So Saturday night we left Babes with a baby sitter and headed out for a night on the town. (Although when I say "night" I mean evening or maybe mere three hours) And since we are leaving Azerbaijan soon (Wooo HOOO!) we decided to forgo the normal, well I guess this could be Italian food if you squint with one eye and hop on one foot cuisine and headed out to a place that served Azeri food. One of the better places to go in Baku is the Beh Beh club (I wonder what that means). We hit the one just out of town that kind of looks like a traditional house and has live performers. The building itself was very neat, I guess a traditional house looks a little like a ski lodge with a garden, all wooden and sloping roofs. Inside it was modestly decorated with candles and various kinds of Azeri copperware, dolls in native dress, and candles.
The musicians weren't bad even though they played elevator jazz (although I have to admit, that I do like elevator jazz). However, the belly dancer was... well, here's the thing. I think, I have never seen it live, that belly dancing can be sensuous and a very unique art. HOWEVER, most places when they boast having a belly dancer usually mean a stripper who is not taking off her clothes, but wearing a belly dancing costume. I keep going because I keep hoping to see tastefully done belly dancing.... but no. If I was going to have a belly dancer in a restaurant I would find someone who could dance, then have her only accompanied by a drum, a wind instrument of some kind, and maybe a tambourine. But I guess that's harder to find, it is easier to find a young woman, put her in a costume and tell her to shake her stuff to Russia's Madonna equivalent. But that's neither here nor there.
The other interesting thing was that we were there at the same time as a birthday party. There was the general feasting, and then as the night progressed some dancing. I've only seen it once before, but this is the first place I've been that has it's own unique form of dancing. Most clubs that I've been to all over the world have about the same booty shaking dances that the US has. But here the women give their wrists and hands a little flick as they stick out alternating feet with a little hop. There's almost no booty shaking going on at all. The men do something similar, except that their hands do not flick and they usually tap their foot against another male partner's foot. I wish I was better at describing or I could think of what it reminds me of. It's very interesting and looks pretty cool, and is one of the truly unique things that they have going on for them here.
