Denzel

This past Friday through Sunday I had the pleasure of attending Sahra Saeeda’s wonderful Journey through Egypt workshop sponsored by the incomparable Amina Goodyear.   For an entire weekend, our class explored some well known and many little known folk dances of Egypt.  As a fun finale, we all ventured over to Penapachamama in San Francisco where I had the privilege of dancing with the Georges Lamman Ensemble — who is of course fabulous.  I highly recommend the restaurant to anyone craving beautiful prepared organic food and enchiladas.  Lots of lovely dancers and crazy Egyptian music, what could be better?

Wow. The new glasses dance was a resounding success — the crowd loved it. We did 5 shows over 2 days and 65,000 people came through the gate. Just put the tag “Maker Faire” into Flickr, and you’ll find hundreds of photos. There have even been a few videos with Denzel that have popped up! I’ll be posting photos soon. This is a fun taste of Maker Faire 2008, and Denzel appears at 08:07.

May 3rd and 4th is Maker Faire 2008 at the San Mateo Fairgrounds. This is an enormously fun and eclectic event in it’s third year, and I believe it will be bigger than ever. Along with robots, DIY craft, swaparama-rama, the Lifesized Mousetrap, and twin tesla coils; there will demonstrations of everything from welding and glassblowing to recycling your Apple IIc. Where else can you see a 3-D modeler that prints out in caramelized sugar?

The Sarriugarte household will be there with a brand new installation: the Boiler Bar and the Boiler Bar Theater. There will be several shows a day with many different acts. Tansy the Serpent Queen, Circassian dancing beauties (including myself), Holly Volatile tames fire… too many to enumerate. So come on over to our Boiler Bar setup.

Circassian dancing beauties Denzel, Gibson Pearl, Kristen, and Janice
Mitara balances death
Tansy the Serpent Queen
Dancing on Glass
Miss Melanie’s oddity emporium
Funambulist Mitara
Holly Volatile lights up the stage with fire
Uber Da entrances the musical ear
One Man Band-jo

Info for Maker Faire is here.
Info for the Boiler Bar is here.

Besides dance, one of my very early loves was costume design. For a number of years I was a member of the Greater Bay Area Costumer’s Guild and made a number of costumes ranging from the period correct to the fantastic. Middle Eastern dance opened a whole world of costuming opportunities to me. I have made belly dance costumes for the nightclub as well those that are tribal or folkloric. There are several that can be worn to the Rennaisance Faire. Recently, my costumes are inspired by the fantasy of the Middle East through a 1920’s lens. They appear to be very old Hollywood.

The newest costumes for the Boiler Bar Theater were designed by me and fabricated by myself and Katherine Summer. I also designed and fabricated the hats.

Scottie’s costume that I made for the Boiler Bar Theater fire act was created from an 80’s prom dress! Take a look here.

Welcome to information about dancer Denzel!  We’ll have more entries detailing Denzel’s adventures soon…