It’s been a while since we’ve posted. Our lives have been incred­ible busy since we moved to Grande Prairie in September 2010. I can’t believe it’s been over 1 year. Our two busi­nesses we started are going great Beauchamp Creative and Beauchamp Photography, we volun­teer for the Reel Shorts Film Festival, I belly dance and volun­teer to dance at events, Chris does indoor rock climb­ing, we dable at some skiing and cross country skiing in the winter and I’m think­ing Yoga and choir for winter which lies ahead of us.

Here’s a video of what my friend and I like to call “The Opus” of belly dancing. It’s a 6 minute and 40 second dance we per­formed for the first time at a Christmas Festival called the Festival of Trees in Grande Prairie.

In July 2010, Chris and I visited Iran for 3 weeks. While there, we met a man named Abed. I like to describe him as an “Iranian hippie”.

We spent four won­der­ful days with him in Esfahan, Iran. He shared his mind and style of life with us, taking us to the new, hip parts of town, as well the old his­tor­ical ones. Above all, he opened our eyes to the history, the unique story and the life behind each and every Iranian “Persian” Carpet. Each carpet has meaning unique to itself. The two broad cat­egor­ies of carpets are City Weave and Nomadic.

In this video, Abed teaches the sig­ni­fic­ance of common symbols found in carpets. The video fea­tures the two Nomadic carpets Chris and I bought to com­mem­or­ate our epic eight month journey and visit to Iran.

Music by Niyaz. Footage by Chris Beauchamp. Video pro­duc­tion and editing by Laura Beauchamp.

Please do not repro­duce without per­mis­sion. www.outtheresomewhere.ca

This is a mixture of video clips and pho­to­graphs taken during our trip to Siem Reap, Cambodia in August 2010. The cre­ation of the video and the footage was taken by Laura Beauchamp. The fea­tured pho­to­graphs were taken by Chris Beauchamp.

The video was made using iMovie. Laura was feeling cheesy when she made it so she used the “Photograph Album” video tem­plate. She also apo­lo­gizes for the glitches in the sound, she’s looking into a solu­tion.

I’m happy to say that our belly­dan­cing per­form­ance went well yes­ter­day! The entire theatre sold out, and seven of the seats were filled with my loved ones and friends. It was pretty special for me to look out and see my mother-in-law, two nieces, husband, sister-in-law and two friends.

The entire evening was three hours long. Below is a video of two of the dances my class per­formed. I’m in the green outfit in the front. Enjoy. –Laura–

Belly dance per­formed by stu­dents of Moondance Shimmy. Teacher and cho­reo­grapher: Oksana.

The first dance is a Fan Veil dance fol­lowed by a Drum dance.

Dancers: Laura Beauchamp, Macia Bell, Linda, Shirene, Deidre, Carrie, Julie, Christina, Shauna and Oksana.