Thank goodness for friends.
It seems ages since I have been to my classes and mixed with all the 'ladies' who I have a bit of a repartee with most weeks, so I was very pleased when Kathy phoned yesterday morning and asked if I wanted to go along to the twice yearly JOY event in Saltaire (JOY abbreviates for JEWEL OF YORKSHIRE) which we have attended a few times before.
I explained that I couldn't possibly attend any workshops or even stay out for more than a few hours before I would be wanting the comfort of my old settee.
"That's Ok she said" we'll just go along to look at the 'souk' which is set up in the main hall and have some lunch in the makeshift cafe that is also set up for the event.
"Great" I said, "let's go"

It is a hive of activity in the main hall in the middle of the day,with lots of dancers and teachers sitting around, whiling away time between attending workshops, chatting and eating lunch.
I met quite a few people I knew so it was lovely to catch up with them.

I spotted two international male belly dancers( Yes, indeedy, there are one or two of this strange species around)
I have seen them both perform a couple of times and have chatted with them before so they were quite happy to allow me to take their pic whilst they were discussing one of Egyptian dancer Khaled Mahmoud's props 'The Candelabra'also known in the dance as 'Shamadam'.
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I found a short video of khaled doing the dance with a female egyptian dancer Aida Noor but unfortunately embedding is disabled so if you want to see how they dance with this adornment on their heads then click the link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUqHowxvTCI

Khaled offered Turkish dancer Ozgen a try of his candalabra helmet but his head must be smaller than Khaled's as he daren't let go of it:))
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There were lots of lovely things to buy at the souk but my ability to dance nowadays doesn't warrant spending any more money on outfits ..but Kathy did manage to buy some brightly coloured sticks for her class to use when she teaches them a new 'stick dance' :)
There will be a lot of ducking and diving when she starts to teach them a stick dance :)) traditionally Stick dances are performed by men, here's an example of this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsG7Y7C_uno
Shades of morris dancing..don't you think!

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