Zulu Lounge at Boardners in Hollywood, January 28, 2011: Bella Luna and ...

We (She'enedra) were asked to dance improv to live music by Donavon & Zulu at Zulu Lounge and to dance with Bella Luna as well. One ATS group one ITS group! It was really fun planning and performing.

Tandava @ Tribal Fusion Faire 2010

This is Tandava, it is a troupe of my dance students. We all used to be part of the Sisterhood dance collective and I was the west side teacher for SDC at the time. But then blah blah blah things changed more new teachers moved to the west side (thank the goddess! I was tired of driving there). We had a troupe called Nataraja but as troupes do it became more intimate aka exclusive and I had to form a second group for the new students who were coming to my classes and that was Tandava! Then Nataraja went through it's natural progression, some of those girls quit and went off to new dance troupes and solo careers and now we have Tandava left which is fantastic!

I'm always proud of my students, they worked so hard and did extra rehearsals made all these fabulous costumes, gathered props and look at the results!

I must add that I am completely incapable of posting videos to my youtube channel! The only ones on there were posted by Donavon because he was kind enough to help me out. So I have to "favorite" all the videos I convince people to post for me...it's really ridiculous I know!

50th Anniversary of JFK's Inaguration

January 20 has been Inauguration day for every U.S. president since 1937 when Franklin Roosevelt was admitted into office for his 2nd term. This year it was the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's inauguration. I don't remember the inauguration day but I do remember the day he was assassinated. The neighborhood children all gathered on the driveway in front of my house, apparently all of our mothers were inside crying. We must have been very small at the time.


Fast forward to January 20 2011- My husband was invited by his childhood best friend & next door neighbor to attend an opening of his father Phil Stern's photography gallery. He had been a photographer for Life magazine, a WWII photographer, and personal photographer to Frank Sinatra. It was Frank Sinatra who was in charge of entertainment for the inaugural ball and that was how Mr. Stern became the official photographer for the day.

We went to the penthouse of a lovely building in downtown L.A. for the show. It was very nostalgic to hear all the old music and see photographs of so many major politicians and stars on this historic day. Included in some of the pictures were JFK, Jackie Kennedy, Richard Nixon, President Eisenhower, Mimi Eisenhower, Frank Sinatra, Harry Belafonte, Ella Fitzgerald, Kay Thompson, her dog, and many more I don't even remember. One that made me emotional was of Robert Kennedy & his brother...it just struck to the heart to see people who had so much potential to do good knowing they were both struck down.

Anyway I wish I had brought my camera I could have shared more pictures...here are some from my phone.

More Tribal Fusion Faire

I should add a few more lovely pictures that were taken of the circus at Tribal Fusion Faire by my friend Roger Hendrix. Belly dancers are super lucky people because even though we don't really make much mullah, there are some really talented people who like to snap photos of our escapades...

While at Tribal Fusion Faire I also got to be in an Opal Moon fashion show! Which was really exciting for me cause I'm a shorty and no one ever lets me model their clothes! My beautiful daughter Jillian also was a model.

Happy New Year!! And how I spent my December warning...tons of pictures!

Well I haven't been posting except random videos that other people have made of me/us/them! December was incredibly stressful and busy. But not bad...

On the fiber front I worked really hard to prepare a submission for Spin Off magazine for the gallery of Helix scarves... I started out with an orange silk/merino yarn I had spun to submit but when I got most of the way through knitting the scarf I realized they asked for a sample of the fiber, 5 yards of the yarn AND 5 yards of the singles if it was plied with the finished scarf...and since I had knitted the yarn earlier in the year I had used up every bit of fluff!!

So I went to plan B and started spinning up some lovely luxurious camel/silk that I bought from Red Fish Dyeworks at the guild harvest festival. The deadline for submission was December 13th and I sent my completed scarf & required yarn & fluff by overnight delivery on December 10th. This plan turned out to be successful! I received a contract for it to be included in the article in the Spring 2011 issue of Spin Off! Yay!! I'm just so excited!! Anyway their pictures will be a zillion better than mine! But here is the fluff, yarn & scarf in progress.


While all this was going on I was preparing my dance class to perform at Tribal Fusion Faire. I had been working on a choreography to a song that reminded me of an old European circus so I decided we would portray a circus! The class troupe is called Tandava by the way and I'm super proud of them. Here are some pictures from our little circus.















Our family also hosted our Annual Holiday party. We don't say this every year btw...this was the best one EVER!! We had a lot of really talented performers sing and dance for us, we had good friends, and the food wasn't too bad considering my oven died a week before the party. Luckily my really great friend Heidi lives near by and she has a beautiful LARGE oven. FYI we do have dog friends that attend the party, I take full credit for Deanna getting together w/ Jeremiah cause I told her to go out with him, I'm so happy Richard comes to our parties and takes so many pictures even though there is not one with Robert in it, our friends are all nuts and we must do this again every year forEVER!








Then we had a nice quiet Christmas I wish the whole family had been here but it was nice having what family could be here to do some baking (in the toaster ovens), and spend some joyous time together.






As I'm sure you can tell by the label at the bottom of many of the pictures they were done by my good friend Richard Lowe Jr. the ones with no labels were done by other people...all the fuzzy pictures or pictures with weird color were done by me & 8 year old Riley! LOL

Eclectic Ensemble December 2010: Danny "Slapjazz" Barber

This was a special treat I got to join in and dance near the end around 12 minutes or so! Super fun!!

She'enedra @ Tribal Fusion Faire 2010

Here we are at Tribal Fusion Faire 2010...you may think you have seen us do this piece before but this is improv...or improv is what happens when you forget what you were supposed to do! LOL