Raks Jenna meets Mixmaster Mike

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I was asked by our troupe leader and choreographer, Elayna, to give some of my impressions of our experiences in the filming of an actual music video for MIXMASTER MIKE, one of the members of the group THE BEASTIE BOYS.

The making of the video was a project for a film class at San Jose State University. One of the students told me that the class had sent out lots of fliers to different record companies and the one that had responded was MIXMASTER MIKE's. The casting director needed lots of different kind of dancers and basically found Elayna and the rest of us in the yellow pages. We have only been performing as a troupe for about two years dancing about four times a year at Zorba's Restaurant and lately several nursing homes. So being a bunch of good natured hams the thought of doing a film that might even be on TV was a terrific opportunity and all in all turned out to be a lot of fun and hard work. I learned that in "show biz" one has to be very flexible, patient and ready for anything, which leads me to the filming of the "party scene" with just Elayna and myself as they only needed two bellydancers. We brought three costumes each, our troupe costume, a more ethnic looking one and a glitzy cabaret outfit. Of course, they went with the glitz. Well, then on to make up and hair...HALLOWEEN ANYONE????? The scene turned out to be in a graveyard or coffin or something so we ended up looking like corpses, black deep circles around our eyes and lips and hair pull tightly away from our faces into ponytails on top of our heads. I also got some silver spray in mine.

We didn't do any of our rehearsed dances but just did what the director told us to do at least seven or eight times with the smoke machine going music playing and everyone dancing and trying really hard to be "seen." It really was fun but just that day alone, filming just the party scene lasted five hours and a lot of that time, as I said earlier was waiting for directions. Then, at the end of the filming I had really hard time trying to find some cold cream to get all the black stuff off my eyes and lips so I could drive home and not scare anyone.

The next day the whole troupe was going to be filmed. I warned everyone to be really flexible and very patient. The casting director picked our cabaret costumes again and our hair and make up was very glamorous this time, but it took a while for them to do eleven of us. This time we were filmed in the large woodshop area where they actually construct the scenery for the theater. We were placed on and around the various table saws, grinders, jigsaws, etc. And again we did not perform any of our routines. Some of us used our gauzy veils, some had their swords on their head and the rest just moved to the music while another actor walk through the same area that we were dancing in. We were supposed to ignore the actor and dance, like we always dance in a shop with tools and machines and such...! We did have one costume change and since there were so many of us took turns. We won't know for a while what actually makes it to the actual film and what ends up on the cutting room floor. But it really was a unique experience and something I can tell my grandkids about. The students at San Jose State University Film department were very professional and all in all treated us very well and if they ever need a bellydancer again I hope they call us!!!

---Written by Amara a.k.a. Mary Kies---

Click for Mixmaster Mike's Video: Surprize Packidge Music Video