The Spotlight on Donna Savage (aka - "Hot Donna")

As I move on to my next “victim” in this interview series, I must admit to having a very difficult time pinning her down for an interview (which is why this interview is so far behind my last one).  She is such a busy lady and, in my opinion, doesn’t really care to be “Spotlighted”, so to speak.  But I knew I MUST interview this woman.  She has always been near the top of my list, but has been ever busy with work and just being her awesome self.  I’ve known her for many years and count her as a well-loved and dear friend.  But, again, I do not know nearly enough about this fellow dancer and seamstress.  And so, after many a persistent text and using my charms of persuasion, I endeavored to interview this Siren of Swords, this Feline of Fire, this Temptress of Tribal, this Maven of Mischief – “Hot Donna”!

This time the interview takes place in the upstairs room of my home – my sewing/craft/spare room.  She’s been eager to see the room where I tell her that Joann Fabrics has exploded.  J She arrives at my home looking very comfy and non-bellydancer-like.  Just a regular lady, lovely as always.  And so, on this Saturday morning, we head upstairs, sit down and I turn the “Spotlight” on Donna Savage.

Now that I finally have you, let’s learn a little about “Donna ”.  Where did you grow up?  I grew up everywhere!  My dad was actually in the Air Force (he’s retired Air Force), so I was a military brat, and we traveled a LOT.  I was born in France.  I was in Hawaii for 5, Texas, Oklahoma, California, all over.  And then he retired in Georgia, actually, in Toomsboro, about 2 ½ hrs from here.  (So, do you have a dual-citizenship in France?)  No, I could have.  When I was 18 I just had to decide, but it’s like, eh.  So I don’t and I’ve never been back.  But I actually went to Germany, when I was in the military, but I just didn’t have the chance to get back there. 

Tell me about when YOU went into the military.  You went into the Air Force?  Nope!  You know, I was a child of the Air Force so I had to be different.  (laughs)  Couldn’t be like my dad.  I went Army.  I did.  I knew I didn’t want to stay in Georgia, because we had traveled so much and it was like my feet were just itching.  When I graduated high school, I was, BOOM, out of the house immediately, and, um, I moved to Milledgeville, GA for about a year or two and I was thinking, (sigh) I gotta go, I gotta go.  So I said, “You know what, I’m just gonna travel some more!” So I decided to join the Army.  (And what did you do in the Army?)  (laughs) Most people will be like, What??, when I tell them.  I was actually in Transportation.  And the reason I made that decision is I was 18/19 years old and the guy at the M.E.P.S station was like, “Well, you have these 5 choices.” But I didn’t want to sit behind a desk, so then he said what I could do was, I think it was 64 Charlie then, but I think it’s 88 Mike now.  But he said, “Well, you could do this and you could get a $4000 sign on bonus.”  (clap) There!  I want that one!  Believe it or not, it was fun, though.  I really enjoyed it because I had no direction.  I had no clue what I wanted to do or be.  But it was fun, I totally enjoyed myself.  (Cool!  How long were you in?)  7 years.  (Enlisted or Officer?)  Enlisted.

Now, you said your dad was in the Air Force so tell me a bit about the rest your family.  I have 2 sisters and 2 brothers.  I’m the middle sister, next to the youngest.  Actually, my sister was Air Force, my brother was Army, my son is Navy, so we have military all around.  Just the 5 of us.  My dad being in the Air Force, my mom, she didn’t drive, so we would just get in all kinds of trouble.  Back then, you know how it was, you would go outside and play all day and not come back home and be OK.  And we would just go out together and enjoy and get into all kinds of trouble.  (laughter) (I think I want to know about that.)  Yeah, but we played together a lot.  Now my oldest sister is in Washington state, my older brother is in Toomsboro still, my brother that’s a year older than me is still in Toomsboro and my youngest sister’s in Dublin.  So, they’re all kind of close except for my oldest sister.  (Toomsboro?  Where’s that?)  It’s like, between Milledgeville and Dublin.  It kind of sits in between there.  It’s actually for sale.  (The TOWN is for sale??)  The TOWN is for sale!  (laughter)  Yeah, it used to be booming back in the day, Swampland Opera House, I don’t know if you’ve heard of it.  Yeah, it’s just like tour buses and craziness.  It’s a beautiful little town. 

So you have two boys, tell me about them.   One is 24 and one is 23.  One’s in the Navy and one just graduated college.  He’s actually got a job at EZ Go as an Electrical Engineer!  Yeah, I’m very proud of both of them.  It’s weird thinking that they’re that age, it’s like, when did that happen??  I just don’t remember when that happened, it just did.  (So, were you married before?)  Yep, I met their dad in the military when we were stationed at Ft. McClellan, Alabama.  My rule was, I never dated anybody in the barracks, I just didn’t do that, and then HE showed up.  It was one of those things and 4 months later, we were married.  We were married for about 10 years.  It just didn’t work out.  Stuff happens.  Yea.  He’s no longer with us.  He died about 5 years ago.  (Oh, dear! I’m so sorry.)  Yea, well.

What do you do in the “muggle” world?  I, actually, as a vet, take care of vets.  I work at the VA Medical Center.  I’ve been there about 16/17 years.  I started out 6A, which is a medical floor, anything and everything.  (As a Nurse?)  Yea.  Yep, and I did that for about 10 years and then I got the job that I have now, which is primary care.  It’s like a doctor’s office, kinda sorta.  At first, it was like, “What did I do, I don’t want to do this, I need to go back!”  This is a whole different world for me, because it’s like preventive medicine and not the other, so.  But now that I’ve done it, I’ve been there about 8 or 9 years and I love it.  I like taking care of our vets.  It’s like, I kind of understand it, you know, I know their world a little bit.  (That’s an incredible job!)  Yeah, I mean, it has its days, all jobs do, your patients really try your patience sometimes but it really is rewarding.  I like it.

Well, how did you meet Mr. JT?  It’s so crazy!  It was just meant to be, because if one little thing had not happened, we would have never met.  I was actually working at the VA Medical Center on 6A and I was getting off, my shift was ending, he was supposed to be off that day, and they called him in.  They brought this patient in to Augusta, to the VA Medical Center, and they NEVER bring patients straight to the ward, EVER.  But they did this day.  (laughs) (He’s a Paramedic?) Yea, he’s a Paramedic. (But he’s also in the military?)  No, everyone thinks that because he’s all tactical and everything but he’s not.  So they bring him to the floor and I’m walking and I’m looking and I’m, WOW!  And my friend was walking with me and I’m like, “Man, I’d love to get his digits!”  (laughs)  And, of course, my friend turns around and was like, “Hey, she wants your digits!”  And Jason just turns around and says, “Well, tell her to come get ‘em!”  (laughter)  So, they took, the patient in the room and Jason was doing whatever he was doing and I could see him and I was standing there with my little notepad and pen.  Then he turns around and he was like “OH!”  I said, “Yea, I’m getting you digits!”  So I start writing them down and I was like “This isn’t your phone number!” And he says, “Do you want it or not?!”  I was like, “O, I guess I do.”  (laughs)  It was just a crazy day and I called him almost immediately, as soon as I got in my car.  We talked and we talked.  We probably talked about a month on the phone before we ever went out.  Our first date was actually a motorcycle ride.  Yea, it was fun.  And that was it, it went from there.  (Kismet!)  10 years later!  But if anything hadn’t happened that day, if I had got off a little earlier, if my friend hadn’t been there, or if he didn’t come to work, so it was just meant to be.  I almost hung up when I found out how old he was!  He told me he was 25, I was like, “Um, o, ok..”  (So, he’s younger than you, by how much?) 14 years.  He’s an old soul, though.  Jason’s a very old soul.  I tell him there’s an old man hiding in there.  He likes stuff like apple crisp and rice pudding and, what is that – not the grits – but, oh, yea, Cream of Wheat.  (laughs)  I’m like, “You are so old!”  So much older than me, on the inside.  We have our good days and bad days but, you know, everyone does. 

What was your first experience in Bellydancing and when?  Believe it or not, it was my birthday and Jason told me to put on some yoga pants and a tank top.  I thought I was getting surprised with a massage or something, so when we pull up at Warren Community Center, I was like, “What are we doing here?”  He’s like, “Surprise, I got you bellydance lessons like you wanted.”  Because I’d mentioned it to him, just out of the blue, you know.  I’d always wanted to do it and I had, like, NO dance background, NOTHING.  And at first I was like, “I’m not getting out!  I’m not doing it!”   He told me, “You’re getting out!”  And that’s when I met Mari, Mari Edwards.  She was my first bellydance instructor.  After that first class, that was it for me, I was hooked.  She created a monster in me.  (A good monster.  A very HAPPY monster.) Yes!  Bellydance has done so much for me and opened so many doors and made me see the world so differently.  Because I have a lot of stuff in my background and it’s just help me deal with it all.  I’ve met so many wonderful people, friends.  I just love it.  (That’s a common theme that runs through is the fact that it helps people through so many things.)

How long have you been bellydancing?  Um, oh geez, um.  8 years?  7 years?  Something like that. 

How did you feel during your first performance or when you were first able to make sense of the dance?  Um, I remember my first performance.  It was with Mari.  You know, she made all her students do “Wadi”, which I think was a good idea, because then you get to watch if first before you perform it.  I remember, she came outside and it was me and Jason’s sister and she was like, “Well, we want you to perform.”  And I looked at her and said, “Absolutely NOT!” (laughs)  “No, I’m not doing that, no!”   But, eventually, I did decide to do that.  I remember on the way down, I think it was for the 4^th of July celebration, they still do it but they don’t call it “Riverblast” anymore, they just call it “4^th of July Celebration”.  I think it was for that and it was me, Jason’s sister, and I think Kristin, was on the stage as well.  I think I have that video somewhere.  It’s crazy!  I remember going downtown and me and Jason’s sister were in the back of the car going, “Oh my God!  We’re gonna do this!  It’s gonna happen!”  Got through it, my nerves were like wracks, but got through it.  And when I got off the stage, I was like, “I wanna do that again!”  (laughs)  “I wanna do that again!”  I still get so nervous when I perform, with fire, with bellydance, with anything!  I still get so nervous.  The butterflies start.  (I would think if you don’t, then you’ve lost something.)  Yea, that’s why I think it’s a good thing I still feel that way.  As a matter of fact, Fierce Fusion has a thing they go through, especially before a big performance, we just crank up the radio with the crunkest music and we just get crunk.  We just crunk it out.  And it really helps, you know, with nerves.  I mean, dancing with a sword, and your nervous?  Not a good combination at all! 

Costuming.  I know you make some but do you buy some and where?  Um, I’m trying to remember the last thing I bought.  I still love to buy the Desert Dancer pants.  They’re really good.  I love her stuff.  But, for the most part, I think I make most of my stuff now.  Just because it’s my style and what I like.  And being able to create it, I think I make most of my stuff now. 

How scary is a serger??  It was terrifying!  It was like, “Oh my gosh!”  Of course, my wonderful Boo bought that for me for my birthday.  Had no clue it was going to happen.  But we went to Jeff’s Sewing and the ladies there are just phenomenal.  They’re so awesome.  And they do classes.  The lady who helped me learn how to thread it, which once you get the hang of it is ok, but you have to do it once a month or you forget.  I’m still learning so much.  Rachel Morris just got a serger.  She’s taking classes and she’s learning things so we’re going to start learning stuff together.  She’s got a ruffle foot.  I totally want one of those things!  But as for my serger, I’m still learning things about it, it still pisses me off.  It’s like, “Uh uh, I’ve got to leave this for a moment.”  (But, yet, you make some of the most fantastic things.)  Yay!

What music inspires you?  I don’t know.  I think it’s just the feel of the song, when I hear it.  I mean, I’ve danced to songs that I just didn’t feel at all but we did it anyway cause it was “badass” or “cool”.  But as far as music goes, I think it’s the melody of the song and the feel of the song when it comes on – do I feel it?  I think, does it make me want to do something to it?  Either it does or it doesn’t.  Like my first solo.  I did my first solo with my fans and it was just something out of the ordinary and when I first presented it, they were like….  It was “Hello” by Evanescense.  It was slow and dark.  I love that song and I love doing it to fans.  Because when it came on, I was like, “I want to do something to this.”  That’s just how it works with me.  It might be something totally out of the norm.  Totally nothing to do with my type of style.  But it makes me want to do something to it. 

So what’s on your iPod?  Anything and everything.  You name it, it’s on there.  I don’t have one type of music style, it’s just off the charts crazy.  From screaming, yelling, hard-core rock to sappy love song, you know?  (laughs)  It’s on there! 

When you’re in the car, what radio station do you listen to?  95 Rock is usually the one that I have on.  But most of the time I have a CD in.  I will make CD’s and just pop it in.  Just different ones, one is rock, the next one is slow, the next one is just randomness.  That’s what I like.  I don’t like the same all the way through. 

For choreographies that you have created, where do you find your inspiration?  I have, especially for my class, my students, I do stuff for them.  We created “The Garden”.  Fierce Fusion did it first, and then I redid it for my students.  Just going out there, putting the music on and just dancing!  Finding different movements with whatever comes up, that’s where I find it.  Me and Kristin have just stood in the mirror for hours just trying to get the last 8 counts.  And then, one day, it’s like, “Oh my gosh, this would look so good here!”  It’s craziness.  Sometimes it easy and sometimes it like, “Man!  This is not working!” 

What types of movement are you drawn to and why?  Because you were talking about the music will kind of inspire a movement.  Well, I like dancing with my sword so I the long, slow and the sharp and pop and just drastic movements that you don’t expect.  I came up with a move for Fierce Fusion that we use a lot and I got it out of a breakdancing class at the Y.  I was just in there checking it out and watching them do it and I was like, “We could totally use that!”  And it looks so cool!  And that’s where I got it from.  I actually put it in my students’ choreography for “The Garden”.  All it is is that you cross your leg over and you pop up with a spin.  And it looks so cool, very unexpected, and I love that!  Because people think, “Well, she’s going to cross her leg and get up slowly”, but no, you’re going to bolt up really quick!  That’s what I like, the unexpected!

What do you absolutely HATE about the dance world?  (sigh)  Let’s see.  Not a lot.  There’s not a lot I hate about the dance world.  It’s just got so much goodness that it overrides the badness.  You know, I try to ignore the stuff that I don’t like.  (Which is?)  You know, someone saying things which are just rude.  I just kind of ignore it.  It’s just not worth it.  I just kind of tune it out. 

What do you absolutely LOVE about the dance world?  Pretty much the togetherness, the bringing everyone together, the openmindedness.  The stuff that it brought into my life that I never thought in a million years it would be this way.  Bellydance not only brought me dance but also fire!  It brought me fire and then the fire spinning and the flow.  It just kept on and on and on and it just keeps on and on and on.  That’s one of the things I love about this world – the two can connect.  You can just keep going, as much as you want or as little as you want.  It doesn’t matter.  You take it and run with it or you can take it and just enjoy the little bit parts. And I love how it brings people out of their shell.  I get some people who are just wanting to learn a little bit it and the next thing you know, they’re dancing and they have their own troupes and I just love watching them come out of their shell and showing their creativity.  Something they never thought they’d be able to do.  I love watching it because that was me.  I know how they feel and I understand it.  And as a teacher, I’m very careful to not make them dance like me, to bring my style to class.  I keep it very basic, let’s just do basics.  You find your passion, what moves you. 

Where do you teach?  At the Y, the Wilson Y off Wheeler.  I’ve been there for about 5 years now.  I teach Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7 pm.  (**Note:  Since this interview, Donna has begun teaching Tribal Foundations at Hip2Hip Studios Mondays at 6 pm.)  I love it!  But the only thing I don’t care for is that it’s hard to, like if I have someone in my class that’s been there a while and they know what’s going on, especially on Tuesday, which is a beginner’s class.  I have to go over everything, every time, so it’s not like sessions, it’s everyday there’s someone new.  Which is ok, but, it’s like with the students that have been there for a while, if we’re shimmying, then start layering.  Get your chest circle in on top if that shimmy while we’re just shimmying.  But, it’s hard.  (Yea, I have the same challenges both places where I teach as well so I understand.)  I’m trying to make Thursday the dance day, you know, where you come in and we’re all ready to dance.  But it’s just not possible because you can’t just tell someone you can’t take this class today, and I just can’t turn anyone away.  I’m like, “Come on, let’s do this!”  But we still have fun, we actually do linedancing.  We do drills as well. 

Other than bellydancing, what types of dance do you like?  Crunkin’ it out at the club!  (laughs)  Other than that, I really haven’t done anything else.  I mean, I like modern dance.   My niece is a modern dancer.  She started about 5 or 6 years ago.  She’s getting really good.  Other than that, just bellydance.  That’s all that under my “belt”.  (Your hip belt?)  (laughter) 

What first “sparked” your interest in fire (if you’ll pardon the pun)?  I want to say that me and Jason were downtown after we had danced, because we were dancing (Fierce Fusion) every First Friday, and I want to say it was downtown and that’s where we first say it and Jason was like, “That’s pretty cool!”  And I said, “Yea, that is cool!”  But I was terrified when I first saw the fire, people playing with the fire and the fans and poi and stuff.  (Ok, so there was already a group of people doing it?)  Yes, they were Pyroteque, but not the same group.  It’s a whole different group now, but it’s still Pyroteque.  They left the name when they left.  They moved.  But I think that’s the first place we saw it.  A friend of mine, Olivia, she was doing it and she just mentioned that she was going over to someone’s house and they were allowing people to come over and practice and I was like, “I wanna go!  I wanna do that!”  And that’s where it started.  We started practicing and the next thing you know, I’m part of Pyroteque.  But, you know, I’m still scared of the fire.  I always will have respect for it.  I will never, ever lose respect for the fire, because as soon as you do, you get too comfortable, and accidents happen.  But I just fell in love with it.  I love the smell of fuel and burping fuel.  And I just love it, the sound it makes.  The first time I lit up was with poi, I think?  It was either poi or staff.  And it’s just, the noise that it makes, it’s just hypnotizing.  It’s like bellydance, either you love it or you don’t.  It just grabbed me in and I was like, “Well, here we go again.”  But we incorporate fire into our bellydance in Fierce Fusion.

Tell me about Fierce Fusion.  The beginnings of Fierce Fusion was CRAZY!  (laughs)  We just went all out.  It was me and Kristin and Alex joined up with us.  And we had no idea.  I mean, I remember when I first found my passion for sword with Romka.  Just watching them I was like,  “Oh, I wanna do that so bad!”  (Romka?) Yea, they’re no longer a group, it’s Belladonna and Mavi.  Yea, we just picked the sword up and creating and practicing.  I think we practiced 2-3 times a week for forever.  We practiced A LOT!  Our first performance was at Spirit (of the Tribes).  We just went crazy!  We cut off our pants and we put on fishnets and garters because that’s what we want, that’s the look, our metals bras.  It was just what we wanted to do.  And that performance, I still go back on YouTube and check it out every now and then, because it’s like, “Wow, we really did that!”  To create in such a small amount of time, and, you know, it just went from there!  But, you know, life happens.  I think Alex quit for a little while and then Kristin had some life things happen and she started school, so that took a lot of her time away.  But we started meeting again probably a couple weeks ago.  We’re starting to create again, get back into it, now that she’s got her Masters!  Whoop Whoop!!  She’s got it!  Finally!  No more school!  Yay!  But we are starting to get back into it, we’re starting to do it.  So that’s where Fierce Fusion is now, years later.  I don’t know how many years, maybe 5?  4 or 5 years. 

What “style” of bellydance do you most associate yourself with – Cabaret (obviously not, lol), Tribal, Folkloric, Fusion, Orientale, etc?  I think I know the answer to that, but I will ask anyway.  Lol.  (laughs)  Um, I would say, Tribal Fusion with a tendency to the darker side?  Because I still do your basic Tribal pieces, you know, but, more or less, our stuff is on the harder side.  But, we’ve done a softer side, a little bit.  We’ve done that one at Spirit, “The Pillow”?  And don’t ask me who does it, because I don’t remember.  We did that softer side and we actually wore, um, beige or cream.  (I remember that!  Wasn’t that 2010 or something like that?)  Yea.  That was very different for us, but you know, we came up with that in, like, two weeks.  It was crazy.  But it’s one of our most favorite pieces.  We’ve done it again but we’ve kind of changed it a little bit.  And when we say we’re going to wear cream, we kind of look at each other and say, “We are?”  (laughs) Because black just didn’t go with the music.  But it totally worked out and that’s one of our favorite pieces that we love to do.  It’s a beautiful song, gorgeous, and I just love what we did with it, especially the spin and the drop.  It’s like, “What?!”

Given the opportunity, if time, money, and distance were not an issue, who would be your “dream” instructor?  With whom would you LOVE to study bellydance?  I think with bellydance (or sword), if they were still together, I would love, love, love to study with Romka.  So either Mavi would be awesome to work with for a while.  Just the way that they move, it’s totally my style and I love it.  I have taken classes with the both of them and they are just awesome instructors so either of them.  As far as fire goes, I’ve never gotten a chance to, but I love Linda Farkas.  She does hoop and staff but I think staff is her specialty.  It’s just beautiful the way she moves with it, because she dances with it as well.  It’s AMAZING what she does with that staff.  Aileen is really good too.  I’ve actually gotten to take classes with her, she’s really good.  If I could spend about a year with either one of those, that would be awesome!  (laughs) 

We are always faced with challenges in life.  If you were suddenly unable to dance, would you continue in the dance world, somehow, or would you just walk away?  Oh, I would definitely continue.  I couldn’t leave this world.  It’d be like losing part of me, you know.  I’d have to stay and definitely be in costuming.  I LOVE creating and I know you totally understand.  (Oh, I do.)  Yea, this room is, I just want to get a bed and sleep here!   (**referring to my sewing room) (Well, (pointing to the sofa sleeper) this is a bed!)  I would be so comfortable here and I understand these piles, they make sense!  I understand, I have those piles.  And, Jason, finally he’s just agreed to accept it.  But, yea, creating is definitely one of the ways I would stay.  Just watching someone dance in something I’ve created, it’s the most awesome thing ever.  It’s like watching hang your art on the wall.  I know that’s cheesy and stupid, but that’s how I see it.   People tell me I should open and Etsy store, but I don’t ever want it to go there.  Because this is more creating for me.  I don’t want it to ever become work.  I want it to continue to stay creating and fun.  I also love deconstructing.  I love getting a piece of clothing where I love the fabric and making it something completely different.  It’s like plastic surgery for clothing.  It’s awesomeness, it’s recycling, it’s all of the above! (Goodwill is good for that.)  I love Goodwill and yard sales.

What is something fascinating about you that no one, or very few, knows?  Well, military people are a totally different breed, it’s a totally different world.  It’s like the bellydance world, you live a totally different life.   You do some really crazy sh--, um stuff.  You get your free time and you just do crazy stuff, and it happens just because.  Nobody plans it, it just happens.  Like, there’s a place, I think I was in Alabama at the time, it was before the boys’ dad had gotten there.  We went to the state park and we were just going to go and hang out and chill.  We were just like, “Oh, there’s a big rock.  Let’s go up it and climb down and stuff.”  So we were climbing down this big rock and I was next and I looked down and I thought, “You know, I don’t know if I want to do this.”  As soon as I thought that, one of our friends fell. (gasp.  What happened?!) Stupid stuff.  He broke his leg.  (Oh my goodness!)  Yeah, stupid stuff like that, continuously.  Yea, we were free climbing.  (How high was that rock?)  It was pretty high, high enough to break his leg when he fell.  Crazy stuff, stupid stuff.  We would go out in the middle of nowhere to camp.   We had no idea where we were at.  (Did you have some random tent or something?) (shakes head) Nope, we just lay on the ground out in the open.  Here we are!  (laughs)  You know, whatever we wanted to do.  Hook up with people we don’t even know, you know?  Just party.  Just crazy stuff.  Stuff you do when you’re young.  In the military, when you’re all together with so many different backgrounds, you put all that in one pot and stir it a little bit, you’re gonna get crazy!  (laughs)  Yeah, there was just so much stuff that we did that was just nuts.  I’m surprised I’m alive.  (laughs) 

What is your biggest fear either in life or in dance? Or Both?  I have a lot of fears.  Of course, as a mother I have a lot of fears for my children.  I’m just very protective of them anyway.  Learning to let go is very hard, you know, when they got about 19 or 20.  And I still, you know, will call and be like, “You need to do dah, dadah, dadah.”  You know?  It’s like, “Stop it, Donna, stop it.  They’re grown.”  But I don’t think that’ll ever leave.  (Did you ever have an issue with, knowing what you did when you were young and crazy, did you ever have an issue with them and what they’re going to do when they’re young and crazy?)  Yea, and I worried about it, because I knew they were doing it.  (laughs)  They’re a lot like me.  They’re like their dad.  I mean, poor guys, they just didn’t have a chance.  (laughs)  I knew that they did.  But, it’s like even now, my oldest is home from college and he’s starting to save his money, working at EZ GO.  I’m still telling him to this day that if he’s going to go out, you know, call me.  I’ll come get you.  I keep that open, letting them know that I’m here.  They probably do worse things than I did.  Both my children smoke and I was a smoker.  And when they were little, they were like, “Mommy, I want you to quit because I don’t want you to die of Brown Lung” because they teach you that in school.  So I quit and then they both started smoking.  It’s so crazy.  But what can I say.  All I say is, “You know, I hate that you started.  I can’t say anything to you because I totally get it, but I really feel for you when you have to quit.  That’s gonna really suck.”  But, that’s one of my biggest fears.  But I have a lot of fears.  I have a fear of speaking in public, because it’s the way my brain works sometimes.  Sometimes it’s hard to get stuff out.  It’s almost like it’s when I’m thinking of stuff sometimes the wrong word will come out or I just can’t get it out, you know?  When I read something, I have to read it again because it’s exactly not what I read.  Me and Jason make fun of it now.  We’ll be riding along and I’ll be like, “Did that say, ‘Blah, blah, blah?’” He’ll start laughing and tell me to just read it again.  (laughs)  So, I’ve learned to make fun of it.  Back when I was in middle school in Texas, I was actually in Special Ed. Because they thought I was stupid.  (laughs)  But you know, it’s just the way my brain works.  I can’t sit and read, because it’s too hard.  I can’t do it, it’s just too much.  The way I got through school is I had to record the class.  Speaking in public is a big fear of mine.  I’m just afraid I’ll get up there and it won’t come out.  I’ll get up there and I’ll just get stuck and what comes out will be completely not what I was supposed to say.  (laughs)  So that’s a big fear of mine.  It’s probably the worst fear.  (How about in dance?)  Fear in dance?  I still get nervous before a performance.  But I think my biggest fear in dance is that, um, you know you’re gonna mess up.  I think my sword slid off my head for the first time a couple months ago at Joannie’s.  I got really pissed at her.   I wouldn’t even let Jason get her out of the car and bring her in the house.  I was like, “You just stay in the f---in car!”  But we made up.  But I think just falling, or I have bad knees and they’ll just pop out.  In the middle of something, they’ll just pop out.  I think that’s a big fear of mine.  Just falling or that happening.  Some drastic thing happening.  Running into the audience or my sword falls into the audience.  I do worry about that.  (Well, I knew for a while it took you a long time to do a solo.)  Yea, it took me a while to actually do it by myself.  Because I’m so used to Kristin being to my right or to my left and you get used to dancing with somebody, especially as long as we’ve been dancing together.  It’s kind of like, “It’s lonely out there.  Something ain’t right.”  You don’t know HOW to do this by yourself.  Especially when that’s all you know and you didn’t start out as a soloist.  And that’s all you’ve ever done, with the same person.  It’s scary.  It’s almost like you don’t know how or you don’t know what or how to do it.  It’s very weird.  (So, how do you feel about it now?)  Better!  I feel a lot better about it, because, like you said, (when dancing a solo) you do have that freedom when you mess up, well, I guess I’ll do this then.  Or if you forget, well, I’ll put it in there later.  You know, you can just kind of wing it.  You know?  Whereas when you’re dancing with somebody, they KNOW when you mess up.  They can see it.   

What is something that holds you back?  Um, I don’t know.  I don’t think so.  I think if I want to do it now, whereas before I was like, “I can’t do that”.  I think now, being in this world or community, one thing it taught me is if I want to do something, you have to work for it and work hard for it.  But I really don’t have a fear when it comes to dance now, because I know if I do something, it will be accepted.  If I bring it out on this stage, it will be ok. 

What are your dreams for the future – where do you see yourself in the dance in 3, 5, 10, 20 years?  I guess just to be doing what I’m doing now.  Just being happy with it, moving forward and changing up. (What about goals.  Do you have any goals?)  Keep getting stronger and learning different stuff.  I mean, Cabaret, you know, I love to watch it but I feel so retarded doing it.  I don’t know why, I just… (This is what I would love to see – I would LOVE, I would LOVE, I would pay money to see you do a Cabaret-style routine in a full-on Cabaret costume in makeup and everything.)  You don’t want to see that, Karen.  (Oh, I do!  I DO!  I would pay money to see that and I bet a lot of other people would pay money to see that!)  (laughter)  You don’t want to see that!!  (I would love to see that!  I’m going to make it my personal goal to try to see that happen!)  Uh, Oh, Karen’s got a goal!  (laughter)  (I have decided that that is my new personal goal.  Along with me trying to do a dark gothic tribal piece.)  But I could see you doing that.  You could totally pull that off!  (whispering I could not do that…)  Yes!  I could totally see you doing that.  (I would be smiling too much.)  (laughter)  (You can’t smile in Tribal!  There’s no smiling in Tribal!) (laughter)  Maybe that’s why I feel so crazy doing Cabaret, because when I dance, I’m so used to not smiling in our pieces.  Maybe, I don’t know, it’s weird.  I just can’t put my finger on it.  (I am going to do this.  You be careful, I’m going to do this.)  Ok!  I’m warning you!  Oh, I’m gonna die… (No, you’re not.)

This is the question that I should have asked earlier but if you were to do something completely shocking or out of character with absolutely no consequences, what would it be?  To dance Cabaret, in sparkles.  (Yes!  You and Jana, in pink sparkles! Oh, my GOSH!  I want that!  I want that!) NO!  Not PINK!  (laughter)  I can’t do pink, I cannot do pink.  I like sparkles.  Sparkles are ok.  I like glitter, glitter’s ok.   

OK, so if you were stranded on a desert island, whom would you like to be with and what one thing?    Of course, my Boo, Jason.  And I would say my boys, but they would be like, “Hell, no.”  You know, you just don’t want to be around your mom at that age.  (laughs) Especially on a desert island.  Um, so definitely Jason and the boys.  (What one thing would you need to have, assuming that food and water and shelter and clothing were taken care of?)  I would need my air mattress, my blankie, and my pillow.  (laughs)  My blankie doesn’t have a name but it just has skulls on it and it’s nice and comfy and just rrrr.  (If all those things were there, what’s the other one thing?)  Hmm.  I would say music.  I would have to music there, my music, my iPod. 

What is in your dancers’ bag?  What has to be in there?  Oh, my bag I take to the Y every week.  It has my notebook and pens and knee pads, for sure, gotta have those.  Some bobby pins, my headband, water, water’s always in there.  Business cards and cards I get from different places.  (When you’re performing,  what’s in your dancers’ bag?)  Um, of course my makeup and bobby pins, for sure, safety pins, for sure, gotta have those, DEODERANT, you never know, body spray, glitter spray, eyelash glue – which Oollee’s has the best eyelash glue EVER, it’s latex free!  It comes in a bottle and it’s a little wand so you just rake it across.  It’s latex free and it lasts forever!  I love it!  I was like, “Man, how did I live without this stuff?”  But, yea, definitely eyelash glue, because the stuff will come off.  Um, jewelry, of all types, lashes, definitely the lashes, they’ve got to be there.  Lighters!  I have lighters in my bag.  Especially if I’m going to do fire because it’s very embarrassing to start a fire show and have to ask somebody for a lighter.  Very embarrassing.  (laughs)  And it’s happened, believe me.  I keep lighters in my dance bag, in my poi bag.  So, that’s about it, nothing too major.  Maybe some kind of munchies, just in case.  iPod, for sure!  Yea, gotta get crunk! 

(Well, those are the end of my questions.)  Yay!!  I hope I didn’t sound like a DORK! 

No, Donna, you did not sound like a dork.  J  On the contrary, it was a delight to spend some one-on-one time with you.  As you can tell from the many remarks of laughter and laughing during the interview, she has such a bubbly personality, something that you may not realize if you just know her from her dance.   Yes, she has a dark side, don’t we all, but I love the light, sweet side that is the real “Donna”.   As we close our interview, we hug goodbye at my door and I feel as though I’ve just scratched the surface of this lovely and talented lady.  I look forward to seeing her again, soon.  And maybe, just maybe, will see her someday in a pink sparkly Cabaret costume…smiling.  One can dream…  J

 

The Spotlight on Joyce Oliver

My next interviewee was an obvious choice for me.  This woman brings a fire and passion to the dance that few others possess.  Think of swirling veils, a multitude of undulating movements and the occasional sword and your thoughts may also turn to her – Joyce Oliver.

I’ve called Joyce a friend for several years now, and her blonde hair, ready smile, and warm hugs are always a welcoming sight.  The setting for this interview is Panera Bread in Evans and it's evening. As my thoughts turn to Joyce prior to this interview, I am struck by several things. Here is a woman was multiple talents. Not only does she dance, and dance well, but she also sews. I know that there is a pretty killer skirt going around the CSRA that has her name on it. How many of us have a “Joyce” skirt (aka - bracelet skirt)? Or have learned to make a “Joyce” skirt? Lol, it is every seamstresses dream to have something named after them. Kudos to you, Joyce!

I spot Joyce at Panera and we sit down together to enjoy a nice meal.

 Let’s learn a little about “Joyce”.  Where did you grow up?  I grew up in the upstate of South Carolina.  My parents were older when I was born, they were cotton mill workers.  They had been sharecroppers.  They were born 1912 & 1914.  They got married and my mom had three children, one year apart, and then 21 years later, when she was 44, I showed up.  In fact, my brother, who was 21, was married on Saturday night and I was born on Sunday night.  That’s what I like to tell people about my daughters.  Victoria is 23 and Annalee is 12.  God has a sense of humor because I got to experience it from this side of the fence too.  Big Sister and Big surprise.  But it was great.  We lived way out in the country on the farm.  We grew all our own food.  I mean, we went to the grocery store and got our flour and stuff like that, but all the vegetables and canning and stuff like that, we did ourselves.  We had a hog that we would eat for the winter, we would kill that, and, you know, it was true farm, it was a working farm.  My life at that point was running around out in the woods and riding horses.  It was pretty cool.  It was pretty magical, very different from anything my children could ever imagine.  Both my parents are gone.  I have a brother and sister that are still living.  And they’re all still living in the upstate of South Carolina, Clemson area.  Ancestry is Scotch-Irish and Cherokee.  My uncle used to like to tell a story about my Great Grandmother having to hide under the house for the Cherokee Trail of Tears, when they took them to Oklahoma.  Of course, he lied a lot, so I don’t know if it’s true.  (laughs)  He was a storyteller. 

 Tell me a bit about your family.  Well, I’m married to Jim, who is pretty much the love of my life.  We celebrated 30 years of marriage.  In fact, my daughter, Victoria, was two weeks old on our 10^th Wedding Anniversary.  So I waited a looooong time to have kids.  It was fun, though, because when we got married it was the first time I’d really had funds to do anything, like money of my own, so we went snow skiing with our best friends every year.  We skied every slope in Colorado, quite a few on the east coast, and just had a grand old time.  We’ve always had a shared vision of building a Victorian farm house, owning some land and having some horses, which is pretty much what we’ve ended up doing.  My oldest daughter, Victoria, has graduated college.  She’s also a dancer and was on the USC Aiken dance team.  The last two years, she was a captain on the dance team there. So dance has been a fabulous blessing in her life as well.  She’s living in Columbia, loving her job, and dating a great guy, who I like a lot (wink, wink).  Annalee, the Big Surprise in the family, she reminds me a lot of my mom.  She’s kind of an old soul but she’s also got this artistic vent to her that’s really interesting.  She also dances.  She loves bellydance.  She’s also good at hip hop, which is kind of surprising.  She takes ballet, jazz, hip hop, tap, and modern dance, also.  They love school.  I’ve been blessed with my kids, they’re good kids. 

What do you do in the “muggle” world?  Well, I’m a Geek, I always have been.  I knew from the time I was a little girl that science was my favorite subject.  I knew I needed to go into healthcare, because, growing up on the farm like I did, anytime an animal was injured, or anything, I’m just gravitating to go help.  If I see a car wreck, I go out and I help.  I’ve always been that way.  So I KNEW I was going to go into healthcare.  In fact, in kindergarten, they published in the local paper what you’re going to be when you grow up, and I was always supposed to be a nurse, because, back then, that was kind of logical.  But when I got into high school, I had an advanced biology class and we did a parasitology series and I loved it so much because I love working with the microscope and identifying things.  It’s kind of like being a medical detective.  So I ended up going into Medical Technology and I managed an Immunology Lab.  Sexually Transmitted Diseases are sort of my favorite, my forte.  Anything in Infectious Disease, but especially STD’s.  Syphilis is my favorite disease.  (laughs – the table next to us joins in the conversation momentarily.  I am unsurprised to see how easily Joyce interacts with anyone and everyone she comes in contact with.  A very social person.)  But I also manage the Specimen Referral Laboratory, which is where we mail stuff out, which sounds like it may be the easiest thing to do, you don’t have to do any testing on the blood, you just mail it out.  But, honestly, it’s the most fascinating and challenging job I’ve ever had.  You ever watch the television show, “House”?  It’s really cool, it’s like a medical mystery thing where you’ve got this crotchety old doctor with all these weird patients that only he can help figure out.  Every day is like that.  Now we have this thing called NMDAR (I will NOT try to spell what she actually said because I don’t think I could), it’s encephalitis.  It happens when women have certain tumors in the ovaries and they end up completely psychotic.  We had a 15 year old girl last year from the upstate of South Carolina.  Straight A student, she was on the swim team, you know, all this great stuff, nothing wrong, no health problems at all.  And all of the sudden, like over a weekend, she becomes just completely psychotic.  No headache, no fever, just she was seeing things, hearing things.  They ended up, eventually, putting her down in Columbia in the mental hospital.  There she became catatonic.  So her doctor realized this is not just psychology, this is some medical thing.  So they sent to us, (GRU/MCG/Whatever) and we ended up diagnosing it.  We ended up sending that blood test out, helping the doctors figure out what to do.  So, it’s really interesting.  So, manage labs, and I love my job.  You know, my mom didn’t work outside the home, she did for a while, in the cotton mill, but she always told me, “Joyce, get a career.  Have your own money.”  She said, “A man may not leave you but they may die on you. So, make sure you can stand on your own two feet.  Have some sort of career.”  I mean, I can’t imagine doing anything else.  I’ve been at MCG for at least 25 years, then four, five, six before that, (before MCG) in the upstate, I worked in Greenville at a private lab, and then we moved to Michigan with my husband.  He’s a Fisheries Biologist.  He worked for the Fish and Wildlife Service.  I actually met him because he was mowing the grass in Clemson and he lived up the street where I grew up and I was riding my horse by.  At the time, I had a horrible crush on John Denver.  So Jim comes up and turns his mower off and he’s like, "I’d love to go horseback riding with you sometime", and he sounded just like John Denver and he told me he was getting ready to go to Colorado on a hunting trip and I’m like, Oh, it must be meant to be! An omen, or whatever.  Anyway, he was transferred with the Fish and Wildlife Service to Michigan.  I really didn’t want to go, because I loved my life and I loved my job in South Carolina, and I told my mom, he can just go and come visit every now and then and it’ll be fine, but my mom said, “No, Joyce, you married that man, you’ve gotta go.”  So, of course, I went and it was one of the best experiences of my life.  I worked up there in an Immunology-like lab that wasn’t medical.  We manufactured products so I got to do some research and make some products and go represent the company in different trade shows around the country.  It was too cold.  Southern girls just don’t do Michigan.  So he applied and got the job in Aiken, SC, which was back in the state, even though I’m 2 ½ hours from family, but we moved in here in ‘85 and I’ve loved it ever since.

 What first peaked your interest in Bellydancing and when? Well, I live in multiple worlds and thinking of it, I don’t remember ever NOT being interested in it.  Because, as a little girl, I must have seen an old Cleopatra movie or something because, I always wanted to do it, always.  I remember when I was probably 9 or 10 years old and my sister, who is 22 years older than me, would bring me cool clothes and stuff.  She gave me this really awesome velvet blue bikini that had these gold rings on the side, and I would take my momma’s curtains off the windows, the white chiffon curtains, and pull them through those rings and just dance!  (The true origin of the “Joyce” skirt!)  I’ve always wanted to do it but it just never worked out.  I always wanted to dance, period, but Middle Eastern dance, particularly, has always resonated with my soul and my heart.  But as a little girl, I ended up getting this falling disease, Legg-Calve-Perthese disease.  And those are the three doctors who basically discovered the disease in the late 1800’s/early 1900’s.  It’s not that common.  It’s where the blood supply to the hip, the femur head, dies, so the bone dies.  The first indication that I had something wrong was I would turn my foot out and limp and I would cry every night with my ankle hurting, my hip never hurt, but I would cry with my ankle hurting.  If they don’t do something about it, the entire hip collapses and you end up in a wheelchair.  At the time, what the treatment was was to put me in this brace that was a metal rod that went down both sides of my leg and takes the weight off my leg.  I could not walk on my leg for 3 years.  And I had on my left foot, to balance it out, what I called my “Frankenstein Shoe”.  It was this ugly, white shoe but on the bottom of it… (Forrest Gump!)  Yea! Yea!  And I was horrified of the whole thing because this was in, like, 4^th or 5^th grade when kids are so mean, they make fun of you and stuff.  In fact, they had to just about hold me down to get the thing on me the first time.  Because I’m like, “I’m not wearing that thing!” but I had to.  But it  ended up being a great life lesson, because, you know, when people are mean, it’s like, “What the heck’s wrong with you?  Why are you making yourself feel better by tearing me down?”  But I did learn to do tricks on my crutches.  In fact, it became a joke when new kid came to school, they’d say, “I bet you can’t beat the crippled girl.”  And I could pretty much outrun everybody on my crutches on that playground.  I could do spins on them and all kinds of amazing things.  I still have my crutches.  They’re in the barn (where we lived for 2 years while our house was being built) hanging up right next to all my old ballet shoes.  So, take that, Life, for what it’s worth.  So, I couldn’t dance because of that, and really we couldn’t afford it anyway.  When I got out of the brace, it took about 2-3 years for me to get my leg strong enough to where I could walk without turning my ankle over a lot.  So as soon as I got out of high school and got a job, I started taking ballet classes.  By then, I was like, 17/18 years old and I’ve got to be in class with 5 year olds.  I said, I didn’t care because I wanted to learn that bad.  So, I did it and I haven’t stopped since!

 Who was your first instructor/where?  For Middle Eastern, it was actually Gale Schultz, she’s in Florida.  She’s from here, I think her family still lives around here.  I cannot for the life of me remember what her dance name was.  But she worked at MCG at the time too in one of the labs and I got to know her.  I was dancing at Augusta Ballet at the time, at Martinez Evans, and when I found out Gale was teaching classes, I went.  I think I had three with her before I found out I was pregnant with Victoria, my first child, and I thought it was probably not the best time to take up bellydance.  I kept up the ballet and everything right up to delivery, so I didn’t really pursue it at that time.  Looking back, I wish I’d had the chance to study more with her.  She’s very folkloric in her style and pays a lot of attention to details and techniques.  So we moved back to Augusta in ’85 and I didn’t get a chance to dance with Gale because I got tied up with all the other dance I was doing – jazz, ballet and modern – and a lot of performing.  I was down at First Friday and I saw Envey dance one night.  They were doing a Shakira piece and I thought THAT looks like fun!  So I started taking Kendra’s class, and that was probably 10-12 years ago.  It’s hard to believe it’s been that long.  Since then, I’ve tried to dance with everyone I could find that I could dance from, including workshops and local dancers. 

How long have you been dancing/bellydancing?  Well, jazz, modern, ballet, tap – all those since I was out of high school, over 20 years.  Bellydance, probably seriously, about 12 years.  O, clogging!   I didn’t tell you about clogging.  Clogging is what I did during high school.  We were the South Carolina State Cloggers.  There was a place in upstate, where I grew up, it was a state park, and every Friday night they had square dancing and clogging.  They would play live Bluegrass bands and all these amazing people would just get up and be organized, kind of like ATS is.  Everyone knew what to do, they would call it out.  But they had cloggers also, and my niece, who was a year younger than I am, started dating one of the lead cloggers.  It didn’t take any time until he wanted to form a clogging team.  We did competitions and festivals all up and down the east coast.  It was all my nieces and family members and lots of friends.  We were First Runner Up for World Champions one year.  I clogged for a long time, probably 5-6 years, and my whole wedding party was actually the clogging team.  The photographer wanted me to clog down the aisle.  He said he would give us the photos for free if I did.  But I didn’t.  I’m like, I’m not clogging down the aisle!  I would Veil Dance down the aisle today, though! 

How did you feel during your first performance or when you were first able to make sense of the dance?  Oh, it was absolutely amazing, because it was kind of like getting your medal of honor and I finally had a sparkly, jingly bra!  (LOL!)  And I was so excited about it.  I felt like life had finally come into what it was supposed to be, you know, a dream had come true!  So I loved it.  By then, I wasn’t shy at all.  That’s the other thing.  I was extremely shy as a child, I don’t know that I could have danced as a kid, I was so shy. 

Where do you get your costumes?  I know you make them, but do you buy any?  Yes, but some of the purchased costumes, they don’t fit as well, especially the bras.  They’re also a little cheesy, quite frankly, especially the cabaret ones.  The tribal ones I love without fail, but the cabaret ones, some of them are quite cheesy-looking.  So I prefer making my costumes.  That’s one of my other passions anyway.  I love doing it.  There’s something so zen about creating something, it’s another creative outlet.  (By the way, you call them the “Bracelets”, we all call them the “Joyce” skirts.)  (laughs) Yea, they’re the easiest skirt to make and flatter just about everyone.  (And we are so thankful for you sharing them with us.) 

Let’s talk “Music”.  What music inspires you?  Any music that has emotion.  It doesn’t have to be a certain genre, but any music that elicits some sort of feeling.  I like music that speaks to my soul.  My iPod has mostly Middle Eastern music, but I’ve got country, hard rock, I love hard rock. I used to be a metal-head, I forgot to tell you that.  I used to hang out backstage with Jackal, Aerosmith, White Snake, Bad Company.  I was sort of a groupie back in the day, you know, for Cinderella.  I love heavy metal music also, especially the ballads.  I love classical music, anything that speaks of emotion.  Not any particular genre.

So then, what IS on your iPod?  A lot of Middle Eastern, I also love Dubstep.  And Pandora, of course, Bellydance Radio. Techno too.

For choreographies that you have created, where do you find your inspiration?  It’s usually the song.  I call it my dashboard muse.  One of my friends from Tip Toes and Taps, she coined that term, and it’s so true.  To choreograph, I like to just put on some music in the car and just drive, not try to think of any movement at all just drive and let it happen.  Just do that over and over and eventually it just comes to you.  And for inspiration, I love YouTube, of course.  One of my favorite things is in the morning to have my coffee, go to YouTube, and search for bellydance and look for things that have been uploaded today.  Because you see some really bad stuff, but you also see some really awesome stuff.  One of my favorite tools to use with this is, and I’ll give you two YouTube videos to do it with, is to pull up two tabs.  Pull up the dance you really like and then pull up the song you want to dance to in another tab.  A perfect example would be, you know Sedona Soulfire from the Northwest?  I love them.  And they have a fabulous drum solo piece they did at one of the competitions, it might have been Bellydancer of the Universe, or something.  Pull that up and then pull up another YouTube of Lady Marmalade from Moulin Rouge.  Mute the sound on Soulfire’s video but watch it with Moulin Rouge.  It is PERFECT!  It’s absolutely perfect.  Even though the songs are so different.  And that’s one of the things that fascinates me, is the connection between music and math, going back to being the Geek again, and Middle Eastern rhythms, especially, are woven throughout all music.   So that’s why Middle Eastern Dance works so well with something like Moulin Rouge.  I would never take a YouTube video that I like and rip it off, for choreography, but I would take inspiration from it.  Like, say, I love how they did that turn, or I love the formations they used for this or that, and then adapt it with my dashboard muse in my car.  The other thing about choreography is that the best dances ever done, whether I’ve been in ballet, tap or jazz or whatever, is when it’s a group effort, and it’s not just one person’s ideas.  Beverlee Nichols, my friend at Tip Toes and Taps, is the one who first turned me on to this.  She would call assignments, like, you choreograph the first minute, you choreograph the second minute, and because of that, you end up with this rich textured dance that is not one dimensional.  Because it’s hard to not get stuck in a style.  So when you bring different dancers in and let them say, O, let’s try this here or let’s try that there, it works out really amazingly well.  You have to have people that don’t have egos to do that, though, and you also have to have someone with kind of an overriding guidance of the dance so you maintain the whole concept.  I also like to choreograph to the audience keeping in mind what they will see and, honestly, most audiences see the beginning and the ending of a dance so those two need to be really strong.  You want to leave them thinking, Wow, what are they going to do next, that sort of thing.  You also don’t want to tire them out with too much movement.  It’s a fine line, you know, doing what the music says and portraying it for the audience.  Another trick I like to use to create choreographies is I have a set of cards, it’s basically cardstock that I can create in a word document program and I put in certain combos that I like, and I shuffle then and then pull them out and put them together.  It’s what I like to say when I let the dancing spirits, and the forces of nature, guide me . 

So, what do you absolutely HATE about the dance world?  Well, of course, everyone is going to say the drama, blah, blah, blah.  But I hate that not only in dance, but it’s the one thing I will not tolerate in my home.  I always tell my family, “Save it for the stage, I don’t want it in my house.”  Otherwise, I think, Ego probably would be the thing I hate most, because, I think it smothers the potential that the community has by not having people that are capable of working together because of egos.  And I think we’re blessed in our community, we really do have a very strong dance community in the CSRA, in fact in Georgia and South Carolina. 

What do you absolutely LOVE about the dance world?  The Sisterhood that develops among women.  There's something about women, and men too, that past the age of 15 continue dancing.  There's something in them that there cut from a different fabric or cloth.  It’s a Sisterhood, even though we’re not all the same, we have different interests, there’s a common thread.  There’s, “I’m just strong too.”  I love other dancers.  But for bellydance in particular, I love what it has done for some people who were shy and kind of sheltered and withdrawn and I love to see women like that just blossom and grow!  Nothing else I’ve seen does that.  It uplifts; always, without fail.  I’d still love to do some classes with the CSRA bellydancers at the shelter for the women and the children that are in the homeless shelter.  I just think that would be so much fun to, you know, go down and give them some veils and coin skirts and give them a class.  I’d just love to do that, kind of like a big birthday party for them.  Maybe this summer we could pull that off. 

Are you a soloist or do you dance with others or a troupe?  And which troupes have you danced with previously?  I dance with anyone I can find because I love to dance.  For Middle Eastern Dance, of course, solo stuff, Envey, Dancing Through the Skirt, and Eastern Star.  And I’ve done some stuff with Sho (ShoShannah Estell), in fact, I danced with Sho before EITHER of us were bellydancers.  We did a really cool jazz piece (pictured right).  She did some hiphop and we were in short little black dresses and long black gloves.  We did it for a fundraiser we do every year.  Janet & Lisa from Envey were also in that one. 

Do you teach?  Yes, I have taught and I enjoy teaching.  In fact, I just bought 10 more veils that are silk, but a quality of silk that are not going to tear easily.  My favorite, the guy I get my veils and double veils from, Zondra turned me on to him, AJ in India, I love him!  But I got them because I was going to do a little fitness thing at MCG they were doing at lunch.  Veil work is probably my favorite thing in the world.  The thing about teaching, though, is I found it took a lot of my time, and with working full time, I would rather spend time choreographing and making costumes and going to classes myself than teaching right now.  You have to really put a lot into teaching, I think.  I don’t think you just show up and say, let’s do this, let’s do that.  You know, I would pick out music, I would even write it down.  I can’t get that far away from the Geek. 

Other than bellydancing, what types of dance do you like?  I have to say Ballet is my least favorite form of dance to perform, but it’s probably the most important dance I’ve done because it provides the technique and the sense of balance and the foundation.  It’s just extremely important.  It’s one of my goals when school’s out to take an adult ballet class, maybe if Sho has one, I’ll take some of hers too.  Right now I’m not taking any at Tip Toes and Taps, there’s just not enough time.  I love Ballet.  Ballet’s the only thing I’ve ever broken out in a sweat trying to stand still properly.  The body alignment, and every muscle is engaged just trying to stand still.  And then Jazz, I love Jazz, Clogging, and Modern dance.  That’s probably my favorite form of dance other than Middle Eastern dance because it allows such freedom of movement.  It’s free form.  And I love anything where I get to fling myself down on the floor.  I love the floor.  I love floorwork.  (Have you ever thought of doing an entire choreography of just floorwork?) It’s funny you should say that, I’ve been toying with the idea of that.  Get out of my head, woman!  (laughs)

What types of movement are you drawn to and why?  It depends on the day and the song.  Overall, I prefer big stage performances, lots of entrances and exits, and I guess your solos are where your soul really comes out and what your most natural doing.  I can’t keep Ballet out of it.  I like a lot of elongated, flowy movements.  That’s why I’m not as good at drum solos.  That’s one of my goals, too, it’s like all that little ticky-tocky stuff, it’s beautiful and I love it, it’s just the intricateness of it that’s tough for me.  I LOVE spins.  I love spins, I love turns, and I love falling on the floor. 

What “style” of bellydance do you most associate yourself with – Cabaret, Tribal, Folkloric, Fusion, Orientale, etc?  Of course you can say “Fusion” because it incorporates everything, but, if I had to rank them, I’d have to call it Fusion first, because it allows me to get away with whatever I’m doing at the moment, then Cabaret, then Tribal, I love Tribal, and it actually grows on me every day.  I really wish we had an ATS instructor here in Augusta.  I’d really like to do more.  (Alison Stratton’s working on it!)  I would so love that!  I would love to dance some more with her (Alison), too.  I didn’t know she was such a Geek too till her interview.  I found that fascinating, I loved that. 

Given the opportunity, if time, money, and distance were not an issue, who would be your “dream” instructor?  With whom would you LOVE to study bellydance?  The first name that comes to mind is Isadora Bushkowsky from Colorado, Izzy is her name.  She’s the one that did that video I just love, "The Language of Life".  I love her style because she manages to incorporate all those elements that appeal to me.  The intricateness of some of the Middle Eastern movements.  She’s very technically accurate.  But she also fuses a lot of modern.  She’s had a lot of modern and ballet and jazz training too.  And I love her costumes and just everything about her.  I also love Saida, I think she’s from Brazil, her and her husband, Emil, they dance together.  I love her style too, she’s just gorgeous. 

We are always faced with challenges in life.  If you were suddenly unable to dance, would you continue in the dance world, somehow, or would you just walk away?  The only thing that will stop me is to be six feet under.  Of course!  I want to do the drumming stuff, it’s just hard to fit it in right now.  Drumming’s an option, making costumes, I love making costumes so much.  And I’m dying to make some costumes for some really young skinny people.  I’m just dying to do some over-the-top cabaret costumes and some of the tribal ones too.  So, I would make costumes, that would be so much fun.  It’s not a hobby, it’s an addiction.  I’m addicted to everything about it.  The people, the pillows!  (Your portable harem.)  Exactly!  We were at Myrtle Beach and we went to one of the Waccamaw’s and I ran right to the stack of pillows.  And Annalee’s like, “Mama, you’re getting perilously close to being a hoarder!” 

What is something fascinating about you that no one, or very few, knows?  Hmmm.  Some of my friends know this, but not many of my dance friends know this, that my other passion is True Crime.  My uncle, who is my daddy’s brother, he would come over, back then we didn’t have the internet, and he would bring over his True Detective Magazine.  And it always had these half naked women on the cover of them with some crime story in there.  He was fascinated with True Crime and he would come talk to me about it.  I always thought that was really cool and I would like to understand the psychology of it.  My husband hates that kind of stuff, he hates murder mysteries, he hates horror movies.  I can’t talk to him about True Crime – he doesn’t want to hear anything about it.  I was watching something one night and he comes down and he says, “You know, the only difference between you and your uncle is you have the internet and television.”  He’s so right!  But, I’m a member of this group, Web Sleuths.  It’s a free internet forum that’s based on True Crime, and besides my dance friends, they’re an amazing group of women and men.  A lot of them are older, retired detectives, a lot are crime victims that are on there, so we’re sort of like victim’s advocates.  My favorite forums are the serial killer forums. I’m fascinated with those.  The one in Long Island hasn’t been solved.  We’ve been blogging about that and trying to look for clues.  But also unidentified bodies.  I love trying to identify dead bodies.  It’s a huge problem and there’s no national database that can match up missing people with unidentified bodies.  One of my goals in retirement, one of my many long list of things to do at retirement, is to do that sort of thing and work on coordinating those kind of databases.  But, like I said, I live in multiple worlds.  There’s the rodeo world, I used to rodeo – barrel racing.  I love cowboys!  I love the way horses smell.  I’ve never not had a horse.  There’s something about the bellydance world that goes hand in hand with those big beautiful animals running across the plains.  We would travel through the Southeast.  It was nothing to travel 300 miles or so for a rodeo, come back home, brush your teeth and go to work in the morning with no sleep, you know.  There’s that side and, of course, the clogging side.  And, honestly, of all the dance forms I’ve ever done – ballet, tap, jazz, modern, Middle Eastern – clogging gets the best response.  It is amazing how much an audience loves it.  I think they’re loud and they’re happy and they’re fun and it’s always upbeat.  (whispers) The costumes are just so tacky.  (laughs)  Those gingham dresses, that never was my style, but that’s what you wore.   Then the crime stuff, especially the cold cases.  I’m a science geek.  I’m a big supporter of Vietnam Vets.  Politically, I’m a Libertarian, but I suppose if you put all the things I support together it’d be more Republican, because I don’t believe you should be just given things.  And Second Amendment rights, I love to shoot.  I qualified for the Combat Pistol shooting thing at Pinetucky.  And I’ve done home defense drills at the house in the middle of the night.  I grew up with guns and shooting and it’s a sport, you know, how good you can be.  And I used to work the gun shows too.  Multiple worlds!  My philosophy is you can rest in the nursing home!

What is your biggest fear either in life or in dance? Or Both?  Well, I really don’t fear much, my mom used to tell me ghost stories to get me to go to sleep at night.  I’m not really a scary sort of person.  But the biggest fear is seeing my family suffer in some way.  Especially if it was something I could not somehow fix.  (Something that holds you back then?)  Sometimes I don’t take leaps.  I tend to settle for secure pathways instead of unsecure pathways.  I’m not a risk-taker.  And you have to take risks to get certain things done.

What are your dreams for the future – where do you see yourself in the dance in 3, 5, 10, 20 years?  Well, I’m going to go as long as I can.  You know, you have to costume it a bit different at some point, but that’s just another challenge.  I think, you know, if you rest, you rust.  I have a picture of a 70 year old ballerina from Russia doing Swan Lake on my bulletin board behind me at work.  Like I said, physically, you have to change what you do.  You can't do Turkish Drops when you’re 80, but who knows, if you’ve been doing them every single day, you probably could. I’d stay involved on some level. 

If you were to do something completely shocking or out of character with absolutely no consequences, what would it be?  That’s kind of hard, because anything I would do probably wouldn’t shock most people.  I could say I’d quit my job and become a detective, but that wouldn’t shock anybody.  I’d love to go and arrest pediphiles.  Those are the ones I like to stalk on the internet.  Probably it would be to completely leave my job and run away and join the circus or something.  The reason I say that is that my very best friend from kindergarten all the way through high school, when we all graduated high school, we all went to college or work but she had the nerve to do that, run away and join the circus.  So, it would be kind of fun to run away and join the circus or something, because it’s always kind of appealed to me.  That’s one of the things I like about the bellydance community, it’s a lot of the same kind of people.  I like those artistic, talented people. 

If you were stranded on a desert island, whom would you like to be with and what one thing?    Of course, my family, the problem is my two daughters wouldn’t want to be stuck on a desert island with their mom and dad.  They wouldn’t be happy unless their friends were there.  The one item, at first I thought Snickers bars, because they are the perfect survival food, but then I thought, no, what I would want is one of those cool little survival tools that has like a saw and a compass and a fire starter and fishing line and that way I could make a boat and get off the island with my family. 

What is in your dancers’ bag?  What has to be in there?  Veils!  It’s so full of veils, it’s always busting at the seams, because we’re always going to use them in class and if someone doesn’t have them, then I go, oh, here’s a veil.  Also, knee pads because of the modern dance.  I almost panic if I walk out of the house without my knee pads, because if you’re going to end up doing floorwork, you don’t dance at my age and do floorwork if you don’t rehearse with knee pads.  (laughs)
 

 So, the time comes to end our interview and I think the table next to us may be a little relieved – they were having some sort of meeting.  LOL.  Always happens.  Oh, well.  They were nice, as was the conversation.  As I gather my belongings and prepare to leave, I feel very much as if I’ve only scratched the surface with this wonderful, multifaceted woman.  Even spending an hour with her, Joyce is a little less of a mystery, but still has much more to explore. Haha.  A follow up interview?  Maybe.  In the meantime, I hug this lovely lady and we head our separate ways.  Once again, the food was good but the conversation was much more satisfying.  Until next time….

So, who will The Spotlight shine on next?  Are YOU game?