OMGTOOCOOLFORSCHOOLRAWKED Incredibly fun. Much more fun than anticipated. The show went well. Carlee and I did our short bellydance performance on the stage at The Shadow Lounge around midnight. We chose three songs for the performance: Smack my bitch up - Prodigy (we wanted something upbeat, familiar, and predictable), Cybele (Just the Dark Bits Edit) - Pentaphobe (this was more bellydance-oriented), and then ended with Oh Yeah - Daft punk. This actually ended up being a good lead-in to DJ EZ Lou, who was on after us. Our dance was almost entirely improvisation. We didn't have any time to come up with choreography and practice it, so when we did get together and practice, we worked on a small repertoire of moves, and signals and transitions, and we did most of the dance as a lead-and-follow, with me being the leader most of the time. For the first song, we stuck with your typical two-man ATS formations, but we used a lot of moves and signals that we came up with ourselves, not in the common FCBD repertoire. The second song was a backdrop for lots of slow movements. We did a couple more interesting transitions there. The last song, we started out with a call-and-answer, and then mirrored some slow sexy movements, standing close together. I'm pleased with how it went. We were both really nervous. The audience was pretty cool about it, considering that most of them did not come there to see bellydancing...lots of folks took photos...maybe we'll see some posted on The Shadow Lounge photo gallery. We got a lot of compliments afterwards. Otherwise, the party was the hip, happenin' place to be last night. I hadn't been there since they expanded the place and re-decorated. They have three rooms now, and they serve alcohol. There were different DJs playing in each room, and lots of furniture and areas to chill out and lounge, if you didn't want to take the loud music and dance. The Shadow Lounge has come a long way from the low-budget coffeehouse they once were. It now resembles some of the cool clubs I've seen in other cities, but it retains the "coffeehouse" feel. The party organizer, Angelus, sure did throw a great party. There were several different DJs playing everything from 80s to current hip hop. After DJ EZ Lou took over in the front room, the dance floor filled up and stayed filled the rest of the night, and the energy level of the dancing was through the roof. I can't remember the last time I stayed on the dance floor so long.