SKIRTFULLOFFIRE.COM

It’s derived from a poem by Anne Sexton. I started off using it as a phrase to describe my mother when she was being feisty. It is very evocative of the passion of feminine energy and the danger inherent in it, as well. Fire burns, my friend.

I messed up my knees and ankles doing classical dance for 13 years and had to stop dancing when I was 16. It swung me into a pretty deep depression as it was the only thing I really enjoyed doing at the time. Dance was always something I could lose myself in.
I got into the idea of learning bellydance in 2003 when the bellydance craze was just starting to gain mainstream notoriety with artists like Shakira bringing it into focus, but I never thought I could get into it with my distaste for sparkly costuming, my tattoos and piercings. So, I got the tapes, practiced on my own, and thought that would be the end of it until I saw my first tribal bellydance performance. These ladies were curvy, had piercings, had tattoos, and wore some amazing costuming that was more earthy than anything I had seen previously. I was hooked. I found my first teacher and the rest was history.
Ideally, I’d love to tour with BDSS long enough to get a good name for myself, then open up my own dance studio and have it do well enough to allow me to travel and continue teaching workshops and dancing around the world. I’d also love to open an entertainment venue. My dream would be to buy out a warehouse and have it serve as a nightclub, dance studio, art gallery, and store so that I’d be able to collaborate with all my favorite people and build a loving, supportive, and fun community. In this fantasy, I would be able to give back to the community by hosting classes, lectures, and other fun stuff for lower income children and parents to attend free of charge.

I’ve been bellydancing for around 5 years and performing for three.

I think the biggest thing to learn with ANY dance form is stillness is your friend. There’s nothing I hate more than seeing a dancer up there just floundering because he or she doesn’t want to stop moving. You have to savor the pauses; savor the moments in the music where it’s totally appropriate to just make contact with your audience. Learning the balance of stillness and movement can be really tricky.

Other than that, you have to connect with your music on a deeper level. Anyone can create an 8-count and perform it to music, but that 8-count needs to actually WORK with the music. Too often I see ladies create an absolutely gorgeous combination that makes no fucking sense with the music they are using so it just makes them look like bad dancers.

The last point to make is that you can do ANYTHING when you are soloing. You don’t have to worry about matching other people’s strengths and weaknesses, you don’t have to worry about a group looking good, it’s just you up there. With that being said, why would you use your solo time to do stuff you would normally do in a group piece? Why not use that opportunity to play with a combination you haven’t been able to use, or maybe to insert some movement from a completely different dance style? It baffles me when I see a soloist do ATS style dancing for a solo. I just can’t wrap my mind around using that small amount of time so poorly, with such a lack of imagination.

The sparkles make the voices go away. It’s protection against evil forces.

John Lovitz is the only man with the spiritual fortitude to take on my life story.

I was totally an MTV kid. Didn’t watch many cartoons, didn’t play with dolls, just learned choreography from music videos and watched John Hughes movies. You can probably guess that New Wave played a pretty hefty role in my musical development, but I also was a huge fan of David Bowie, Prince, and Joan Jett. The first tapes I distinctly remember having in my collection were Depeche Mode’s “Violator” and the soundtrack to “Edward Scissorhands”. With that being said, I had a rock-n-roll mom that had a large collection of records and tapes that I would, of course, rifle through at my leisure. I also remember being very influenced by motown, blues, and big band music as a kid.