dancing into the night (and day)

hello dear reader

during a week long period from thursday october the 1st until (yes ..my birthday!).. wednesday 7th we performed six times with our dance group ...

i will have pictures of it later and a film i think as well ..

but here's the story ...

in march 2008 i was approached by Jeroen, our choreographer and i was the only person in the project then for quite a while ...

of course, since i had no formal background in dancing he started giving me workshops to learn the basics of contemporary dance

soon he was learning me some choreography for the piece but then i convinced him to start working with me improvising on totally different music genres as the music that was meant for the performances ...

so, i would improvise like 20 minutes or so on industrial music or new age or even some more mainstream oriented music while he would take notes of the good bits so i am very pleased to see that a lot of what i did on my own was integrated into the dance performances ...

later he asked me if he could use some songs of mine and if i could play them live during the performances ... and so i did!

so the whole week was very hectic with six performances .. on saturday Jeroen even had to come pick me up because i was having a video shot for one of my songs, and do the dance ...

that was a very exhausting and stressful day because we were all in a hurry the whole day long ... worst of all, i forgot the dance costume vest at the video studio and when the vest finally arrived (it was sent over by taxi)i just put it on on time to open the show! ..

it was a fantastic week, and i learned that dancing (performing) nearly every day is very exhausting but very rewarding!

The dance performnaces came to an end for now .. but we'll surely do more of the same spectacle next year!

watch out for the video and photos that will be posted i think on http://www.myspace.com/bettydonelly

betty donelly gets involved in mental health patients' band

hello,

since 7 january 2008, betty donelly is involved in some part time volunteer work in a day activity center for mental health patients..

activities include amongst others painting, sculpting cooking and...music.

they have a band which is called the rolling dice...i have engaged myself temporarily to rehearse with the band which plays covers ranging from the beatles, the doors,to brazillian bossanova music to lionel ritchie and others...it's a great way for me to get used to playing in a full band again and i can switch instruments so one day i play the bass guitar and other times i play the drums or guitar...i performed once with the band already and there's more shows coming up

these people are brilliant and i already learned a lot from playing with the rolling dice...like playing softer or louder when appropriate...

i'm also involved in weekly dancing lessons which will turn me into a star of the floor when i will go dancing which is something i really enjoy doing

that's it
take good care

and remember, you can donate free rice through the united nations by going to www.freerice.com and play the lingo game for as long as possible