Belly dancing is the only thing that makes me cry in public.

Warning to non-belly dancers, you might not really get all the names and stuff I'm referring to here, and I'm just too emotionally and physically exhausted to explain right now. This weekend was the Ariellah workshop that I convinced my troupe to put on. It was incredible, I have never been so sore, she worked our asses to a nub (if that's a metaphor I can mix).

I cried when I had to leave Rakkasah last year, and when Ariellah left today after the workshop, I cried too. Well, cry is too strong a word, I get teary eyed. I'm really bad at crying in public, didn't even do so when telling people that Katie (my cat) had died. But I suppose sometimes you can't help but show your emotions over the stuff you're passionate about.

I caught Ariellah's workshop in New York last year by total accident. I was going down to see Pickle as Polonius and thought I would look up any workshops that might be going on (I don't travel anywhere anymore that doesn't have belly dance worshops going on) and found that a founding member of the Indigo was doing a gothic belly dance workshop. I went and it changed my life. She expressed the art in a way that just so enraptured me and suddenly I was all 13 year old goth girl again and she put on music and I just wanted to move like her, and found that it came to me more naturally than most other forms of this dance (as I've mentioned before, this dance does not come naturally to me). So I learned her choreo, I got Jodi to help me and we did a performance of it and it just made me so fucking happy. And I brought her here to do a workshop and people came to it, and the were also in awe of her. I had more than a couple of people say it was the best workshop they had ever been to. The whole room literally burst into joyous noise when she announced that she had an instructional dvd coming out.

My dance ladies made all this possible, they put more work into bringing her here and setting up this workshop than I did. I can't thank them enough.

I've had workshops with Rachel Brice and Carolina Nericcio, as well as Sarah Johansson Locke, Sabura, Nath Keo, Kami Liddle, Petite Jamilla, Sonya and others. In other words, I've had workshops with some of the best. And they were amazing and I learned from all of them. But from Ariellah I learned what I personally want to to with this dance, how I want to express it, and that's just...god I sound pathetic, but it's precious to me.

Needless to say, I think she thought I was a bit of a freaky stalker girl, with me telling her she was my hero and all. But she was a real class act, very personable and professional. Not many people can say they've had dinner with their hero, but I can. It was cool.

I'm gonna go smoke part of my fresh from-cuba-cigar, finish off the tiny amount left in my birthday bottle of Lagavulin, and have a really long bath. And maybe cry some more.