Utilizing Energy in Movement

by Paola
posted June 17, 2009

Sometimes, it feels futile to write about dance, or even to talk about it.  If we could express concepts in words, we wouldn’t need to dance them.  Much better is the danced moment than the spoken word, yet as a dance educator, I must cast for words and images that help open pathways with which others may connect.  Between the remote reader and myself, that’s all that exists, really.  In a physical group, there are visuals and music, but more importantly, there is also an energetically charged, affective atmosphere that aids understanding in subtler ways.  In the flesh, we can explore our intent for dancing;
for example: 

• Why do we dance?
• Where are we reaching with our gestures?
• What are we trying to say?
• Are we speaking, or are we listening through our dance?

Dance can be the corporeal miming, shaping, and manifestation of the soul’s intent.  It can transform the body from a mere physical organism going through the daily motions of survival – work, feeding, caring – into a vessel for Divine Nature of which we are all a part, and it can draw that nature into us for multiple benefits – art, healing, transformation.

We take our earthly vessel and refine it, shape it, open it in a way that draws down our higher essence, to reside in us, fill us, make us overflow, recharge us, and move us in ways that spark transformation (not only in us, but in those who witness or participate in our craft).

In my own practice, I have found it highly productive to ritualize my dancing, in order to work this process more consciously.  Through a daily series of exercises in breathing, focusing, centering, opening, receiving, transmitting, and circulating, I draw closer and closer to something extremely vital.  I have begun to see that there is nothing our bodies can do that the Universe is already not doing.  Each step, each motion and shape that we execute carries within it universal implications, and has the potential to connect us to Earth, self, others, and the Universe in a vital, rhythmic cycle of energy. 

The practical use of imagery and breathing aids us in accessing this.  I stand in the shape of a vessel, my feet balanced, comfortably connected to Earth, arms and sight reaching to the Universe, with my chest open and lifted.  The highest point of my gesture coincides with the fullness of my inhalation.  Then slowly, the breath is released and plexus center contracted while the hands draw the energetic image down the center axis. For me, that image is a golden ball, a sun that I reach towards, grasp, and then like Lady Pac-Man, draw down into the vessel just like a cosmic energy pill! Through one image, I have worked a breath and stretch for my body, a mental picture to focus my chattering monkey mind, and a gesture that clearly defines my intent—to reach toward something higher and nobler, and to draw it down into the vessel of myself.

Additionally, there are so many other movements that can be extended into this form of practice!  Consider your undulation, for example.  Where does it start and where does it end?  We tend to train our undulations from the abdomen and chest.  It can be localized right there, but what if we were to reach further?  Using the state of dancer-as-vessel, raise one hand to the Universe while the other gestures to Earth.  One foot is grounded while the other is posed in a demi-toe position. Begin to take a deep breath, casting your sight along the runway of your raised arm, experiencing the fullness of your gesture as you connect to that universal energy source.  Execute your undulation on your exhalation, imagining that energy traveling down your arm, energizing your body, and then grounding itself via the lowered hand.  To me, the undulation movement always seemed to have the quality of a swallow, so why not work this image with the intent of drawing down, “swallowing” cosmic energy?

Consider the reverse undulation—so often compared to a cat passing up a hairball.  It seems funny, but how could we use a reverse undulation for the intent, for example, of cleansing, or releasing (or bringing something up from below, from earthly realms to universal realms)?

In my daily practice, I go through a series of these layered exercises.  Bit by bit, breath by breath, I feel myself slipping out of ordinary reality into a fuller experience of myself as a vessel.  The attention to breathing clears and calms my mind.  The mental image shapes each movement danced more fully while the intention adds emotional and intellectual texture.

Let me leave you with one more image/intent exercise with which to have fun: You are an actual vessel now, the kind that the alchemists of old used for their experiments in transmutation of base elements to noble.  There is an issue in your base Chakra from which you would like to free yourself.  Begin by lighting the fire! 

Start to shimmy, lightly at first, your hands framing and aiding your hips energetically. No fire can live without air; so breathe in rhythmically to stoke the flames higher while your hands and arms gently ebb and flow at your sides.  Inhale and expand; exhale and contract.  Feel the heat rising, see the flames increase.  Begin to mimic the flame-like motions with your hands and wrists.

Now you’re cookin’!

As the heat rises and your mental and spiritual state begins to change, imagine your “issue” melting, breaking up.  It starts to release impurities, and just like an actual physical substance reacts when heat is applied, it releases steam and particles into the air.  So get rid of them on your exhalation.  Use your inhalations to charge and energize, and your exhalations to release and cleanse, as the constant
heat of the shimmy-powered earthly fire keeps the process going.  Notice how your body begins to respond to this exercise.  Let your arms “conduct” the energy as they will, listen to your body and take note of what it begins to tell you, keeping your mind focused on the breathing and imagery.  You will begin to feel an amazing lightness of being, of transcendent refreshment.  All the while, you’ve practiced your shimmy for—Heaven knows how long!

For me, this exercise can last up to a half hour or even forty-five minutes, depending on my mental and physical state.  However, once again, I’ve worked a stamina-dependent dance move for my body, a mental picture for my mind, and I’ve merged it all into an intention for the movement, using my breath to aid my meditation and extend the stamina—one image with myriad benefits.

I hope these exercises will help you unlock some of the secrets of your own vessel: May you stand in the full grace of your being, your vessel open to the bounty of universal energy, your breath clear and focused, and your entire self renewed through the application of conscious intent to your dance movements.

Saturday Afternoon: Troupes, Duos & Trios, Grand Dancers
Saturday Evening: BD of Year, Preliminaries
Sunday: Finals

Photos and text by Susie Poulelis, (*with a few supplemental photos by Lynette)
posted June 2009

As a fish to a shiny object, so am I drawn to a well produced event of glamorous, bedazzled and talented performers of belly dance.  Leea  Aziz’s yearly production The Belly Dancer of the Year Pageant held this year at the San Ramon High School was at the top of my list of shows to see and photograph.  It never disappoints in its ability to help me snap some of the best shots in my portfolio;  the clean backdrop, the lighting, the exquisite sparkle of the costumes inevitably lead to a weekend of nonstop shutter clicks.  My apologies to those seated near me.   I just can’t help myself.

Favorite costume:  Summer Sahar’s pink number in the finals on Sunday.  The Barbie pink with shell paillettes get up could be heard tinkling during shimmies from the stage.  Fabulous!

Satuday Afternoon- Troupes, Duos & Trios, Grand Dancers We missed part of the first set of dancers and troupes, including: Troupe Nijmeh, Orchid Belly Dance, Jamila from Jerusalem, Troupe Dhyanis

Seshata*

Defi Safir*

Hala Dance Company*

Taroob*

Aiwa She Raqa

Raks A’Diva– awarded 2009 Troupe of the Year

Theresa Jade awarded 1st Runner Up for Troupe of the Year

Modern Gypsy awarded 1st Runner Up for Troupe of the Year

Magenta

Raqs Ahroosh

Fiji awarded 2009 Grand Dancer

Scimitar

Tiyanna

Awards Raks A’Diva – 2009 Troupe of the Year Modern Gypsy – 1st Runner Up Troupe Dhyanis – 2nd Runner Up Tiyanna – Congeniality Aiwa She Raqa – 2009 Trio of the Year Seshata – 1st Runner Up Fiji – 2009 Grand Dancer Theresea Jade – 1st Runner Up Taroob – 2nd Runner Up Fiji – Congeniality

Saturday Evening- Bellydancer of the Year Preliminaries

Stephani

Marzieh

Rasa Vitalia

Namira

Mia Sh’uri

Aazura Nour

Khalilah

Magidah

Maria

Lu Lu

Sedona

Summer Sahar

Mariah

Alanah

Karolina

Finalists

Sunday Finals

We missed Namira , Mia, Khalilah…

Magidah

Maria

Lulu

Sedona

Summer Sahar

Mariah

Karoline

Namira, Mia. Khalila, Magidah, Maria, Lulu, Sedona, Summer, Mariah, Karolina Maria – 2009 Belly Dancer of the Year Sedona – 1st Runner Up Mia Sha’uri – 2nd Runner Up Karolina – 3rd Runner Up Namira – 4th Runner Up Magidah – Congeniality click photo for larger image

Casuals

2009 BDOY Judges Ahava, Aneena, Ayesha, Aziza!, Bay’la Zena, Denise, Ely Buffin, Fadil Shahin, Jizan, Judeen, Malia DeFelice, Ma*Shuqa Mira Murjan, Naiya, Numa’ir, Oreet, and Pat Olson

More photos of this event by Michael Baxter coming soon.

My Introduction to Shaabi, Part 1

by Amina Goodyear
posted June 11, 2009

Literal origin of the word Shaabi (Sha’bi) in Egyptian Arabic: Of the common people.

It was the late 1970’s and I was working as a dancer at the Bagdad, a nightclub in San Francisco’s North Beach. Aside from a very few visitors who would eventually become “regulars”, or “family”, the clientele consisted of Arabs looking for a home away from home. 

One of our regular customers was an Egyptian man named Samir Rizkallah. He often spent every night at his “office” which was the bar at the Bagdad even though he lived more than 2 hours away in Monterey, California where he taught Arabic at the Army Language School.

His main job at the “office” at the Bagdad was to be the cultural and language song (lyrics) advisor to Amina and The Aswan Dancers.

Yusef Kouyoumjian, the owner, and later George Elias (Yusef’s brother-in-law and next owner) would often invite members of the audience to participate in the show. Samir would take these opportunities to demonstrate cane and mop-handle Egyptian dance on the Bagdad stage.

Shamira and Linda

We loved it and wanted more and also asked him for his help in the Arabic language so we could translate the songs ourselves instead of always bothering him. He immediately agreed to teach us Arabic. What we got was Sunday morning classes at Linda Grondahl’s house with coffee cake, coffee and an Army textbook. He taught us Modern Standard Arabic and lectured us on how Arabic was a macho and a vague language and that there were at least 1001 different meanings for the word Ållah depending on intonation or context. (Allah could mean: how awful, what a mess, she’s a gorgeous, what?, wow!, really? I swear, oh my gawd and so on.) We learned useful words such as army base, soldier, weapon, tanks and military.

There were about 10 of us in the class. It included Shamira, the late Mimi Spencer, Mary Ellen Donald, Linda, Kathy (who now dances with Alexandria’s Ghawazee dancers ) and me.

After more than a year of struggling to teach lazy and bad students who liked the donuts more than the lessons, he finally quit on us the morning that Mary Ellen Donald (who is blind) did not show up for class because she wanted to WATCH a football game instead.

Other customers at the Bagdad would drum, dance (either debke or belly dance) or sing. I remember one woman in particular. She was a pretty, young, light skinned, almost blonde tiny Egyptian woman with smiling sparkling eyes named Nicole who was dating a very good looking Jordanian young man named Mwafak. They were part of the Bagdad family and were part of our entertainment. Nicole loved to dance and to sing and we loved to watch her. I wonder if she knew that we secretly studied her every move. But, more than dancing, Nicole loved singing and of course we loved hearing her. And we were also studying her dancing mannerisms when she sang. 

Mimi Spencer

The Bagdad Cabaret really was like hanging out and socializing in your own living room with various people getting up to sing, play or dance. One day Nicole came in and told us that she had married Mwafak and that it was no longer proper for her to get up on stage to perform. Our darling couple would still come in and hang out, but no more great shows from Nicole.

What a loss. But not for long. Or, rather I should say, her loss became our gain. Nicole’s heart and soul couldn’t give up singing so her husband agreed that she could give her friends singing lessons.

This was something that all of us craved and hungered for because we all really wanted to know the background and the meaning of the songs. I remember our first lesson. Nicole gave us the words to the song and wanted us to each sing alone. Well, I remember Linda Grondahl and I told her that we didn’t want to, as she would laugh at our voices. She said no, she would never do anything so insensitive. So we sang and she barely controlled her laughter behind her hand. This became a weekly visit to Nicole’s home to study Egyptian songs and music. And it was also a study of Egyptian culture and hospitality since food and tea were an integral part of our lesson. 

Her core group of students/singers was Shamira, Linda Grondahl, Leyla Lanty,
Mimi and me. 

She taught us that besides learning the words and their meanings, Egyptians do not stand still when singing. They dance around a bit and use their hands, body and eyes to gesture according to the songs.

I must say we were a big hit and even performed at the Egyptian Consulate. Leyla Lanty also used her newly found talent to sing while in Egypt and Linda amazed the audience at the Herbst Theater when she was a solo singer at the Ethnic
Dance Festival.

We learned mostly Egyptian folk songs and, of course, songs by the popular Egyptian star, Ahmed Adaweya. Part of our lesson was learning the accompanying mannerisms and gestures for performing these songs. Soon we were like parrots repeating phrases to various Arab friends, but we could only repeat what we memorized and we couldn’t converse. This led us to begging Nicole to teach us Egyptian Arabic so we could actually have conversations with our Arabic friends.  And she agreed. Our Sunday afternoon lessons expanded to singing and also learning conversational Egyptian.

Nicole was a natural teacher and looked forward to teaching us. Each week we had a new lesson plan that included two or three pages of custom-made dialog and grammar. Each class ended with her repeating the dialog and high points of the lesson for us to tape record. After close to two years, one day in class Nicole told her husband and us that she had a surprise. He asked, “a raise (at work)?” she replied no, she was pregnant. He said good. It will be a boy!  Shortly before giving birth she stopped our classes and we were again without a teacher.

About ten years later we met another Egyptian, Essam el Mahgoub, who was an Arabic translator for the courts. He would meet at my house with Linda and Mimi and of course the breakfast rolls and coffee.

This was short-lived and soon it was only Essam and me meeting downtown during his lunch hour once a week talking about —- food of course. It was hard to keep up with his busy schedule and after trying an after work happy hour with free snacks we both realized that I couldn’t concentrate on Arabic with food around.

Now, we come to the present.  I am teaching dance classes and still struggling to figure out the words of the songs. Each time I had gone to Egypt in the last 25 years, it seemed that my Egyptian friends would tell me that I had forgotten more and more of my Arabic (which I really didn’t know anyway).

I felt pathetic! Here I was relying totally on Arabic friends and the internet for song translations and my Arabic had dwindled to a handful of words – habibi, ya albi, yanni eh, keda ho, ya salaam, shokraan and song titles – Fakkarooni, Lessa Faker, Ya mSaharni, Lailet Hob –

What happened to all the sentences, the conjugations and words, the grammar and the reading and writing I knew! Gone gone gone and gone! It’s true – If you don’t use it, you lose it.

About 4 years ago Wendy, one of my dance students, said she wanted to review the Arabic she learned in an Arabic course. I asked my friend Debbie Smith if she also wanted to practice Arabic with us as I knew that she had studied both Modern Standard Arabic and Egyptian Arabic in school. Our immediate goal was to regain some of the knowledge that we had lost or were losing and our ultimate goal was to be able to translate the songs ourselves rather than use the internet or our Arabic friends.

We met once a week at my house and set goals and lesson plans for ourselves. I had invested in some language cassettes including AudioForum and brought those out as well as bought the Egyptian Pimsleur CD series. We were set.

I am an inherent collector and a strong believer that the more you possess the more likely you will “get it” and I had quite an array of teach yourself books, text books, work books and dictionaries. Debbie also likes to collect – but I think she actually reads what she collects.

So between the three of us we had a library probably larger than most language schools. Shortly after we started, Wendy dropped out due to her schedule and the fact that Debbie and I were actually going at a pace too fast for her.

Debbie and I moved our Monday night study class to my dance studio and invited Hana Ali, a friend and a dancer from Pakistan to join us. She had not studied Arabic but being a Moslem knew how to read and write Arabic because she studied the Koran. Also her language, Urdu, uses many of the same Arabic letters and even has many Arabic (and also Persian) words.

We started class with basic Egyptian dialect conversation: messa el kheir, messa el nur, ezzayek, kwayessa, ilhamdulillah – good evening, good evening response, how are you, fine, thanks to God. Class progressed to listening to a little Pimsleur, a little grammar and ended with listening to a song. This was the fun part – our listening comprehension section.

We would write all the Arabic words in the song that sounded familiar, then we would compare the words with each other to see if they really were words and not just sounds and then we would try to translate them into English using our collective knowledge and the dictionary.

Debbie and Hana would use the Arabic dictionaries and I used the ones with English letters.  I found it too difficult to try to navigate the Arabic dictionaries as you need to find the root words first and I was having trouble just finding the correct letters. 

In the beginning, the result was a paper with a few Arabic into English words and no sense in them. Then we would find translations from song books or the internet – not look at the translations, listen to the songs, write down what we heard, compare our words or syllables, use the dictionary, try to translate into some sort of sense with no regard to the poetry of the song and finally check with our translation to see if we were even slightly close. Sometimes we were.  Sometimes our imaginations had taken over.

One thing we did discover was that perseverance pays off and just as the turtle would reach its goal, so would we. We were determined to be literate, conversant and be able to understand and translate our songs.

So how did we do? I feel as if I’m still with Samir Rizkallah in his office at the Bagdad between dance sets straining to understand.

Below is an example of words we (Debbie, Hana and I) heard while listening to Om Kalsoum singing and reading Hana’s transliteration from the Arabic  March 2007.

Our Baeed Annak Word List

• naseet – forgot – (in class – my most used sentence – ana naseet = I forgot.)
• noum – sleep –
• aHlamoo – dreams –
• layali – nights –
• ayyamo – days
• baeed – after
• Hayati – my life
• azab – hell,
  agony, torment, torture
• gheer – without
• Doumoae – tears
• aHbab – beloved
• leyl – night
• issohd – the black
• Dowwibni – melt me
• saharni – I stay awake, insomnia from love
• Hayarni – I am confused
• shouq – desire
• nar-fire
• we or wa -and
• u – you, plural
• i – me, my
• ak – you
• m – esh-negative

Below is our translation with a little help from various dictionaries, the internet and an Arabic friend. I hope you can understand the process and how and why we would spend evenings discussing the lyrics.

Baeed Annak (Away from you)

A song for Om Kalsoum
Music by Baligh Hamdi
Lyrics by Maamoon al Shennawi

naseet innoum, wa aHlamu
I forgot sleep and his it’s dreams

naseet layali, wa ayyamo
I forgot the nights and his its days

baeed annak, Hayati azab
Away from you my life is hell
torture agony suffering

mat badneesh, baeed annak
Don’t leave me far from you
Don’t send me away from you
Don’t go away from me

maleesh gheer-iddumuae aHbab
I have nothing but the teardrops for lovers
Never mind the tears of the beloved
(I have no lovers or dear ones but the tears)

maaya baeesh baeed annak
With her, living far from you
With my life away from you
(With whom I live away from you)

ghalabni ishouq wa ghallibni
Passion conquered me
(My longing for you has overwhelmed me)

we leyl issohd dowwibni
And the sleepless nights melted me
(And the nights of your absence is melting me)

we mahma ishouq yesaharni
And no matter how much the desire keeps me awake
And conquered by desire and worn out by sleepless nights

we mahmal baeed Hayarni
And makes me confused

la nar ishouq taghayyarni
The fire of desire doesn’t change me

walal  ayyam bitbaedni
Nor will the days keep me away

baeed annak
from you.

Rakkasah Festival East 2008
Saturday Dancers L-Z

Photos by Carl Sermon

October 18, 2008,
Ukrainian Cultural Center, Somerset, New Jersey
posted May 31, 2009

*Click for larger image
Caption corrections for each dancer appreciated.

Latifa and Banat Al Beled of Severna Park, MD, here and below

Leena of New York, NY

Little Boy of Open Floor

Lotus Niraja & NDC of Washington DC, here and below

Mahalat of Little York, New Jersey

Mahira Tribe of Runneymede, NJ

Mahrabesh & Middle East Mystique of Spring Mount, PA

Majestic Hips* of Huntington, NY

Malweh of ?

Ma*Shuqa Mira Murjan of Los Gatos, CA

Mayumi Yamagish of ?

Nabila Nazen of New York, NY

Naheda of Germany

Natica‘s Poetic Dance Theater of Richmond, CA: Shukriya, Sara, Richard, Cindy, Fatima, Natica, here and several below

Nixies of New Jersey

Pat of Pangia of Mt Shasta, CA sings for his fans

Rakset el Layla of Hasbrouck Heights, NJ

Raqqaset Zirayat of New York, NY, here and below

Raqs Caravan East in above photo and Raqs Caravan West below of Ami, Washington, DC

Safiya of Annnapolis and Scott Wilson of NY?

Sahibat of Holyoke, MA

Saqra of Seattle, WA

Sera and Soltice of New York, NY

Sirena* of Annapolis MD

Sonziry* of New York, NY

Suhaila Dance Company of Berkeley

Surayyah of Orefield, PA

Tauta of

Urban Oasis of Long Island, NY

Yala Iana* of ?, here and below

Yasime of North Carolina?

* click on these photos to see a larger image
Previous parts to this series- Carl’s Photos from Raks East- Friday, Saturday
A-D,
E-K

“Why We Dance”

by Latifa
posted June 8, 2009

In spite of the wind whistling down Caledonia Street on May 24th, the day of Sausalito’s Caledonia Street Fair, a certain group of belly dancers performing on the main stage at Locust and Caledonia were HOT.  Thank goodness it was at least sunny!

We (the dancers) were (in alphabetical order) Alnisa, Cathy Guthrie, Jawahare,  Latifa (I organized the show.), Pamela, and Terry DiGiorno. I live in and teach Belly Dance in Sausalito for the Parks and Recreation Department.

In late April I received a call from the director of the department asking if I would be able to produce a show for the fair. Since I don’t have an on-going active troupe at this point in time, I thought about it for almost a minute and then accepted with delight.

This fair has always one of my favorites.  I have attended it many times, even before I started teaching for the city, and have always enjoyed the blues bands, African drumming ensemble, vendors, food, and drink.

The idea in my mind was, why not contact some of the best dancers and teachers in and around Marin County to come and have a great time at a street fair?

Frequently teachers will accept these shows with the idea of show casing their own troupe. That falls into the realm of work.  When performing with less experienced performers, issues frequently arise, for example lack of preparation or performance anxiety.  I was enjoying thinking about a day of play! All professionals – no one needing extra support or help – let’s just get together and enjoy, kind of like we do upon occasion at various Bay Area restaurants.

I made sure that we would have a parque floor and an awning over our space since I knew most of us would want to dance barefoot. As it turns out, the awning also acted as a pretty decent wind break, which we really needed! The City went out of their way to treat us well.  They sent us parking passes so we could drive through the “Do Not Enter” signs and park exactly behind our stage.

As we arrived and assembled behind the stage, West African drummers were on the stage  playing fabulously, and, in so doing, providing an energetic warm up for us back stage. The spirit of celebration spread rapidly within our group. 

Before long we were all moving to the infectious rhythm, laughing and talking about the great warm up we were having. In fact our energy was so relaxed and unstressed, as opposed to how it can be at many shows arranged for – let’s face it – mostly other dancers, that we began to experience the freedom and joy of simply performing – the reason most of us embarked on the Dance Path in the first place.

As the time approached for our show, two of our dancers were stuck in traffic trying to reach us from San Francisco, so we arranged our show to accommodate them if they made it and so it would work if they didn’t .

We started as a group with “Taht El Shabbak”, using zils, taking solos, and improvising in pairs. After that intro, we would each do a solo. I hastily arranged our order based upon who was there and the style of dance and music each of us was using. I gave the CDs to our DJ who was absolutely professional and so organized! He was a good grounding force for our improvizational zeal.

As we made our entrance, the crowd began to build. There were rows of chairs set up in front of the stage to accommodate maybe 50+ people. The chairs were rapidly filled and suddenly people were sitting on the ground in front of the chairs and on the surrounding curbs.  Additionally there were 5 or 6 rows of people standing behind the chairs. The energy from the audience was positive and enthusiastic. Each solo was greeted with applause and cheers.

Pamela opened the show with fiery enthusiasm to “Haramt A Hebek”. I followed Pamela with an Oriental Dance number wearing a new contemporary costume designed by Black Lagoon. I loved it! Jawahare performed as strongly as ever with the strong emotional presence and spontaneity that is her hallmark. Alnisa did a strong, classy number in a beautiful Spring green costume to an upbeat contemporary piece. Cathy Guthrie followed with an energetic, well choreographed, Gypsy like performance to “Habibi Nour El Ein”. Terry closed the show in a killer bright orange costume with a sword dance which the audience loved as demonstrated by roars and applause!

Throughout the show, I felt a welcome lack of the need to be perfect and the freedom to simply celebrate our dance and spirit.  What a great relief! Performing for a sizeable audience that are not M.E. dancers is nothing short of exhilarating! To a person, all of our group expressed the same feeling– “It was a blast!”

Ask Yasmina #7

by Yasmina Ramzy

Question #1: Thank you for recommending the recent article on Gilded Serpent about Milaya but I still have a few more questions. What are the most typical steps in the Milaya dance? What was the life like of the girls that inspired this dance? What is the rhythm used, or what is the most characteristic thing in a song that is for "Milaya"? And I haven’t quite understood if the Milaya dance is folkloric or not.

Answer:  I am not good at describing steps or technique without physical demonstration. I highly recommend you take a workshop or get an instructional DVD for Milaya; however, I will say that most of your traditional Bellydance technique can be used but with a different nuance.

It is really about the character depiction.

A variety of strutting type walks are often associated with Milaya. Performing hip accents while standing on one leg is associated with Alexandria. Much of the performance is utilizing the heavy black veil in different ways of wrapping or not. This prop is integral to the dance.

The lead drummer for the El Tannoura Troupe in Cairo once showed me a variety of rhythms he said were Alexandrian. Each one had a different name. I have forgotten this kind of detail but they all seemed like variations on Maksoum and Masmoudi Soghair. Often upbeat songs depicting the character or beauty of the Alexandrian girl or a song describing a city or town on the Mediterranean are used, The answers to your other questions are probably answered in the comments by Morocco and myself at the bottom of the article you read.

Question #2: Please explain the appropriate etiquette for accepting tips when performing.

Answer:  From the Cabaret to the high class 5 star Night Clubs throughout the Middle East, it is considered an insult to the dancer to offer cash in the middle of
her show. It insinuates she is a prostitute (I found this out the hard way by throwing piles of cash on a dancer in Cairo I admired, trying to win her affection, and then being promptly scolded by management and getting a very angry look from the dancer). If someone would like to offer a tip, then it is encouraged to do so after the show and it is more polite to offer gold than cash. In many places flowers are thrown on the dancer to show appreciation in the middle of the show (can get slippery). Most of the tips/presents I received when performing in the Middle East were in gold. Either way, it should be in an envelope or wrapped.

At a private family type event, particularly a wedding, money can be thrown on the dancer (this is a whole custom onto itself that has more to do with the bride and groom than the dancer). The concept of stuffing cash in a bra strap would be very rare and definitely not done with respect, as physical contact between men and women in a public place is almost non-existent in the Middle East. The concept of earning ones income based on tips leaves the dance artist in a very precarious position, not just risky financially but the appreciation
of the performance is often diminished.

If the employer is offering large tips as payment, then this employer can afford to pay an appropriate fee and if tipping becomes part of the equation…bonus, but never expected or needed.

Outside of Arab countries, tipping is more prevalent. If an audience member starts approaching you while dancing waving some cash, then you can turn away and ignore them or be more forgiving and with a big smile and a "thank-you" take the money out of their hand before they get too close and then place it down near a musician or on top of your veil. If the patron insists on aiming for your bra strap, then definitely turn away and ignore them.

If you work with musicians, it is customary to split the tips as they contributed greatly to the success of your show. In many establishments, it is a three-way split between management, the musicians and the dancer. The same practice is implemented for singers as well. Musicians are often not kind on stage to artists who have previously withheld tips. It is a good idea to tip a waiter and ask them to pick up your tips for you. It is not becoming for a dancer to pick tips up off the floor. At a wedding, the kids are usually eager to do this chore for you. Always, double check at a wedding to make sure that the tips were meant for you and not for the bride and groom.

Question #3:  I have been in love with Bellydance for almost 12 years and have met many inspiring women in this community. Although I was not very adept myself, I was
encouraged by my teacher to start teaching in my own smaller city which previously had no Bellydance classes. Over the years, my life became consumed with Bellydance including teaching many classes, hosting workshops, travelling to attend workshops and staging performance events. In the last few years, many Bellydance teachers in my small city have sprung up,
some good, some not so, but most of them were once my students. For some reason, I keep hearing mean-spirited gossip, insults and lies that these teachers spread about me. I cannot begin to explain the pain this has given me and now leaves me wanting to never teach or dance again. Any advice?

Answer:  Hey, you are not alone. I am sure if you talk to most teachers who have been around for a while, they have all experienced different degrees of this kind of behaviour. I have recieved many a tearful midnight phone call from teachers with the same story. One of the first times this happened to me, I asked the person in question why she would spread such lies and she quite frankly answered "but Yasmina, it is just competition!" She seemed surprised I did not get it. Whatever the reasons, I find it is best to ignore and just go about your business as usual. Definitely try not to retaliate. You will only bring yourself down in so many ways by getting caught up in an unfortunate web. Sooner or later, this person(s) will get tired of such antics or maybe even go away or apologize eventually. Students are sometimes like kids and when they are in that adolescent stage of discovering their independence, they can get kind of rebellious. Don’t worry, they eventually grow up and lose their insecurity. If not, at least it is not your concern. A wise musician once told me "not to worry about what was being said, just be thankful people are talking about and reacting to you, because it means you matter and are important".

The feeling of wanting to give up and quit can happen for many reasons. The above mentioned would be a good one of course, but there are so many. At all of these discouraging moments, I find it best to dig down deep to the original fire that was lit in your belly because of Bellydance.

Ask yourself "why?’ over and over again, digging deeper for the truth, until you arrive at that moment when the beauty of Bellydance had you completely inspired and elated, that moment when you wanted the whole world to experience the same joy.

Ask "why are you upset?", then "why does this reason make you upset?", then "why did this happen?" etc. When you forget about who is saying what or which event you were not invited to or whatever the details, and you just dance and/or teach for your original reason or impetus, then things usually fall into place again and the path to take is clear. Even if you have one student whom you are inspiring and being inspired by then you are back on track, sharing the joy.

Studio Work with Some of My Favorite Dancers!

Photos and text by Michael Baxter

posted June 4, 2009

Lynette recently asked me for up to a couple dozen or so of my belly dance photos and since I have about 1 million, I thought that ought to be easy. As I started to form this collection, only then did I realize how incredibly hard it would be. For one, I have met and photographed hundreds of fabulous dancers and I’d most definitely have to leave someone out whom I really do love. Then, in order to show as many belly dancers as possible, I would certainly have to limit picking one photo per belly dancer.

Half a decade ago, I remember that soon after I first met Michelle Joyce, I discovered that I was truly ignorant about belly dance, and that it was an enormously deeper art than I had ever imagined. I had technical photography skill (or so I thought at the time), but I did not have very much knowledge about the dance, nor the belly dancers.

I actually felt ashamed, because Michelle had really opened the door for me and now I could sense how enormous belly dance was and how little of it I knew.

The first step is learning. So, from that time onward, I vowed I would learn as much as I possibly could from each lovely dancer, and especially the teachers whom I was privileged to meet.

Ultimately, it became very helpful as a photographer to take belly dance class from a teacher so that I could understand how the movements work to the music, why things are done, what the setup moves are, and so on.

I didn’t do this a lot, and I’m a terrible dancer in that I can shimmy but that’s about it; my footing for traveling is just terrible and I get left and right mixed up a lot. But the learning I had via Sandra and Setareh was very providential for understanding belly dance. What I learned enabled stronger cognition of each belly dancer’s movement vocabulary, and the ability to sense faster.

After that, belly dance became much, much deeper than a sense of inertia and muscle memory. There was one day, about two years ago, I was covering a show with Sandra when time appeared to slow down to me … a lot. All of a sudden I was overwhelmed with "seeing" Sandra dance in a kind of slow-motion … this was a novel and uncanny sensation that I was not used to. My camera though, was stuck in some other parallel universe that ran even slower, it was definitely not keeping up with what I could see.

In actual fact, this was only the beginning of new sensation, an entirely new dawn. I’ve had an extremely large number of non-ordinary experiences in belly dance and these have been quite helpful to the photography work. Most of these have been trance-like, or a unique psychic connection, with the dancer. It’s taken me a long time to even understand and then explain these things, but now in belly dance, experiences that would be considered non-ordinary have actually become normal and routine for me.

What might not be generally realized is that if you ever have obtained a really good photograph with Single Lens Reflex (SLR) camera, at the time that photo is taken, you literally cannot see it. Now this is no less true for bad photography, but you don’t see what’s recorded because in a SLR (or DSLR, for a digital camera), a mirror lifts up to block a pentaprism that provides your view in the viewfinder. This effect is called viewfinder blackout and depending on the type of camera, it can be very quick, or not. But at the moment exactly when the photo is recorded, you cannot see with your eyes what the camera sees.

There are, however, other ways to "see." If you can sense the dance in a manner connected with the dancer, then the dance becomes an unbroken whole. When you are psychically "tuned" to the same sensations and movement, they appear hyper-real, and time becomes meaningless. The camera in that instance is merely an electro-mechanical device that does your bidding. The hyper-real dance is one where the shutter opening is a rendezvous with the belly dancer, both arriving at exactly the same moment in time concurrently. Taking the photo in this manner is not anticipation, it’s KNOWING. There is no shutter blackout when sensing the dancer directly as she is herself — everything appears continuous, more real than real, and basically the photographer is merely a witness to a cascade of numerous beautiful events. The "great shot" is plural: many are accessible as a consanguinity of arrival times that are concurrent.

From this and many other similar experiences while photographing belly dancers, I have come to know the joy of the dance very personally and it has affected me deeply.

I sense this joy is a kind of light within and that maybe it could be the belly dancer’s true nature … unburdened from any existential worry, completely free to move with the music. If true, this seems to be a much better light source because it both reveals and shadows what may be seen as herself, the dancer.

The photos in this small collection are some of the "unseen photos," generally from 2007 and after.  I hope you may like them.

Adriana

Adriana Lira

Ahava

Alimah

Andrea

Claudia

Eve

Kashmir Isis

Katharina

Khalilah

Maria

Meissoun

Michelle Joyce

Mina

Mychelle

Nadira

Nanna

Nicole

Salena

Sandra

Shoshanna

Shaunte

Summer Sahar

Surreyya and Crystal

Tabitha

Zaheea

"Herself"

Rakkasah Festival East 2008
Saturday Dancers E-K

Photos by Carl Sermon

October 18, 2008,
Ukrainian Cultural Center, Somerset, New Jersey
posted June 4, 2009

*Click for larger image
Caption corrections for each dancer appreciated.

East Pennsylvania Middle Eastern Dance Club* of Schwenksville, PA Click image for larger photo

Egyptian Sunrise* of Danbury, Connecticut

Egyptian Sun of Baltimore, Maryland

Egyptian Sun* of Baltimore, Maryland Click image for larger photo

Enzina of New York City, here and below

Eye of Horus of Norwalk, Connecticut

Fahtiem of Rowland Heights, California

Fatima Al Wahid of Sacramento, California

Femme Fatales of Monroe Township, New Jersey

Gypsies & Genies of Scotchplains, New Jersey, here and below

Jenivia of New York City

Jewels of the Niles of Bear, Delaware, here and below

Click for larger image

Johara & Snake Dance Theatre of Boston, MA

Kaeshi Chai* of New York City

Kaoru of Baltimore, Maryland

Kimberly of ?

* click on these photos to see larger image

Rakkasah Festival East 2008
Saturday Dancers A-D

Photos by Carl Sermon

October 18, 2008,
Ukrainian Cultural Center, Somerset, New Jersey
posted May 31, 2009

*Click for larger image
Caption corrections for each dancer appreciated.
Musicians in most photos are members of Pangia & Djinn:
Denise Mannion, Pat Olson, Carmine Guida, Melissa, Pete, Brad, more?

Abzahrah, Amala Gameela of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, here and below

Aladina of ?

Alchemy of Brooklyn, New York

Alexa of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Amalia of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Amira Shula of Rockville, Marlyland, here and below

Aneena of Novato, California, here and below

Angelique of ?

Anka Kusu, Treannah & Khatife of Somerset, New Jersey

Anna of ?, here and below [ed note- what’s the story behind this show?]

Desert Jewel Dance Company of Bear, Delaware, here and below x 2

Dondi of San Diego,California, here and below x 2

* click on these photos to see larger image

Rakkasah Festival East 2008, Friday Evening

Photos by Carl Sermon

October 17, 2008,
Ukrainian Cultural Center, Somerset, New Jersey
posted May 29, 2009

*Click for larger image
Caption corrections for each dancer appreciated.
Musicians in most photos are members of Pangia & Djinn:
Denise Mannion, Pat Olson, Carmine Guida, Melissa, Pete, Brad, more?

Alia Studio Dancers of Barrington, New Jersey

Alrana* of Stamford, Connecticut

Ariel of Washington, DC

Ayperi of Portland, Maine

Blanca of New York City *

Gabi of Randolph, New Jersey

Jennifer of Highland Park, New Jersey

Leila Haddad of Paris and Tunisia

Mira Naja Al Sephira of Columbia, Maryland, here and below

Mystic Wiles of Barrington, New Jersey, here and below

Najma * of Far Rockaway, New York

Shadia* of Gilgertsville, PA

Snake Charmer Dance Company of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Tempest of New Jersey *

Tonche Spirit Dancer of Hamilton, New Jersey, here and below*

Troupe Tryanga of Maplewood, New Jersey, here and below

Wicked Wiggles of Gaithersburg, Maryland

Willow* of Honolulu, Hawaii

Yosha Rahda* of Westerminster, Maryland

NOT Ziba*[Ed- Help!] of Charlottesville, Virginia

* click on these photos to see larger image