Lace and My Muses: In Search of A Personal Style Part Three by Najia Marlyz Oct 17, 2004 (Continued
from Part 2)
Perhaps you wonder how this idea pertains to the field of dance, but I have been a part of the dance scene long enough now to have seen the dance itself (and costuming for it) change in subtle, but sometimes, radical ways due to influence from whatever competing performance arts exist at the time. Therefore, I would suggest to those of you who are now performing to look more closely at that which has been and why it is now undergoing change, sometimes for the better, but more often (in my opinion) for the worse. If we dancers want to compete for entertainment dollars from the public, then we cannot do it by altering our dance to be similar to all other dancing. I suggest that "elevating Belly dance" to the standards of western dance would be counter-productive in the long-term rather than a valid goal for us to desire. It is, must be, and must remain, different! Vive la difference! Whatever
crosses one's life path can become a canvas for artistic insight.
My husband ) taught me during the '60s
and '70s, (before our tidy little dissolution of our twenty-year
marriage), not to fear changes in technology. On the other hand,
my muses taught me to create by renewing and re-using the old
forms of almost anything: dance, art, lace,
tapestry weaving, or cooking. Kaethe Kliot's homemaking tips
proved to be as useful as they were homespun and funny such as:
one should not clean house before entertaining, but should, instead,
quickly simulate order, then do a thorough cleaning after guests
leave, reinforcing the notion that one's family deserves your
best efforts rather than one's guests! I applied this idea to
my dance career by doing major cleaning and repairing of each
dance costume, show tape, or choreography immediately after each
use rather than just before performing or just before planning
to sell it at a dancers' flea market. I don't have any photos
of Kaethe or me cleaning anything, but here is one of her teaching
me how to build a better sandcastle her style on the beach at
Fort Chronkite, CA.
Fortunately, many of the items comprising my collections have usually needed some repair. Generally, their state of disrepair was why they were affordable in the first place.
For the most part, Kaethe was the person who taught me how to repair and maintain many different types of objects. Some of them I managed quite well, and some not so well, but always, after assessing whether making a repair to the object would enhance it visually and decrease its value, or conversely, elongate its life and prolong its value to a collector. For instance, if you find a rare coin that would be of interest to numismatists, you should never clean it, but just preserve it from further degradation. I knowingly sacrificed and risked loss of many valuable coins on my dancer's coin belt and on my body jewelry, but I cannot say that I regret having made those sacrifices! As
I first began to study Belly dance, I read that when the ethnic
dancers of the old times in Egypt performed, they purchased and
collected gold coins, wrist and ankle bracelets, and rings with
the money they earned while dancing in entertainment troupes.
When I first began to dance professionally, I wanted to emulate
them in my own way, and so, with the currency that I had received
as "tips" from audiences, I habitually purchased gold coins to
add to my dance costumes. At the time, purchasing gold coins
with one's tips was not a feat as incredible as it would be today
because the price of gold then was only thirty-two dollars per
ounce and sometimes even less. Nowadays, it would require a lot
of dancing just to purchase one mediocre large gold coin.
I
fastened my gold coins into special holders rather than drill
holes in them. It proved difficult, and sometimes impossible,
to find one that fit some foreign coins, but since so many foreign
coins were odd sizes, commercially made holders to fit them were
not available generally. At least I knew enough about coin collecting,
not to ruin them with a drill if I wanted them to retain any of
their numismatic value. I purchased commercial holders and altered
them to fit the foreign coin sizes, and Jules designed and made
holders for a few of them that were odd sizes. As a result, I
never lost any of my coins and still have all of them, safe and
sound in my safety deposit box at the bank. I replaced the lining of beaded antique purses that contained nothing but shredded silk and repaired other parts of them. It was necessary to re-bead some that had been damaged by removing and utilizing small sections of their own beaded fringes, thereby gaining enough antique beads of the right size and color to complete the project. Kaethe taught me how to repair items, not just beaded purses, by a process of minor alterations, reworking their beaded fringes and tassels so that nothing appeared to be missing from the original design, and to restring necklaces and bracelets made of semiprecious stones that only appeared to be on their last legs when I purchased them. I soldered, jump-ringed, braided, and then, eventually, danced in some of our newly revamped creations. It would have been an extremely satisfying hobby even without the pleasure of wearing them for dance!
When I first expressed an interest in learning Belly dance, my mentors gave me the phone number of a mysterious Berkeley woman always dressed in black, who was known to haunt the local antique stores as well as the Kliot's shop, "Some Place," searching for Assiut cloth and other ethnic tidbits to sell to her dance students. However, the year I phoned the lady in black, inquiring about taking lessons with her, she took a fatal, and nearly instantaneous, dislike to me! She hung up the phone rather than except me as her student, without offering any politically correct excuses as to why she would not accept me in her classes.
"What do you do with your time now?" she had asked. "I
teach twelve classes per week in women's exercise at the YMCAs
and Parks and Recreation Departments," I had answered. . Click! Yup, I would have definitely become a problem to her! The teacher with the hair trigger did not consider inviting me into her camp even for a Berkeley moment. Instead, her rapid and firm receiver click sent me to Bert Balladine (but almost a year later) when the Berkeley Gazette published an article about his new Berkeley class opening enrollment at the O Aitos Greek Taverna. Unannounced to even my mentors and muses, I began attending late afternoon Belly dancing classes at O Aitos (Greek meaning "The Eagle"). After three years of Bert's delightfully funny and insightful instruction, and a couple more years performing, then teaching Belly dance finally, I also became a dancing partner with my instructor, Bert Balladine. When we danced together the first time, we were on stage at a 1975 convention, sponsored by Sula in Walnut Creek, California. I costumed for that occasion in white silk harem pants and a white silk long-sleeved blouse tied into a bra with a white silk veil fastened into my hair with a beaded belt from a 1920s dress. Around my hips, I wore a half circle variegated lavender silk shawl with long fringe that I untied during the dance, and did circular, sculptural movements with it (that I imagined Loie Fuller might have used) after having danced with the light weight, rectangular, white veil of fluttering silk for contrast. It was pure fantasy costuming. Had both of us not been so feverish with influenza, we would have enjoyed the moment for the pure magic that it was. For me, everything in life contains its own sort of magic, but occasionally the Universe sometimes laughs and throws us a curve ball, and sometimes, even a spit ball, just to remind us of who we are, .or aren't. (to be continued in part 4 of Lace and My Muses: Stardust) Have
a comment? Send us a
letter! Ready
for more? 10-31-04
Dancers Belly Up to Beat Bush,
by Grace, Photos by James Dudek & Victoria Seidman 10-30-04
Fill-'Er Up! by Alyson 10-25-04
The First (and definately not the
last!) Tribal Cafe! by Tempest |
My
budding knowledge about handcraft skills, accompanied by a heightened
awareness of artistry, age and history of artistic objects, caused
me to become a collector. "A collector of what?" one might ask.
You name it; if some (probably long-deceased) person had made
it by hand, and I could afford it, then I collected it! In the
future, I envision a personal Internet art gallery, in which I
hope to share with you some of my odd little collections of antique
laces, Assiut cloths, coins, beaded bags, hand embroidered fringe
shawls, paintings, etchings, lithographs, and sculptures. 
Later
on, I figured out the reason for her rude behavior for myself.
(It was elemental, my dear Watson.) 
