Gotta buy it now? It’s available on Amazon.com.

Studio Davina: Behind the Seams

If you enjoy watching projects develop from fabric to fashion, from idea to publication and more.  This is where I share my projects in progress with my fellow costumers.  Do you sew?  Wanna share your projects?  Join us for the conversation!

Not a Facebook Fan – Email me Directly!

If you aren’t a fan of Facebook, you can find me on Instagram under the handle @davinadevine.  Or email me directly davina@davina.us with any comments, thoughts, or questions about my blog.  So while I don’t have plans on opening my posts up to comments and discussion, I wouldn’t mind hearing from you!

Here’s to Creative Costuming & Delicious Dance
Dawn Devine ~ Davina
June 27, 2017