.experimentation.

February has turned into the month of Experimentation.

I had my first Art Show.
I entered and won an art contest.
I started teaching dance again.
And I started a Third Friday Bellydance show night.

The impetus was simple - other than Tasso's, there's nowhere in Kansas City to go out and see good bellydance in that regular I know when the show is every month kind of way. There are sporadic bellydance shows (usually associated with workshops or student recitals), and there are shows with bellydancers in them, and there's Tassos. And don't get me wrong, I love Tasso's: the food is good, there's Ouzo, and Zaina is an amazing dancer (perhaps even a Kansas City Institution?). On the other hand Tasso's is expensive, and loud and crazy, and there are 42 people wandering around trying to sell you something: a rose, a polaroid photo (10$, and sometimes they take it before they ask), a plate to smash on the floor, money for a trumpet player covered in double sided tape...and they frequently group separate parties together on one ticket.
I love Zaina, but sometimes I want something different.
Or always I want something different, being an introvert and generally shy around insane loud parties.

So why not a bellydance ¡SHOW! - they've been doing it in DC for years, and more recently Ami Amoré in St. Louis has been hosting a monthly Urban Cabaret, but what about here?
The burlesque troupes have been fairly successful about it...why not bellydance?

I hemmed and hawed over it for a few weeks, and on a whim I started contacting venues.
And they were interested.
And I contacted dancers.
And they were interested.

And then it happened. Third Friday Bellydance show.
So weird.

.elemental.embers.

.professionalism.

The weekend before last (the weekend of Elemental) I heard a word a lot. A Lot.

“professional”

“You’re a professional, so….”

And it got me questioning whether I am a professional, as it always does every time I hear it; which led to me wondering, “What is a Professional Bellydancer?”

That term gets bandied around the bellydance community so often, but to this day I don’t think I’ve ever heard a discussion of what makes one a Professional. At the beginning of workshops we ask people about their dance level: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, Professional? We put it on business cards, and use it to describe ourselves and other dancers.  But there’s no qualifying test for Professionalism in the bellydance world, no final exam, no board of certification (ok – Suhaila and FCBD had certification programs, but being certified doesn’t really mean you’re a professional either, does it?)

So what makes you a professional?

Looking at the dictionary, which is where I always start just to get a baseline, there are a couple of things listed:

• following an occupation as a means of livelihood or for gain; following as a business an occupation ordinarily engaged in as a pastime
• an expert player, as of golf or tennis, serving as a teacher, consultant, performer, or contestant; pro. a person who is expert at his or her work

Already, we have two qualifiers – making money, and expertise.  But it’s not just making money. It’s not just “knowing the material."

Are you charging a reasonable and fair rate for your services without undercutting the other professionals in your area? Are you not only presenting venue appropriate dance/education, but doing so in a way that makes sense to your audience - whether they be a class full of students, restaurant patrons, or an audience in a giant big theatre? And is that performance of a quality to justify what people are paying to see it?

Appropriate pricing. Appropriate material.

But is that it? Is that all it takes? I’d argue that No, it isn’t. And having contracts isn’t enough. Everyone’s been in a situation where they encountered a person and had a reaction: “That’s not professional,” whether it be a dance teacher, or a babysitter, or an employee or a boss, waitress, plumber, or doctor. As a society, we have an expectation of a certain standard of behavior from our professionals – that’s why we go to them. We know/expect that they will show up on the agreed upon time, do the job correctly the first time, and not act like a teenager having a temper tantrum when things do not unfold exactly as planned.

So we’ll add a third qualifier – Behavior.

• If your music doesn’t play, do you have a backup plan? Can you figure out a solution to that problem without flipping out on your host?
•  If your performance isn’t going to start on time because the party your performing at is running late, can you calmly but firmly inform your client of the problem?
• If you drop your prop or trip while dancing or forget a portion of your choreography, can you dance through it?
• What are you going to do if you get sick? Can you still perform? Or do you have a backup dancer who might be able to fill in for you?

All of these things can and will happen at some point in your dance career. Your music will malfunction. Your host will try to delay your performance, or possibly even try to weasel you into a second performance for free. Something is going to go wrong while your dancing. And you are going to get sick. It’s part of being human, rather than a robot.

I’ve been sick a number of times, and only ever missed a performance because I blew out my quads and quite literally could not walk; and very fortunately the performance in question was a very forgiving situation with very forgiving hosts. I’ve danced with the flu, sinus infections, altitude sickness; and severe depression, anxiety, and celiac flare ups.

So we’ll add a forth qualifier: Dedication.

You have to be dedicated, you have to Want to do this, beyond a sense of physical or emotional comfort.

Income. Expertise. Behavior. Dedication.

It’s not all fame and glory.

So the question now, are you a professional?
And do you want to be?

.happy.v.day.

And here it is - that day of days which I have tried my best to ignore for most of my life.

Of course, now I officially can't, as it's the one year anniversary of me and my Mister getting engaged. This year, in order to celebrate my getting one step closer to being a normal girl (but who are we really kidding?) I thought it would be a stunning idea to make valentines for all of my nearest and dearest.
And in typical fashion, I completely forgot to mail them.

But it's never to late really....right?

I also forgot half of my lunch today and I'm really hungry. Anyone want to bring me some noodles?

just for the record...

That last post was entirely the result of my reaction to a job listing on guru.com in which a potential "employer" wanted someone to do 15 illustrations for a childrens book, and was going to pay no more than 100$ - which breaks down to roughly 6.67$ per finished piece, and if you think of it in hourly wages.... Normally an illustration takes longer than an hour, and that's not even taking into account initial sketches and revisions.
Even speeding through it - say 2 hours on initial sketches, and if they got approved, maybe 2 hours per finished illustration (once again, we're rushing this), and perhaps another 4 hours spent on revisions, because there are always revisions. If you call the whole project 36 hours of work, it breaks down to about 2.75$/hour.

This guru post wasn't anything new, or unusual - they pop up daily: "I need a book illustrator, but I don't have much/any money. But it will be a great opportunity for your work to be shown!"
And it gets a little tiresome to see...

Art isn't magic. It doesn't spring fully formed from an artists head and magically appear on paper - perfectly how the client imagined it in every way. We aren't psychic - there's a lot of guessing and research that goes into artwork of all kinds. It's worth considering.

.the.cost.

Quite frequently in dance as well as art I hear two arguments from people not wanting to pay what I think my work is worth. Always the same arguments, though phrased differently - always consistent, and always with the same underlying message.
"But you do this for fun, right?"
"This would be a really great promotion for you."

Both of these statements echo in my mind of the same thing: "I don't want to pay you for this because I don't see it as actually being work." No one argues with a plumber with these phrases, or a doctor, or a lawyer. No one goes into a restaurant and says to the manager "You should feed me for free because it would be a really great promotion for your restaurant," or "You really like cooking, right? You do this because you enjoy it, so I only want to pay half that."
But here's the thing - very few people fall into a profession by choice without enjoying some aspect of what they're doing. Yes, I enjoy art and I enjoy dance. They happen to be things that I'm fairly good at and so I've turned them into my job. Yes - JOB. But lets look at these other professions for a moment.
Do you think a doctor, on some level, doesn't enjoy not only understanding how the human body works but also the problem solving in diagnosing a disease or ailment? Does a doctor not gain satisfaction in having treated that same ailment? Does a chef not enjoy the look of delight on a customers face as they take a first bite of special dish? Do lawyers not enjoying both arguing, and winning arguments based on logic or trickery? Does a police officer, on some level, not enjoy protecting the innocent? Does the maintenance man not enjoy fixing things?
If they didn't enjoy it on some level, would they put up with the garbage brought to them by their customers on a daily basis?
Yes, customers. People paying other people for a good or service. We might call them patients or clients or patrons or tax-paying citizens, but they are all customers.

And so yes, I do enjoy making art and dancing. But someone who calls about an illustration or a painting or a performance is still a customer. I don't do this for free. Aside from the massive amount of time that it takes to create a costume or an art piece or put together a dance, there is also a material cost. And when a person asks for a performance or a drawing for free or nearly so - they are not only disregarding the time that I put into my craft, but also the cost of the materials.

I can only assume that when people call me for any of these services it is because they've seen my work and seen value in it - there was a reason you picked me over the myriad of other artists and dancers available. I may only be dancing for 15 minutes that you can see, and that painting on the wall that you've fallen in love with may only be 12" x 12", but is it really so easy to disregard experience, talent and craft?

Please don't insult me by assuming you're doing me a favor.
My prices are not arbitrary. And in art as in law or medicine or cuisine - you are getting what you pay for.

.elemental.

Photos by Steve Thompson

.i.am.exhausted.

...and with good reason.
Tomorrow is the opening of my solo show, subtitled "I dream of Science" at the Base Gallery in downtown KC. I can't really say the actual title of the show, because I decided to be graphically clever and make a non-word...

I'm also exhausted because I've been prepping dance-wise for Elemental, a theatrical bellydance production by the BDU, at Union Station on Saturday.
It's a lot to do!

I'm so glad I took the day off of my day-job tomorrow.
I need to sleep in before all of this goes down...