Private party performance

Last night I had the honour and pleasure of performing at the birthday of a lovely lady I hadn't seen in about 5 years, and even thought I had the worst flu I've had for a very long time the audience were absolutely superb and gave me all the energy I needed!  I had such a great time, and I think it shows from the pictures ;-)

Tribal Salon 2016

I had quite a crazy year in 2015 when it comes to juggling things happening on the same day, and this is something that I decided I would like to become better at during this year. Or to be more precise, I decided that for my own sanity I should try not to book too many things onto the same day, specially when it involved running from a place to another. And guess what? It seems last year's karma somehow managed to send me a last reminder of why I should *really* try to keep it more relaxed in the future. 

Long story short, I had deleted the wrong event from my calendar back in autumn and I now found myself with three different appointments on the same day. Luckily it all work out in the end, so I started the new dancing year having the pleasure of dancing with wonderful people during the whole day. <3

In the morning I was part of Himo Club's show at the Love Me Do Fair, which won the price of best company of the year in the bachelorette party section. I'm so very proud of all my gorgeous students (also the ones that for one reason or another did not make it to the show)!!! <3

As soon as the show ended I headed to Kanneltalo for the rehearsal of our performance at this year's first Tribal Salon, which is an event organized by TribalTanssiKeskus. We performed our teacher Laura Luna's choreo "Gawazi", which is inspired by old school tribal bellydance and is so much fun to perform! Folk inspired costume with lots of vintage tribal jewelery/decoration and finger cymbals, what's not to love about it? The rest of the show was probably quite amazing, but unluckily enough I did not have the chance to see any of it, since I still had to make it to Tervakoski for this year's first corporate gig. 

A tiny bit stressful, but all in all a Saturday full of doing what I love best! <3

Fleamarket Finds, Vol.8

We did a quick visit to Tampere last Friday, and since we ended up having one hour to kill we visited a couple of our favourite fleamarkets. 

I found a lovely (probably German) 1920's/1930's ceramic jar and Lassi found some cooking knives plus a pair of really cute leather and fur folk slippers (probably 1960's) that happened to be just my size. The weather has been pretty chilly around here, so I can't wait to wear those! :-)

(They're at the moment being pre-emptively treated for possible pests, better be cautious than sorry!) 

Paljettipommi vol. 2 released!

Wooot, this is what the postman brought today, the second volume of Paljettipommi (the first and only burlesque magazine in Finland)! Packed in a lovely envelope by the force behind it, dear friend, burlesque performer and Paljettipommi's producer Kiki Hawaiji! 

I'm utterly honoured to have had the chance to be part of this second volume, together with burlesque legends Satan's Angel and Kitten de Ville, and many of Finland's best <3

Picture by JIRINA (www.jirina.fi)

New year!

So here I am again... The last year and a half has been the most insanely stressful of my life, and I have barely been able to keep up with things (specially the ones related to the internet). This year I would like to start from scratch and try to keep up and relax, since the sole idea of thinking about everything I should get done already gets me stressed. It is so that I have finally decided to leave all the belated posts aside for the time being. It was a rather difficult decision for someone as obsessive compulsive as I am, also because so many amazing things happened which I would love to share with you all. Nevertheless, unless I leave them aside for the time being and start writing about the current ones I will just keep accumulating them. 

Soooo, that being said here goes the first post of the new year! So many amazing things to look forward to. A new apartment (which I now share with the most amazing person I have ever met <3 ), some very scary but very exciting possible plans for this year and of course, the Helsinki Burlesque Festival! This will be the second to last year (9th edition) and the lineup is as spectacular as ever, and I couldn't be more excited about sharing the stage with the XXXettes! We are cooking something extra cheeky for the festival, and if you have ever followed the ticket sales for it you know you should act fast! It always sells out and once that has happened you will regret now having acted sooner ;-)

I will be updating the upcoming gigs section in the near future, but until then here goes the poster for this year's festival, fresh from the oven! 

The Shadow Seamstress

Last autumn was also the time to try some new things! Lassi's cousin Nick, who happens to be a cinematographer, had been wanting to shoot in Lassi's building ever since he first visited it last year, and he actually ended up turning that idea into a short movie! The movie was to be shot in Finnish, so I was extremely relieved that the character I was cast to play was actually mute :-D

It was nevertheless extremely exciting to act in a movie (first time ever! :-) ), and we had a wonderful team to work with. Besides Nick and Lassi (who took care of producing and assisting Nick with a wide variety of tasks) most of the people involved were close friends, such as Saara Salmi and Marco Melander from Atelieri O. Haapala and people from Fintage RY. Stay tuned, since the movie is now finished and that means we'll hopefully be able to show it somewhere in the near future! :-)

as Venetia van Kraemers
picture by Marianne Niemelä

Kae Montgomery workshops in Helsinki

The last weekend of August was reserved for bellydance, but unlike usually (I most often take Tribal Fusion related classes) this was all about ATS® (American Tribal Style), which is a bellydance style developed by Carolena Nericcio that is all about group improvisation and strong women! I had taken a couple of short ATS workshops before, but this one was a proper, long, ATS focused weekend, and I was quite terrified to be totally out of place. Luckily enough, and even though my ATS vocabulary is extremely limited, I was able to feel the joy of group improvisation and be proud of myself for facing such a challenge! Of course the wonderful teacher Kae Montgomery (who is a member of the FatChanceBellyDance® performing group) and the encouragement and patience of the other lovely students helped a LOT, I don't know what I would have been able to do without them!

On saturday we got to perform at the main show with our student troupe Kaira Tribe, so here you go a "fangirl" picture of a few of us with Kae! :-)

Left to right: Tiitta, Julia, Kae and me