Alia's Adventures in Illumination

Hi Everyone!

I have finally embarked on my 2009 Sofa-Surfing Tour of Fame (woo-hoo!).

This means I'll be dancing across the country and back again over the next few months. William and I will be in NYC until mid February, then drive South to Baltimore and on into Florida, then along the southern coast to California. I'll go up the west coast to Oregon, and we'll drive home through the Midwest and Toronto, returning to VT by early May. Here's a Google map with some possible cities on it.

My goal is to meet people and have fun, so if you think of anyone I should know (or anyone I can crash with), please hook us up. I would love to perform at haflas etc, and/or guest teach classes and workshops.

So far, we've have been in NYC since Christmas (helping my Mom recover from a knee replacement). The weather here is vile: gray, snowy, windy, and cold, but probably not as vile as it is in VT ;-}.

I've taken classes with Elena and Dunya, had lunch with Joe Williams, attended a couple of great concerts with Zikrayat, and performed in the subway at Union Square and Penn Station to benefit the homeless with Bastet Bellydance and Pacita (We had a so much fun - Jerry Bezdikian came and threw money!).

Kaeshi Chai invited me to perform at Je'Bon with Djinn and a wonderful guest violin player, Chern Hwei . What a lovely evening! I was flattered to get wonderful complements from Dalia, Jehan Kemal, Jeniviva, and many other folks. Jehan's husband Hanna took some great photos (one is attached above), and I wrote a FlynnSpace NASA Grant to begin working on Medea in the spring (cross your fingers for me).

Plus I just uploaded a couple of new videos to YouTube, with more to come: Raquy and the Cavemen (yay!) and Bitwannes Beek. While you're there, check out Dorit's cool Wonder Woman video.

Lots of love!
Alia

PS: June 11-15, Amity and I are hosting Tamalyn Dallal. Save the date! Are we good or what?

Labels: New York City