Author: Davina

 

We’re one month out from our annual belly dance event, The Fabulous Fall Festival, hosted by the event production team BABDAMA, aka Bay Area Belly Dance and Music Association. 

2025 – Fabulous Fall Festival – For Leyla

This year, our event is honoring our fallen friend and organization co-founder, Leyla Lanty.  While she won’t be with us in person, she will carry on in our memories.  We’re dedicating this event to her and celebrating her life and work.

For more information about our event, visit the official website at babdama.org

Perhaps I’ll see you there?
Dawn Devine ~ Davina
Oct. 2025

October is here, and thoughts turn to my long-running ritual of participating in the Inktober challenge. However, this year, I’m mixing it up and changing directions.

Instead of drawing every day, I’m going to lay down my ink in the form of text. My mission is to write a little every day.  Even if it’s just an outline or paragraph, I’m going to make time to progress my current book project.

 

Writing and Rewriting, with a side of coffee

For those of you who are new, Hi, I’m Dawn, and I write books about belly dance history and costuming.  You can find my book on Amazon.com and over on my own personal Etsy store.

In 2023, I celebrated the milestone of the 30th anniversary of the first edition of “Costuming From the Hip.”  That humble collection of class handouts put together by an audacious young college student launched a career filled with beautiful costumes, interesting articles, and epic opportunities to meet dancers around the world.

Rewrite or Re-Envision?

There has been a lot of progress made in this head-to-toe rewrite and expansion of “Costuming from the Hip.”  But, I must admit, I’m look forward to really solidifying the shape of the book throughout October’s “Inktober” challenge.

I’ve grabbed an old notebook, and it’s now time to make tiny but potent daily progress on the book.  Throughout the month, I’ll make regular updates over on my old Facebook page.  And of course, I’ll be back here for an end-of-the-project status report.

50,000 Tiny Choices

Writing is simply making 50,000 tiny choices. Each word is a decision that shapes each paragraph and phrase. But in a DIY book, you’ve gotta consider all the images too. My writing will undoubtedly be filled with sketches, diagrams, and illustrations.  I’m including a bunch from past publications like some of the ones above.  But there will be a lot of new line art and photographs too.

But my first “Tiny Choice”
is to get started on Inktober 2025.  
Let’s finish this rewrite!

~ Dawn Devine ~ Davina
Oct 1, 2025

 

 

 

 

This week, the costume I dubbed “Blue Mermaid” is on the move.  I boxed the costume up and sent her winging away to her new home on the East Coast.

Remodel, Renovate, and Recycle

This costume arrived at Studio Davina last November.  I did some quick renovations to the bra and belt to get them onto the stage and in motion.

The bra is magical. The skirt is a dream. Unfortunately, the belt was lovely, but a bit of a mismatch. While impeccably made, the stones were sparse.  It was a match between a professional Egyptian imported bra and a more amateur level belt. 

Shalimar of North Carolina and I had a deep consultation. With enough time, I could bring this belt to a new layer of doneness to make a better stylistic match. The design brief included:

• Remodel: Make the costume more versatile by removing the skirt from the belt. As a working professional dancer, having a mix-and-match skirt wardrobe is essential for Shalimar.
• Renovate: Bring the belt up to the same level of finish and shine as the bra. Create a design connection between the bra and the belt for a more harmonious marriage of pieces
• Reuse: Use as many leftover bits and pieces of embellishments in my inventory.  The fabric was left over from a previous blue costume I made for Shalimar. The AB rhinestones were left over from a pink costume.

Good for the budget – Good for the planet

I’ve been sharing this project over in my Facebook Group throughout the summer.  The most two asked questions are “What glue do you use?” and “Where did you get the rhinestones.”

First, if I were to use glue, I would reach for a bottle of Beacon 3-In-One Craft Glue. But all the pearls, stones, and sequins on this belt were sew-on.  Although I sewed slowly over the summer, it was only about 12 hours of sewing. To save time, I choose larger embellishments that covered more territory with fewer stitches.

The rest of the supplies were pulled from my inventory and were primarily leftovers from past projects.  In my community, few places sell bulk quantities of surface embellishments. Amazon helps me access materials I simply cannot source locally.

• Flat Back AB Rhinestones
• Lake Blue Rhinestones in setting
• Rivoli Glass AB Sewon Rhinestones
• Assorted AB plastic Stones
• Rhinestone Chain – Three Row

With luck and good fortune, Shalimar will capture photos and video of this costume in motion.

And now the studio for the post-project cleanup.

Happy Dance and Costuming,
Dawn Devine ~ Davina
Sept. 2025

PS: As an Amazon affiliate for my books and publications, I appreciate your using my affiliate codes should you choose to shop for these materials and supplies. Using these affiliate codes adds no cost to you.

I had the privilege and delight to dance with Vakasha. For many years, she was a member of my belly dance group Swirl.  We performed from 2014 through 2020, and have enjoyed an enduring friendship.

Over the past few years, she’s battled breast cancer. Though she was a warrior until the end. I will miss her and the good times that we had laughing, dancing, going to events, having deep conversations and collaborations on costumes and books.

Vakasha was a sassy flirty dancer, so my iconoclastic fusion style meshed well with her elegant lines and absolute diva-tude. Together with Zemira, redvelvet, and Binaz, we performed at various belly dance shows, community festivals, and dance events around the city.

It was such a pleasure to dance with her, make costumes, and above share the fun and laughter of friendship and collaboration.

Take a moment to make a plan with a friend, a family member, a colleague, former dance troupe member, just to meet up hug, and laugh. Make time to make memories that will endure.

Thanks for being here, 
Dawn Devine ~ Davina 
Sept, 2025

P.S. If you click through the video links, please take a moment to like and subscribe to my YouTube channel.

I’ve recently faced some difficulty using AI-enhanced search tools. To help me understand what’s happening, I talked to a friend here in Silicon Valley.

What we call AI today is known as “Machine Learning” within the computer tech industry. Check out this article for more info. Machine learning increases computing efficiency. From Google Search for general information to shopping sites like Amazon.com, we have been using software enhanced by machine learning for a long time.

Blow: Three dance stars of 1905-1914 – From Left: Maud Allan, La Belle Otero, Mata Hari

Has AI destroyed Google Search?

The other day, I went to the web to try and find a birthdate for an early 20th-century dancer, Sahary Djeli. I realized that my research folder didn’t have that info, so I thought as simple Google search would net me the date quickly and efficiently.

However, to my shock and amazement, MY website came up as the first place to look for information about Sahary. Waves of emotion washed over me as I considered how this could have happened.

First, I was completely gobsmacked. I let out a mighty WTF as I stared at the screen. After my third re-read, I took a screen grab to share here.

My next wave of emotion was heavy disappointment. Every day, I spend a small bit of time actively performing archival research. Slowly digging through digitized archives, hunting for details for my “big three” projects.

• The Visual History of Belly Dance
• Belly Dance at World’s Fairs and International Exhibitions
• Salomania: 1905-1914

These three projects overlap like this:

Over the past 150 years, from the time belly dance reached the US shores until today, it has been rare for dancers to achieve notoriety or even stardom. As I dig through the archives, I’m finding that most performers didn’t leave footsteps in the sands of time.

What does this mean for us?  Short blog posts are getting flagged as key reference sources. While I’m confident in my abilities as a researcher, many other sites AI serves are filled with errors. And AI search tools can’t always tell what’s myth and what’s truth.

Image Misattributions

The most common error on websites is misattribution. Because Sahary wears a typical dance costume for the date, she is frequently labelled with the wrong name. But other information can be questionable as well. As a reader, keep in mind that secondary sources should always be taken with a grain of salt.

I recently discovered a dance archives located in Germany, Deutsches Tanzarchiv Köln with a page devoted to Sahary Djeli. The image above is a collage of pages from a rare scrapbook from 1908.

Their collection of information would be a delight to explore in person, but alas, my budget doesn’t stretch to European research junkets.

But here’s my real question, “Why didn’t AI choose to show me this more accurate and prestigious source?”

So in my updated fact sheet about Sahary, includes facts such as, we don’t know when she was born, but she is orginally from France, not Hungry or India as was reported in the press in 1908. At the outbreak of war in 1914, Sahary left for America.

Now that I know that she came to the US to perform, I can now hunt for her here. Something I never thought to do when I was researching her purely as an example of a “Salome Dancer.”

Ultimately, my quest for a date made me question how I search for information on line. With these new AI tools, it’s actually getting more difficult to find the collections, libraries, and archives where primary source materials are stored.

AI Slop vs. Primary Source Material

The other AI issue I’ve recently faced is the presentation of AI-created or enhanced images as historical pieces. One of my Facebook Group participants shared the two pictures above right and stated that they found these two ancient Egyptian bead dress pictures on the web.

My first instinct was to laugh – but then I realized, there are probably people who really believe that these AI-generated dresses are actually real.

In the safe conversation space of the FB Group, I was able to pull out the two images on the right from major museums in the Boston Fine Arts Museum and in London’s Petrie Museum.

AI might be a great tool to use in the future, but until it reaches a point where it points to more reliably accurate sources, just take a moment, like I did, to question the results.

It’s flattering that AI thinks of me with such high regard. But I know there are more high-quality information sources than my little blog.

Best of luck in your own research adventures,
Dawn Devine ~ Davina
Aug. 2025