Sahara Nights Review (Nottingham), June 09
by Trish Champion

Part of my mission this year is to spread my wings a little and get out of Lincolnshire occasionally. With this in mind, when Janet asked me if I’d like to dance at Sahara Nights in Nottingham I said yes. Siobhan was dancing too, so I collected Hannah (our new tribal star!) and we all set off. The drive isn’t too bad, and once you know where it is, the venue isn’t hard to find. No really.

The venue is a quite lovely large Victorian house with an annexe where we were. A nice large dance floor complete with lighting, not quite enough seating area, but you can’t have everything, and a bar. It was a nice change for us to go to a hafla where we didn’t already know everyone, but we knew enough people to feel welcomed and it was lovely to see so many people, including some children! Janets groups had clearly brought their rellys to see them dance, some for the first time, so there was a good turn out, and everyone had great support, even us outdwellers!

Janet had 3 groups dancing (I think, it may have been more, or less….), one group had only been dancing 10 weeks, so this was their debut and very lovely they all looked. I’m always impressed to see student groups dancing without their teacher, so I may introduce this (be warned my classes!). There was also a group veil dance by 2 groups who hadn’t performed together before, again, that’s impressive! There were some first time solo’s too and some lovely costuming. I cant remember any names (nothing new there) but recognised faces from Shekat’s ventures up to Misterton. We had a snake charmer who changed costume a la Asmahan, and the Rhythmic Nomads, with our very own Hannah who has clearly found her bellydance niche. Siobhan danced on her drum, and although she says she’s never doing it again, I thought it was lovely. A lovely girl in a pair of those “spinning” trousers (you know what I mean!) double veiled at high speed and amazed me tremendously, Tati danced beautifully as usual and the guest dancer for the evening was Louisa who has some lovely fusion moves as well as a fabulous shimmy and great prescence. She runs the Barefoot Festival so if you’re up for a camping weekend, give it a look. Louisa also has a very small baby, so is a great advert for the benefits of bellydance as she looks fabulous.

At the end of the performances, the drum circle took over and the floor filled up. Clearly they’re used to drummers in Nottingham. Dancing with drummers is huge fun, you don’t have to do tribal, and its great when there’s loads of you up there. The drummers like it too…

And so we went home. Now we know where it is, we may well pop down again in October, and I’ll certainly show my face in Nottingham again.

Trish