Dayanisma joins Third Eye Tribal on the TribalFest stage

Terri, Dawn, and Lisa during a calibrated spin sequence at Tribal Fest® 15

Sebastopol is a charming town in the middle of California wine country.  It is also the home to Tribal Fest®, the first and largest Tribal bellydance festival in the world hosted by Kajira Djoumahna of BlackSheep BellyDance.  Last Wednesday, Dawn and Lisa met Terri (of Third Eye Tribal and Lisa's sister) to take workshops, visit with old and new friends, and perform in the Saturday evening show.

There is so much to tell it is difficult to know where to begin!  The workshops were amazing.  The highlight was an advanced ATS® workshop with Carolena where we learned about ordering steps to create an engaging performance that is visually pleasing to the audience.  Later we had some fun with Carolena by "parking" in her private parking place.

"Parking" in Carolena's spot

We saw old friends from ATS® Homecoming and made lots of new friends.  A highlight was when Seba Blanchard and Kristen Cortenbach Duerr from WildCard BellyDance stopped by right after our performance with kudos, hugs and much love.  We got to see them dance earlier in the day and they lit the stage on fire- so beautiful and talented!

<3 LOVE <3

That reminds me... the TribalFest® crowd... WOW!  We loved this photo below from our performance taken by Chuck Lehnhard (Kajira's husband and co-event organizer).  The crowd was large and very enthusiastic.  We got lots of love during our dance (we could hear the cheering during an especially cool calibrated spin section of our dance- video to come soon), and off the stage we were greeted and hugged by friends and strangers.  Later that night at dinner we even had a man approach us (not in a creepy way) to tell us how much he loved our performance and to offer photos that he took.

Being on the TribalFest® stage was a dream come true.  Terri taught a workshop on ATS® with Veil this year and Dawn has been invited to teach ATS® with Baskets at next year!  Kajira asked us to perform with veils and baskets and it was a blast!  We used music from the Dayanisma CD, Beauty in Unity, and performed a slow veil and a fast basket dance.  After it was over we were filled with relief and joy because we all felt pleased with the way we danced.

We are all home now, dealing with dirty laundry, piled up work, and fatigue from too many late nights... but it was definitely worth it.  So, what do you say, let's do it again next year!!!