JAMES CRAIG PHOTOGRAPHY

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Belly Dance at the Pirate Fest

Aug 25, 2021

While I’m almost completely overwhelmed by the number of potential images from the rogue Swan Performance this month at the Vandiver, I thought I tackle something a little less daunting. We walked down to the Pirate Fest just to get a beer each and watch the first of two Belly Dance performances. This wasn’t the Black Box at the Opera House, but the girls, as always came through. And I have names – since I have Hafla images of all three of them, HERE.

 The dancers realized immediately that the stage was too far away from the audience – and took to the grass in between. Kinda bright light, but belly dance needs to be close. And this way they could dance into and back out of the audience tent. The opening dancer is Naimah Loren.

This is Kalayla. I managed to switch to a shorter lens and catch her twirling under the tent. This young lady does a lot of spins and twirls, no convenient posing there. She’s always moving:

Havre de Grace’s own April Monique. She’s getting close to needing her own folio here – and some really great stuff is coming of her from the Rogue Swan Show I’m working up…

All three added to the the folios HERE

BARDY PARDY (We don’t know them but just have to give them a plug)

A sort of ladies folk group came on just after the Belly Dancers, calling themselves Bardy Party. I’ll have to admit that they were very entertaining and a lot of fun, singing Irish folk balads and “pirate” songs, acting out short skits and simply having a very contageous good time. If I was setting anything up to entertain kids, they would be the first ones I’d call – partly because even the adults can enjoy them, pretty rare for even good kid shows. We stuck around for the whole thing.

The MERMAID (just an observation)

A full size, living mermaid, crammed into a medium size aquarium, in not-so-clear water, just made me feel sorry for her. Great idea – IF somehow you can come up with a considerably larger tank.