Gilded Serpent presents...
An Interview with Hadia
by Angel Thacker

As a belly dance producer and performer, I’ve had the privilege of learning from and getting to know many of the dancers who’ve left their marks throughout the community.  Through innovation, passion, persistence and strength of character, these individuals stand out as mentors and master craft women/men in this dance form.  Over the years, it has become a passion of mine to chronicle and honor those who have given so much of themselves to bring the dance where it is today and have also laid the foundations for the future of belly dance.  These past five years I’ve worked on pulling together The Dance Masters of Belly Dance, a production project focused on honoring master performers through exhibitions, workshop opportunities, videos and more!  It has been a glorious and challenging journey which I lovingly refer to as “The Agony and the Ecstasy”.  This journey has given me the opportunity to meet and get to know many of our art’s icons and trend setters.  Although it’s not possible to honor everyone in one article, I’m committed to sharing my experiences (and these natural wonders!) with the community whenever and wherever possible.  For my first article, I would like to share my recent interview with Canada’s national treasure - Hadia.  I do hope that you enjoy seeing a personal side of Hadia as she shares her insights and personality with you all. 

I was able to meet and connect with Hadia this past summer at the International Belly Dance Conference in Las Vegas.  I’ve admired Hadia for years, ever since I first caught her in an IAMED (International Academy of Middle Eastern Dance) video early in my performance experience.  For at the time, I had never seen anyone move quite like she did.  From the way she moved to her stage presence, I was in awe.  From that day, I vowed to learn what my feeble body could from her very internal and exotic interpretation of the dance.  During my Vegas experience, I was able to spend some time getting to know her, learning about her history in the dance and her experiences over an impressive 38 year career as a belly dancer.  I am honored to have been given an opportunity to sit with Hadia and present this interview. 

Angel asks: Before we start, can you introduce yourself for the readers?
I am Canadian, a quintuple Leo and was born in the middle of a wild prairie summer thunderstorm, where the electricity (and all the lights) went out just in time for my arrival. Perhaps that could be one of the reasons why I have more than enough energy for 5 people. Although I was always very physically active, discovering dance was the perfect channel for all that energy (as I am sure that my friends, my family and especially my mother will agree). I took my first dance class just after my 17th birthday when I went off to University. I never planned or even entertained the notion that I would ever be a professional dancer and instructor. Dance was my extra curricular “hobby” while I was working on my degree, but by the time that I graduated, I already had an abundance of dance contracts and students, so I decided to just take a chance and just keep dancing – be it for 3 months or 38 years!  I was always far more interested in dance, music and theatre, than the thought of marriage and a family (although I love children and animals to a fault). I have always been an extremely independent person and have a great love of adventure and exploration. I am also very, very curious and want to know almost everything about anything I am interested in. I think that a career as a dancer is perfect for someone with these qualities (even though this was never a career CHOICE for me, just a series of events that formed themselves around a total PASSION for dancing). 

Angel asks:  In your background you have such a diverse selection of dance styles and influences.  What was it that brought you to belly dance?
An invitation from a dancer friend! I often refer to this as a lucky accident!  I actually had no idea what belly dance was, had never heard of it, but decided to go along with her and try it. I loved the softness and fluidity of the movements instantly, so I signed up for weekly classes. That was the beginning of a most amazing journey, which I am still enjoying and exploring today. I had already been studying jazz dance for a couple of years and continued in this field for at least another 20 years. When I arrived at a point in my oriental dance career where I felt I was lacking inspiration and challenge, I ventured into the world of flamenco – a world, I must admit, that never has any lack of challenge, inspiration or new horizons. When I finally decided that this was an extremely fascinating but not very practical life choice, I moved from New York back to Canada where I continued both my belly dance and flamenco careers simultaneously. I was also very involved in African dance by this time and then had the good fortune to make friends with and study with a Polynesian instructor. Later on in my career I continue to explore Brazilian, Cuban salsa, rumba etc. and even Tango and East Indian dance. I think that it would be safe to say that I just love dance, in so many of its forms, but I will also say that oriental dance has been my first love and remains my principal dance form to this day.

Angel asks:  Where did you start belly dancing professionally?
Vancouver, Canada. While I was still a theater student at university, my first main stage performance was a role as “Fatima” in a musical theatre production that ran for 3 weeks.  But my first paid professional contact was in the Sahara, an Egyptian club, where I worked 6 nights a week with 2 shows a night on the weekends. Within another month, I was doing the same thing at the same time at a local Greek night club. Shortly afterwards, I began dancing in many of the newer trendy “ethnic” restaurants that were opening up all over the city. The rest is history.

Angel asks:  What is it you enjoy most about the dance? 
It always makes me feel good, physically, emotionally, I could even say spiritually. I love all dance forms, as they allow me to live in the state of now, but oriental dance has the ability to allow and even nourish one’s individuality as few dance forms can, especially so, the longer we stay with the art form. You can have 2 dancers performing to the same music, the same choreography and both doing so beautifully, but the result will be 2 very different dances, because the dancers are 2 different people of different size, shape and structure. Each will hear the music differently; each will feel it differently and find different ways for it to come through her body…..  It is also an amazing way to explore one’s body and range of movement from a totally internal perspective. The longer a dancer dances, the more refined and subtle her movements and interpretations will become and just when she thinks that she is totally connected, she realizes that she has just approached the edge of what is possible.   It is also not only the safest dance form that I have ever practiced (if properly practiced), but it even has the ability to heal the body of previous injuries, aches and pains. However, I did not really understand this facet of the art form until I became a physical therapist and slowly began to incorporate and apply my training in anatomy, kinesiology, physiology and therapeutic exercise. My experience and training as a dancer has also enabled me to better help my patients. I have even created my own therapeutic technique focusing on movement. This synergistic approach to both of my careers just keeps making both of them better, more fascinating and more intimately interconnected.

Angel asks:  Which do you prefer, live musicians or recorded music when performing?
I definitely prefer dancing with live musicians. When living in Vancouver, we had no oriental musicians available, so I went to work in Montreal just to have the opportunity to work with live music in the Lebanese clubs. Although I loved working with the local musicians, they did not understand how to play for oriental dance, which was fine, as I really did not have much idea about how to dance to oriental music at that time. However, I had the good fortune to be invited to work in one of the clubs with some amazing professional musicians who had just arrived from Tunisia, including master percussionist, Fouad Sherif, the husband of Egyptian superstar Aza Sherif’s. Thanks to these gentlemen, I embarked upon my study of and love affair with Egyptian sharki music. In fact, I even went over to work in the Middle East just to be able to perform to and learn as much as I could about this amazing, endlessly rich and complex music.  However, I still love to dance to my favorite classical Egyptian music on a CD and actually prefer this to working with musicians who are not well versed in classical Egyptian music.

Angel asks:  You travel quite a bit for your art.  What is it you enjoy about the traveling, the workshops… etc.?
I love everything about what I am doing now except the actual task of physically transporting myself to the places where I work. For the past 4 years, I have only been home about 4 months of the year, while the rest I have been touring and teaching. I always love meeting and teaching new dancers and as I am often invited back many times to the same cities, this gives me the chance to make some wonderful friends.  I also have the opportunity to see how dancers from different countries all over the world interpret the art form.  I usually go on tours where I teach in several cities, most of which have the workshops scheduled for the weekends. I try to arrange to have time off during the week so that I can go out and explore and learn something about the country and its people, culture and language. I have learned samba and performed in Carnival in Brazil. I rode an elephant, played with baby lions and a full grown cheetah named Enigma and stayed in a Zulu hut in Africa. I cuddled koalas, dived in the Great Barrier Reef, and hiked through the rainforests of Australia. I have crawled through underground Anatolian cities, paraglided off mountain tops, danced in gypsy festivals and clambered over Greek, Roman, Seljuk and crusader ruins and castles in Turkey. I have sailed on the Nile, danced with the Mazin sisters, ridden camels and donkeys in Egypt…..and more….

Angel asks:  You have teacher and dancer certification programs.  What do you focus on in these programs?
Actually, although I do teach professional oriental dance training programs, I only offer a three level instructor certification program.   Because oriental dance was never traditionally “taught” in any structured, formal fashion, our profession has had quite the adventure trying to decipher how things are done, to decide what actually should be done and to establish some standards of practice, teaching methodology and content.  38 years of experience has given me a very broad spectrum of knowledge of the art form and information to share with the students. I also have the benefit of having studied from many different perspectives; many different dance styles with many different instructors from all parts of the world (primarily in the countries from which these dance forms originate). Thanks to the highly structured training of so many dance forms, my extensive training as a therapist and my work to apply this information directly to the field of oriental dance, I gradually developed a very effective methodology of instruction and which I share with the teacher training students. However, if life has taught me anything, it has taught me that human beings will not actually force themselves to really learn, own and master information which has been taught to them unless they have personalized coaching and exams.  So, in level 3 the trainees have their exams.  If, and only, if they prove that they have achieved an acceptable level of understanding and mastery of the techniques and information included in Level 1 and 2 and display a satisfactory level of competence in their ability to convey this information effectively and safely to their students, they will be awarded a certificate of achievement.  Complete course content for the different levels is all posted on my website, but it includes : alignment, body balance, applied anatomy for belly dance, technique, rhythms, finger cymbals, music appreciation and interpretation, improvisations skills, history, establishing and maintaining an optimal learning environment, teaching theories, learning styles, class and course planning, receiving and working with and growing from feedback, basic business skills, ethics and professionalism…quite a bit to chew on.  Each level is 20 hours of very intense training, which requires preparation as well as daily assignments and preparation. I am also currently in the process of having my courses accredited in other institutions of fields of dance and movement training. This is especially relevant today when “certifications” are handed out at every 2 hour dance class/workshop.

I do give certificates of attendance to the students who attend and complete my 38 hour professional dance training program. I share my skills and knowledge with these students in a group class structure, as well as give personal coaching to each dancer taking into consideration her individual interpretation and style of dance.  However, what that dancer will ultimately do with her training is completely up to her, as she is not directly responsible for the welfare of and content of information presented to anyone else (i.e. students). So a certification is not necessary, but only a respectful acknowledgement of that dancer’s investment of time, energy and money to the continuation of her personal journey. 

Angel asks:  You have a number of workshop and performance videos.  Do you enjoy producing videos and do you have anything new in the works? 
Actually, I don’t enjoy producing DVDs at all. I definitely prefer teaching and performing for real people. However, because my students all over the world requested them as tools to work with in my absence, I decided that it would be a good project to pursue. My students (especially my long distance ones) are very happy that I did decide to pursue the project.  I have 14 instructional and 2 performance DVDs available to date.

Angel asks:  What are the most important aspects a dancer should focus on developing?
Training the body to be her finely tuned instrument (this takes much time, great effort and excellent instruction), then study the music; the instruments, the rhythms, the phrasing and dynamics suh as, all of the intricacies of oriental music (ideally classical Egyptian or Lebanese), so that the instrument of her body can literally incorporate that music. If a dancer focuses on these two approaches, she will never get bored, always have something to discover, learn and master, always have an abundance of joy in her heart and her life and will inspire others and herself.

Angel asks:  How is the dance community different today when compared to when you started dancing?
38 years ago we were completely innocent and I would have to say blissfully ignorant. We really had no idea what kind of dance was done in the Middle Eastern countries, but we certainly had a wonderful time exploring this mysterious and unexplored new territory of creative make-believe. We had to make our own costumes as there were none to be purchased anywhere. Our meager collections of records, which were so hard to come by, were played until we wore grooves in the vinyl. There were very few teachers available, almost none of which had ever seen the Middle East or actual Middle Eastern dancers. But, we had fun and shared everything with each other, created parties and events so that we could dance together.  The few of us who were dancing professionally had more jobs than we could manage and shared work with each other, filling in for each other all the time. I also began teaching very early in my dancer career, modeling my classes on the formats from my jazz and modern dance classes and choosing movements and content from what I had learned from my few instructors. I was very fortunate to have accidentally stumbled across a most amazing dancer who was teaching a workshop in San Francisco during my annual study trip down there. Mr. Ahmad Jarjour rocked my world, gave me my first taste of Egyptian oriental dance and I have been a devoted addict ever since. I continued on to New York to study intensively with Bobby Farrah and also attended Nadia Gamal’s first workshop in North America, which he hosted in the big apple. It was wonderful! Then movie footage, videos and DVDs made these dancers and teachers readily accessible to everyone. Then the internet happened with an endless wealth of information at our finger tips! WOW! Trips and tours to the Middle East area available every other week. They even started to offer dance classes in Egypt. Finally it was so easy to get information, knowledge, classes, footage of the original stars of Egypt, to go to see and even study with the current stars in Egypt….. Very exciting, thrilling, and so easy!  Now, they even come to teach us in our cities and countries. There are festivals everywhere! Master instructors everywhere, every week! Could it be that it is too easy and too much and that today’s dancers are drowning in information, with students rushing from one 2 hour master class to another, with no time for reflection or digestion?  Has it become primarily big business and major money?   

Angel asks:  What advice do you have for the dancer, both new to the dance and those stepping out into the professional ranks?
I think that the first question that an upcoming dancer should ask herself is if she wants to be around for a long time or be a flash in the pan or the flavor of the week. Does she seek quality or quantity? Is she willing to work and work hard and go out of her way to be the very best that she can be? Does she want to touch people’s hearts when she dances or does she want them to see her technique? Is she in a hurry or is she prepared to let this luscious dance form slowly seep into her cells when it is time to unveil another secret and another perspective?

Angel asks: As I consider what colors the dividing line between where we’ve been; where we are; and where we’re headed in the dance, I have to wonder how our dance masters feel about the journey.  Can you give us your thoughts on how the journey has been for you?

I feel the journey has been magnificient, truly blessed and very fulfilling. I think that few people in this world are fortunate enough to be able to do what they really love to do and to do it every day of their life. To also have fun doing so and to be able to share the joy, fun and excitement with other people by being able to perform for them is a wonderful experience. Finally, to be able to then teach others the secrets and keys able to this beautiful dance and to see them living their dream as well, is truly wonderful and a joy beyond words.

www.hadia.com

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