Shake it!

Houston belly dancers Sahira and Silvia launch a DVD with Spanish Gypsy Passion

Get ready for expanding your boundaries and creating new ways of expression with Houston belly dancers Alesha Herrera and Silvia Salamanca. The duo, who go by the names Sahira and Silvia, recently launched their first DVD project together, Spanish Gypsy Passion: A Skirt Choreography for Solo or Duet, with a launch party at Café Byblos.

Known as the "gypsy sisters," Silvia and Sahira have both released several other dance DVDs of their own.

“When we began working together as a duo, about three years ago, we did not have a joint DVD project in mind. But students requested DVDs from us all the time and they are a great learning tool for dancers,” explains Sahira, who performs at a number of restaurants every week and teaches classes. “Silvia has been teaching Spanish-style partner dances for several years now, and it just made sense to release a partner DVD together."

An engineer by qualification and a belly dancer by profession, Sahira takes the stage, putting her hands together in a "namaskar," a movement that has been incorporated in belly dancing by her Indian friend. Belly dancing, one of the oldest forms of dance, with roots in the Middle East, is now being revived by women in the West.

An engineer by qualification and a belly dancer by profession, Sahira takes the stage, putting her hands together in a "namaskar," a movement that has been incorporated in belly dancing by her Indian friend. Belly dancing, one of the oldest forms of dance, with roots in the Middle East, is now being revived by women in the West. She has been studying dance since 2000, focusing mostly on Egyptian as well as American tribal styles (both belly dance).

Silvia graduated from the Conservatory of Mallorca (Spain) with a major in ballet and performed professionally as a featured modern dance soloist in major European festivals and events with the Contemporary Dance Company of the University of Barcelona. She discovered tribal fusion in the USA and developed a unique style through research into her very own Spanish Gypsy and Arabic roots. Her love for belly dance blended with her passion for flamenco fired her up to create a DVD that could reach out to this multicultural city.

“What is exciting about the DVD is that there are really few people in the world that teach anything related with this dance form and this is the first of its kind in fully teaching a Zambra Mora partner (that is woman with woman) dance," Silvia says.

Silvia and Sahira started working together as a duo in a modern fusion context and have been taking their shared dance backgrounds of Middle Eastern and modern, with Spanish dance history, and fusing them together into a new spin on ancient folkloric dances.

“She and I both travel internationally to teach and perform, and we thought this choreography would be well received in the workshop circuit,” Sahira says.

The crowd of 200-plus gathered at the café received a taste of something more than just a release party. The event was a spectacular series of dance performances by student and professionals from all around Houston. The evening came to an end with an outstanding performance by the most talked about duo.

The DVD costs $19.95 and can be purchased online.

Ruchi Mukherjee is a lifestyle feature journalist for TV Asia and host of online magazine Lights Camera Action that covers Houston Indo-American society news.

Movie Review

Denzel Washington brings new spectacle to the Colosseum in Gladiator II

Paul Mescal in Gladiator II

Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Paul Mescal in Gladiator II.

There are some films for which making a sequel is natural, and others where a follow-up is wholly unnecessary. Gladiator, which made both tons of money and was named Best Picture at the Oscars, told an impactful stand-alone story that ended with the protagonist dead and no real loose ends. And yet because there’s always more money to be made, here we are 24 years later with Gladiator II.

The lead character this time around is Lucius (Paul Mescal), a general in a North African army who becomes a prisoner of war when the Roman army led by Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal) bests him and his troops in battle. Taken back to Rome, he is put in the pool of captured men forced to fight at the Colosseum for the amusement of twin emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracella (Fred Hechinger).

Lucius is controlled by Macrinus (Denzel Washington), an ambitious schemer who bets liberally on his prized fighter and always has an eye to move up in the world. Meanwhile, Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), the sister of Emperor Commodus from the first film, is now married to Marcus Acacius and has a unique connection with Lucius that is fairly obvious from the get-go.

Directed once again by Ridley Scott and written by David Scarpa, the film commits a number of sins throughout its 150-minute running time, the most blatant of which is that, aside from a few embellishments, it essentially tells the same story as the first film. Lucius, like Maximus, is a deposed military leader who’s out for revenge on the person who killed his family. Instead of one obnoxious emperor, there are now two. And the only way for Lucius to earn his freedom is to fight his way out.

Stories told in the same world can echo each other and, if done well, overcome those similarities. But Gladiator II is shockingly boring for a purported sword-and-sandals epic. Scott and his team try to introduce new elements to the fights, like a gladiator riding a rhinoceros or a ship battle inside the Colosseum (with sharks!), but most of the sequences are inert with no propulsion to them.

The action fails because none of the relationships in the film amount to much. There are stand-out characters like Macrinus and the twin emperors, but instead of creating antipathy or strong feelings of triumph or defeat, the story just kind of happens without any sense of excitement or importance. Much of that issue lies at the feet of Lucius, who simply doesn’t inspire in the same way that Russell Crowe’s Maximus did.

Mescal is a fine actor who’s done good work in more intimate roles, but he’s not up to the task of being an action star, at least not in this film. Any bombast he shows with the character feels forced, and the story doesn’t give him enough opportunities to counteract that lack. Washington, however, fills up the screen with his charisma, and it’s during his scenes that the film comes closest to being rousing. Quinn and Hechinger are a lot of fun as the twin emperors, but in the end they feel like retreads of Joaquin Phoenix from the original.

Any sequel should have a purpose that sets it apart from what came before, but Scott, Scarpa, and the rest of their team fail in that respect in Gladiator II. It’s a mostly lifeless film that delivers scenes that would be exciting if they had any kind of good story to back them up.

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Gladiator II opens in theaters on November 22.

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