And the Crowd Goes Wild!

The Fishers Renn faire was a blast!

We did 3 half hour shows on Saturday and Sunday. Thats six shows in one weekend. Include all the walking and random participation in other people's shows and that equals a very long weekend. I'm still sore, but it was worth it.

We started the show with drumming...malfuf I believe...and Gaby danced and zilled. This always brings in the crowd. After about 2 minutes, we stopped drumming and I got up to welcome the audience in my crazy blended french/spanish/russian gypsy accent. Hey...ya go with vat verks. Ve Vere pirates who had come to ze faire from ze Mediteranian Sea to bring dem beautiful dancing and amazing acts...anyway, after introducing the group, Gaby pretended to be distracted when I was introducing her, so it was up to me to dance for the crowd while she got ready. "I Capitan Izmara will dance for you!" So I did my best folk groove thing to a kalegy rhythm. When I was done, I introduced the great Gabriella who did her "alien" belly dance to her combo...walking balady and masmoody. I lost my rhythm more than once watching the little kids in the front row freak out when Gaby did her famous belly rolls up and down and side to side. Then we transitioned into a chiftitelli as she picked up her sword. She ended her piece by plunging the tip of her sword into the ground. Very dramatic. Of course I had to get up and chide her for leaving her sword in the ground. Then I introduced Svenki who was dancing the tatib (Egyptian male stick dance) to a slow saidi rhythm. After a few minutes, Gaby came out and they danced together. They cross hit their sticks and she chased him off the stage...but not before he wacked her on the butt with his tatib stick. Gaby finished her raks assaya number and we transitioned into masmoody kabir and she got down on the rug flat on her back and did her famous belly tricks with the dance stick. She got up and ended by dropping the stick from her head to her lower back. I got up and retrieved her stick and shooed her off the stage once more. We invited the audience to dance with us for the last rhythm felahin and we passed out the tip basket so we could buy wind to get us all home.

We had standing room only for all of the shows and the tip basket seemed to be quite full. I don't know how much we made yet, but I saw more than one ten dollar bill in the basket. We also drummed for the queen as some of the other dancers at the faire danced. The queen was very under dressed in my opinion...her courtiers were better dressed...bad form. The Black Rose Caravan used a boom box and had problems on more than one occasion. We stepped in and helped drum a couple of times. That's what happens when you rely soley on tech at a renn faire. Plus the music was so quiet that you had to be in the fron row just to hear it. Kinda sucky for them, but as usual their beautiful dancing made up for all their technical difficulties.

I think we had a great mix of schtick and a variety of dancing and props. People's attention span for anyone thing is about two minutes...especially in an overstimulated environment like a renn faire. Nobody wants to the same old thing drawn out over an over again. Oh look...belly dancers...zzzzzzz. We had oh check it out...drummers, crazy gypsy pirates with bad accents, dancing men, swords, really hot chicks doing amazing belly work, drummers who could play something other than beledy rhythms and who could transition from one rhythm to another and change tempo and volume in the same song...holy swingin tassles batman...ok ok getting a nose bleed from being on my soap box too long... he he he...

It was a great success...and I got to spend way too much money on some fantastic food!