At the last minute, I am invited to a friend's birthday party with my brother who will be playing music with the birthday guy and some buddies who have been playing together lately. At even MORE of the Last Minute, I TOSS my NEW dancing outfit into a plastic bag and decide....hey, if it happens....WHY NOT?
    From watching my little video and studying the photos, I see that the first outfit I made (a little timid yet to actually bare the belly) cuts my already short self in half. So I had begun working on another. Same black and gold skirt, but now the top is a black satin bra with a removable collection of gold-beaded fringe. By spending plenty of time cruising around the internet to the Bellydance Costume sites, I was picking up tips as I went along. One I DEFINITELY agree with is that elastic is DEADLY. What a Pudding Puddler! I have since removed the elastic from the waist of the black and gold skirt, replacing it with black grosgrain ribbon and fastening it with a bellydancer's best friend....a large SAFETY PIN. *QUITE* the difference.
    So I arrive at this party with this non-assuming plastic bag over my arm and who is the FIRST person I see but the same MAD drummer from the Boogie Music Festival...I walk over, ask if he brought his hand drums, tilt my head towards the jingling bag over my arm and we both let out a HOWL....is THIS going to be fun.....
    When the time arrives, I go get into my new get-up, drape my goldengreen veil over the front of me and find there IS no tape deck in which to play my pre-recorded, pre-choreographed music (*gulp*) OK, folks......it's WING IT time!!!
    So I had Jeff on bongos, the birthday guy on complete drum set, Brian on keyboard and my own younger brother (doing an admirable job of keeping his professional composure in spite of this being the FIRST time he'd seen his 50 year old sister DANCE) and OFF we went.  My beautiful daughter is RIGHT. There is NOTHING on tapes or videos that approaches having live drummers drumming FOR you......(Unless you cannot slow them down) The slow, graceful stuff is mesmerizing and just lovely to look at, but the FUN is in the up-tempo and did they get stuck THERE! I tried everything to bring them back down before I HURT myself, making exaggerated SLOW arm movements, but nothing doing, they were WAILIN', so I did my best to keep up. Jeff picked up a good time to half-time the tempo, take it down, and give me a big finish. What unbelievable fun.
    Again, it was the women who gave me the big grins and enthusiastic responses, the "Wow, that looks like so much FUN!".  I said to someone that I was going to change back into my regular clothes and quite a howl went up  for "No! There'll be MORE!"
    Now a meal showed up and I knew better than to eat anything substantial (talk about giving yourself 'the bends!') The music began again and I sat with my brother's fiancee really enjoying watching these guys play together.
    Suddenly my brother puts down his guitar and starts doing some really nice GUTSY stuff on the bongos. I laugh and holler "Hey. You callin' ME???" Everyone laughs and hollers and off we go again. Now Jeff has the full drum set and is just KILLIN' me accenting every Kick 'o de Hips with the confounded CYMBALS. It was just spectacular fun.
    I came away from this feeling really good, feeling that I can DANCE if the music's playin'.....

...by mid-September of 2001, I came to see Another Side To The Dance.....