"The Twelve Veils of Christmas"

On December 19, my partner Angeline (Yallahdance.com) and I celebrated the release of my new DVD by throwing a wild bash. I give mad props (lots of credit) to Angeline for putting this together. I could never have done it without her! We had a live 7-piece band who were *beyond awesome* and everyone danced the night away to their music in what felt like pure ecstasy. As part of my performance, I did a piece that I called "The Twelve Veils of Christmas." I had 12 different colored veils, each one representing a concept to me.

Pink - LOVE
Light Green - DREAM
Turquoise - DESTINY
Kelly green - LIFE
Orange - INSPIRATION
Royal Blue - STRENGTH
Hot Pink - SPIRIT
Lavender - ETERNITY
Light Blue - HEALING
Red - COURAGE
Purple - PROTECTION
White - MAGIC

The night before my performance, I chose the 12 veils, then I picked out 12 healing stones from my mermaid bowl. These are a collection of stones given to me over the past 3 years by one of my drummers, Ira. Matching a stone to each veil came instantly, like an inspiration. In fact, the whole idea to dance with 12 veils came to me the day before the party in an inspiration. I ironed the 12 chosen veils and laid them all out on my Persian carpet for the night. In the morning, I folded each one up, starting with the last to first and placed them in an Egyptian canvas bag. I deliberately did not practice, plan, or rehearse anything at all with the veils because I wanted the whole piece to "unfold" on the spot.

After my opening number "Princess of Cairo" (which remind me to never wear those shoes again, but that's a whole other story), I had instructed my band ("Shamband") to play a slow hypnotic masmoudi rhythm with solo taxims of oud (Maurice Chedide), kanoun (Michael Hess), and violin (Elias Sarkar) over the rhythm, led by my percussionists Gamal Shafik (lead tabla), Ira Weitz (bass tabla), Aziz Mohammed (riq) and Gabby Tawil (bendir). Gabby was my tabla teacher years ago. He now lives in Arizona and flew in with his two top tabla students Joe and David just for the party!

I finished my opening number, took off my zills, brought the bag of veils to the middle of the dance floor, heard the band begin their dreamy rhythm and heard my narrator say "On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me....." then she waited as I pulled out the pink veil and began dancing with it. "LOVE." I danced with the pink veil for a while, then put it on someone in the audience. Then I pulled out my wonderful, dreamy, out-of-body light green veil and continued. At times, I danced with two or three veils together.

By the time I reached the 12th veil of Christmas, "MAGIC," there was truly magic happening, as there were now 11 people up on the dance floor dancing with the other veils. I gave the 12th one to Arlene, my beautiful dancer friend from Arizona, and then there were 12 veils moving and swirling on the dance floor. I stepped back and watched the magic. It was so wonderful, colorful, inspiring, and healing to me to witness all this beauty. Each person with a veil was transformed into a concept of life and love. I'll never forget it. What a wonderful way to ring in the holiday spirit, which is all about peace, sharing, giving, sisterhood and brotherhood. Let your light so shine...

After that, my main man Gamal played a kick-ass drum solo while I tried to keep up, heehee! Let's just say the evening was a blast. Happy days ahead with more dance, music, fun and joy to us all!

Love,
Shamira