If you are reading this, it’s because it was written earlier today and set to future post as I will be performing at the Greek Islands Restaurant in Indianapolis when this autoposts. The group I’ll be playing with is one I co-founded with vocalist and mandolinist, Robert Bruce Scott, in May of 2004, il Troubadore. Rather than give you my bad prose description of us or repost our bio from the website url I just linked, the image below, from the Indianapolis Star written by David Lindquist could just as easily condense what we’re about.
We will be hosting our monthly World Music and Dance night at the Greek Islands Restaurant in Indianapolis, a business run by the Stergiopoulos family since 1987. We call the monthly event the Greek Islands Hafla. The Arabic word, hafla, means “party” but in connection with bellydance communities it has taken on a life of its own. This is a description from Shira.net website:
Hafla. (Pronounced “HAHF lah”.) This basically refers to a party. A private hafla thrown by a belly dancer usually involves Middle Eastern music (sometimes live musicians jamming, sometimes just taped music), dancers taking turns performing for each other, and some open-floor dancing for everyone to get up and enjoy the music. A more public hafla may be effectively a full belly dance festival, with vendors selling their wares and a more formalized stage show.
The local bellydancers in the Central Indiana area know the Greek Islands Hafla as a bellydance night though we do occasionally have some folk dancers that pop in from time to time.
I’ll probably be there until about midnight or so so won’t get a chance to post today hence the autopost. And for you perusal, here’s a video of us performing at a Zafira Dance Company studio hafla in Pittsburgh for a local bellydance, Unsuk. It’s one of the favorite tunes of ours that we do titled, Erev Shel Shoshanim (a “Bouquet of Roses”), music by Yosef Hadar and lyrics by Moshe Dor.
Mae Mai 