A Belly Dance Diary 2022
Dancing a skirt dance in honor of my late father.
2001-2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 Herein is chronicled Zorba's on-going voyage of discovery into the magical realm of Belly Dancing. Sometimes major events, more often just baby steps along the way. Presented here in reverse chronological order.
16 December 2022
This should be the last entry for 2022, more pictures are in the 2022 Gallery, of the Holiday Hafla. Not particularly good ones for a variety of reasons, but viewable.
11 December 2022
High-res videos are now up on the "Belly Dancing Space Coast" YooToob channel:
Zill Like Hell. Zills come through, but not loud.
5 December 2022
Three more low-res videos are in:
All videos thanx to Jessica! Goddess only knows when the hi-res versions will be available, but I'll post 'em up when I get them!
I also added a picture of Kalisa's statue they emplaced near her restaurant site in the Kalisa's Gallery, as well as correcting a bad caption I found on another picture in same. I had to do it by hand as the gallery software I used back then is long obsolete and un-runnable. Thank Goddess for "sed".
3 December 2022
Quadruple performance at the annual Holiday Hafla! First, it was the latest Luna Habibi skirt dance choreography. Jenn adapted it from one she learned from Mindy, and its a ton of fun! Then I returned to the stage with Bianca et al to do her simple but fun "candle" dance choreo. The third time was a solo to a piece of music I call "Zill Like Hell" with my beloved Zildjan Zills - a different style to be sure, but it went well enough. Finally, returned with Jenn and many community dancers for our "universal, multi-troupe, community-wide" dance, "Op". Costume changes between each time onstage, I haven't done a show this "brutal" in many years!
There is supposed to be an "official" video coming for all of these, and there's three low-res photos already at the end of the 2022 Gallery. There is even a
19 November 2022
Another short troupe performance with Jenn at another edition of the Ballroom dance showcase. As before, the Ballroom dancers are MOST gracious - we simply did the famous "ShimmyMob" dance "Op", that Jenn created back in 2016. A huge part of the local Belly Dance community came together, we fielded 14 dancers, including Thalya and Bianca and their girls as well as not 1, not 2, but 3 brand new "Baby Bellies" doing their VERY first performance! I LOVE the energy of first time baby bellies when they come off stage after their first performance! As Jamaica used to say, "That was TERRIFYING, when can we do it again?"
24 October 2022
Several videos and a few new pictures are in.
Pictures are in the 2022 Gallery, bottom of the first page of thumbnails and spilling over into the second. Several pictures of a non-dance event are also included, Zorba attended a Witch's Ball wearing his fabulous "Brolita" or "Elegant Gothic Aristocrat" costume!
23 October 2022
Brief performance today under the auspices of Bianca - dancing that crazy but fun "Start wearing purple" skirt dance with Heather (yet again) at a local psychic festival (yet again!). Pix and vid may be forthcoming...
22 October 2022
Performance. ABDC fall hafla. Jenn and I reprised our Duette of 2019 dedicated to Didi. Overall, it was a better performance than the last time - the choreography was better developed and practiced. I made several minor mistakes and one Lulu when I faced the wrong way. The real bad news is that the venue was too damn dark. The upshot of the whole thing was it looks like I'm heading up an effort to obtain some decent stage lighting for the club. I have a video in hand - shot at a fairly oblique angle, and dark even after enhancement. I need to do a bit more work on it before posting it. Claudette the Camel ended up staying in the car because she wouldn't have been seen if I'd brought her in anyway!
8 October 2022
Brief performance today under the auspices of Bianca - dancing that crazy but fun "Start wearing purple" skirt dance with Heather at a local psychic festival. Pix and vid may be forthcoming...
24 September 2022
I've been asked occasionally why this site doesn't have a "secure" (https) version. My response was simple: 1) There's nothing confidential on the site, "man in the middle" attacks wouldn't get any useful data, and 2) https loads slower.
With that said, when my hosting company offered a free https certificate, I took advantage of it. So now visitors can use the "secure" version: https://www.doubleveil.net - use it if you like. I'm not yet ready to force everyone to use https as there was some debugging and changes that had to be made to support the added protocol - plus it makes little sense anyway, but its there if you want it!
6 September 2022
3 September 2022
A virtual performance in a virtual show which premiered today. Unfortunately, the show had sound problems, including in my segment, so I won't post it here as the hostess is going to fix and re-upload. Not my best effort, too many T-Rex arms and stupid facials.
I'll post the revised full show URL here when its been fixed and re-uploaded - well worth watching!
27 August 2022
One of the two troupe videos is now up on
13 August 2022
Performance. One that I didn't want to do. Dancing in a ballroom dance environment, I figured it would be full of stuffy old codgers that wouldn't appreciate our dance form and/or wouldn't appreciate a male in a dance form considered "feminine" (much less doing a skirt dance).
Well, I was wrong; I'm glad we did it, I'm glad I got a lesson to not draw premature conclusions.
We did two "Luna Habibi" troupe numbers, the veil piece (with a borrowed veil) and a new-to-us skirt dance which is a lot of fun. The skirt dance is derived from one that Mindy taught Jenn, et al years back. Then Jenn did two solos, and did them VERY well.
Our reception - and mine - was far warmer and enthusiastic than I expected or even dared hope for. Jenn taught them the Zaghareet so they'd know it was OK to make noise - this isn't the symphony! Not only did this audience full of ballroom dancers take it to heart and Zaghareet during our performances, they also figured it could be used for ballroom dance performances as well. The Zaghareets didn't stop for the entire rest of the show, regardless of who was dancing or what dance style they were presenting!
There was one couple who danced numerous times (It was a ballroom competition) who were AWESOME! They were "real", every movement was intentional, their joy wasn't faked, their dance was authentic in feeling, they were just fantastic! The kind of thing that Janette squawked at me about for years, that took me years to understand, and that I'm still working on in my own dance. I still have a long way to go in this regard, but I now know enough to know it when I see it!
There may be video and/or pix of our performances - I know there's a posed picture of the troupe at the very least. I'll post 'em when I get 'em!
6 August 2022
Bianca had an open house at her studio, all instructors - both in-house as well as "guest" (like me) were present to present short demo classes and performances. I did finger cymbals and Jenn did veil. A couple of pix added to the 2022 Gallery, as well as a very short video on
1 August 2022
I've been doing a bit of teaching over the last few weeks. Taught the first 2 weeks of a 4 week veil class under the auspices of Bianca, then Jenn took over and taught the second two weeks. Then I subbed for Jenn during her 3 week vacation, I taught veil twice (two different groups of students as it just happened to work out), as well as an "introduction to finger cymbals". On top of all that, I've been teaching a 5 week class in finger cymbals, also under the auspices of Bianca. A couple or three pix of these classes have been added to the 2022 Gallery. I'm really enjoying teaching finger cymbals - the students are enthusiastic even as they're realizing how darn HARD they are to master!
30 July 2022
It came to my attention that my links page hadn't been checked for broken links for over two years. This has now been done, with the usual deletions, fixes and "not working" notations for next time. If the page still doesn't work in a couple of years when I next check the links, it will be deleted permanently. Lost a lot of "good friends" this time around, some links that had been on this page for 20 years are now officially dead. This site (doubleveil.net) is now 20 years old. One of the links that has been present all this time is one for the site of a male dancer named "Zahir". Even 20 years ago, his site had a "in hiatus" placeholder page, and its still there! I don't think he's coming back to dance, but if anyone knows anything about this guy, I'd like to hear about it.
With this said, I'm always interested in articles about male Belly Dancers or male Belly Dancer's sites - if you know of any not listed, please contact me! Note: I will NOT link to facebook or similar sites.
ALSO: I have started an announcement-only listserv for very occasional use for things like "pix/vids just posted" as well as upcoming performances. Spam free, all addresses held in confidence, etc. If interested, please contact me!
23 July 2022
9 July 2022
Two performances. First was a reprise of the "Start Wearing Purple" skirt dance for a local seniors event. I always love dancing for seniors! Video on the way.
The second was for an upcoming virtual hafla on 8/20 which I "filmed" with a brand new Sony video cam! I can't post it until after the hafla premiers, but it took four takes, none of which were spectacular. Its hard dancing to an empty room!
29 June 2022
I've taught my veil workshop again, under the auspices of Bianca as 2 weeks of a 4 week veil class. Jenn is teaching the 2nd two weeks and I'm learning new stuff from her. Salute!
15 June 2022
Videos from all 3 acts I appeared in are now up. Very poor quality videos, but still watchable.
12 June 2022
Pictures from last nite are up in the 2022 Gallery, including this rarely photographed pose from my double veil performance:
"Mary on the Half Shell"11 June 2022
Performance! Another one of Bianca's soirees. First, I participated in a weird little troupe skirt number danced to a weird little song called "Start Wearing Purple" that I learned in a short term class with local Tribal teacher Heather. This had to be the stupidest song I've ever danced to - and I say that "in a good way" because it was so silly and fun! It was all we could do to keep from laughing our way through the entire performance! I danced it in a borrowed skirt and choli so I could have a purple outfit!
Later, anyone who knew Jenn's 2016 Shimmy Mob dance "Op", went up and performed that. Jenn herself was not able to be present this evening. Near the end, all dancers turn around, but the back row is supposed to turn all the way around while the front row only turns halfway. This results in the back row swapping places with the front briefly. I was the only dancer in the back row who turned all the way, so I was the only dancer who came forward when s/he was supposed to. Just to keep me from being too cocky, I did forget my arms - they were supposed to go up just before I backed up and the troupe resumed its former configuration!
Lastly, I did double veil to my favorite double veil song, "Goddess Dance" using my A'Kai "Rainbow Meltdown" silk half circle veils. All in all, it came out quite well if I do say so myself. Audience loved it.
I also need to give a shout out to Thalya who utterly NAILED her drum solo performance!
I have both pictures and video of all 3 of my performances, they'll be up shortly. The video needs some "cooking" before I upload it.
13 May 2022
Dunia has graciously given me permission to post her pair of 1992 instructional videos on youtube:
These are WELL worth the watch!
8 May 2022
Cruising the "wayback machine" (Internet archive) and found a pair of pix of the late Didi, so I snagged them and put them into her gallery. THEN I found a few more on the current web, so I put them in her gallery as well. I still miss her...
Also found this picture as a real film photo print, remember those?
Scanned it in and added it to both the Old Picture Gallery as well as the appropriate location in the 2004 Dairy. 
29 October 2004 @ Kalisa's17 March 2022
Pictures from the Spring Hafla have arrived, and are now in the 2022 Gallery.
26 February 2022
ABDC Spring Hafla - live! First time in 2 years. I did not do a solo, time limit is just too damn short for me to get excited about it - but I did dance "Op" with Luna Habibi and a gal named "Heather" had given a short workshop on a choreo that I also got up and blundered around with. Pix should be forthcoming...
22 February 2022
Now that I can post videos of "Mary Jane's Dance" on youtube, I uploaded 3 of them from the past:
18 February 2022
After years of not being able to post videos of "Mary Jane's Dance" on youtube, apparently youtube came to an arrangement with the copyright holders of the music used. Therefore I was able to actually post the video of last weekend's performance:
16 February 2022
The all new 2022 Gallery is now open for business, starting with pix from last weekend's veil duette with Jenn!
12 February 2022
Fooling around with a video editor, I slightly revised Thalya's video for Bianca's event by adding an unused sound clip from my "Reel of Years" promo video. I had to lengthen the video slightly to accomodate the sound. It turns out that if a video is uploaded to youtube, is vertical or square format, AND is less than something like about 1 minute long, it gets automatically converted into a low rez version called a "short", and is displayed in a loop in a frame that is even shaped like a smartphone. Apparently designed for smartphone idiots that cannot turn their phones sideways to compete with TikTok and Instagram. I want absolutely NOTHING whatsoever to do with smartphones, Instagram, TikTok or other nonsense. So I had three videos this had happened to. I changed two of them to horizontal with black bars format, and deleted the third. This video was the first:
Said event was tonite. Danced "Mary Jane's Dance" as a solo. Something goofy with the computer running the music, I ended up dancing to part of Jenn's music, then there was a long silence, then mine came on. As sound problems go, this was beyond minor! Used my pink/fuchsia swirl veil for this dance. Then danced the Luna Habibi veil dance with Jenn (with a new 4 yard vari-colored blue veil). The fact that it was a duette instead of the full troupe meant a couple of minor last minute changes were made. It was "ok", but I made plenty of mistakes - I'm not particularly happy about my performance here.
Pix incoming, possibly some video as well...
29 January 2022
A non-performance. An outdoor performance I was originally supposed to dance at. Between not being rehearsed for the troupe dances due to my extended recuperation from the CCP virus, coupled with unexpected de-scoping of our performance by the event organizers, resulted in my not dancing - although Jenn and dance sister Liz did.
Goddess Athena was looking after me - this event was outdoors in 50 degree weather with a gusting 10 to 15 knot wind. Even colder than an event in Monterey years back with Janette that was also freezing cold. I attended as the designated "Booth Bitch" while they were up dancing. With veils. They did a fantastic job with the veils as dancing with them is always a challenge outdoors, never mind with that much wind. I'm very proud of them both!
They also did "Hely Meli", also with a
And ended with "Op", which was joined by Thayla with her troupe; and briefly by Bianca who had to withdraw as she discovered that she had injured herself during her own performance!
Zaira and her troupe performed as well. An unexpected performance by Tambil was a special treat!
1 January 2022
Thanx to Nadirah Johara, I had a very nice beach sequence filmed for promotional purposes. So I combined it with several excerpts from many years to create a Demo Reel, aka "Reel of Years". It was quite a bit of work to get this done, and being as I was - and as I write this still am - sick with the CCP virus, I'm sick to death of this thing although I'm proud of it at the same time:
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