Day 3, 4 & 5: International Bellydance Conference of Canada, 2010

Day 3: Friday, April 23, 2010
Friday at the 2010 International Bellydance Conference started strong with a Sabaya final rehearsal and then Pop-n-Lock Artistry workshop with Sera Solstice. I enjoyed the visual effects of her combinations and would gladly study with her again. Another differentiator with Sera is her focus on meditation and energy visualization during the warm up. I took her East Coast Tribal Fusion drum workshop on Sunday afternoon (Day 5) but I hadn't eaten a proper lunch or breakfast so my body wasn't responding to the choreography. So frustrating. Also, the level was challenging enough that we didn't get through the choreography. Can't wait to get my hands on her new drum choreography DVD and work it out.

Here is Sera at Tribal Fest 2009. Look how she commits every bit of her body to every movement in every moment. Incredible. Powerful.



Body Image in Bellydance Discussion Panel
After Sera's Pop-n-Lock Artistry workshop, I headed upstairs to listen to the Body Image in Bellydance discussion panel with Delilah, Mayada, Jaene Castrillon, Andrea Deagon, Galiah and Candace Bordelon. Panelists were a good mix of very experienced dancers, an abuse survivor, fitness competitor, academics, younger and older dancers, and dancers of all shapes. Biographies available on the IBCC featured speakers page. Here is a short summary of the major themes.

Connecting to the Core
Beginning students don't always initially understand the concept of dancing from within their core or their physicality. Teaching dance classes in front of mirrors encourages students to look at themselves as they learn how to feel. This can defy the intention of deep connection with music, the body and emotion through movement. Disconnecting the self from one's image may help students feel emotion in the body. One exercise is to turn the lights low or encourage students to close their eyes to reconnect with their self.

Transformations
Transformations occur both internally and externally. Delilah advises her students to start a journal to note their personal growth through bellydance. As dancers start having physical power and control over their bodies through dance, they gain greater confidence and soon have more power and control over their entire lives. As a catalyst, bellydance can rejuvenate or even break up relationships due to sudden personal growth and awareness.

The Bellydance Image
It's a constant struggle between social perception, perception of ourselves, and the projection on us. Mayada made a great point about the mass media pressures to be thin and yet in the bellydance form there is a stereotype where one can't be a real bellydancer unless you have something to jiggle. In her classes, thin dancers often feel insecure and ask "am i doing this correctly?"

Candace sees the tribal dancers take much more ownership in their image and feminine power than oriental dancers. Mayada pointed out that Rachel Brice and her bellyrolls brought the 6 pack onto the scene but before that (especially in performance venues) there was a certain body type that was accepted: curvy, not too fat and not too skinny. As soon as Mayada lost weight and became more muscular, people asked her why she looked sick. Delilah said that in the Seattle area, being too skinny isn't a common issue but being too heavy may still be an issue.

Health vs Weight
Lots of discussion around the importance of focusing on health and not weight. For example, both skinny and heavy people can be unhealthy and you just can't tell from their weight.

Aging
Delilah made a very honest observation about aging. During her 35 years of dance, she said, there's a sadness in watching the body change and letting go of movements that she once could do and can't do anymore. She is learning a lot through this frustrating process of acceptance but for her the idea of retiring seems impossible. She says she will be dancing even with an aluminum walker. Her point was that although there are things one gives up as the body ages, there are other richer things that come in that an 18 year old won't have experienced. And there is power in acceptance.

Andrea Deagon, who started dancing at around 16 years old, made a touching statement about how one can give so much to the dance community through teaching and performing and yet at a certain time in one's dance career, people stop coming to watch. "The journey from youth to age and from thinness to weight is not at all pleasant," Andrea says. "For me, to have gone from being a thin dancer to one who is no longer thin and from a young dancer to one who is no longer young, I have seen people who would have formally embraced me and wanted to see my art, turn away from me and be uninterested in seeing my art. Am I a better dancer now? I can't do Turkish Drops anymore but yes, I AM a better dancer now. But there is not the same desire to see me, even within our bellydance community. So that's the flip side of the beauty and sharing and delight in our bodies that we create in our classrooms for the beginners among us."

After this panel, I went back to the hotel for dinner at Fresh and to get ready for our Sabaya show. It was nerve wracking, this performance. We were honored to close the first act. Whether it was due to nerves or peaking in rehearsal that morning, Sabaya didn't give the performance we had hoped to share. The next day, we did receive very positive feedback about our showcase and even an "it was perfect!" from Yasmina Ramzy, so perhaps it went better than we thought.

Day 4: Saturday, April 24, 2010
Jillina picked our spirits up with a fantastic Fellahi (farmer's dance) on Saturday morning. In this choreography, our character was a young peasant girl with a jug of water, flirting shyly and looking for a husband. On Day 5, Jillina taught a great Raks Sharki piece. Let me say that Jillina has fine tuned the art of teaching at large scale workshops. She is able to teach and complete a choreography in the allotted time with a strong dose of humor and enough repetition to "get it." As a testimony to her skill, most participants are still up and dancing by the end of the workshop. Don't always see that in either small or large workshops.

Here is Mahmoud Reda, the featured 2010 IBCC instructor who was unable to make it to Canada because of the volcanic ash cloud grounding air travel over Europe, dancing a Fellahi with Farida Fahmy and the Reda Troupe in the film Mid Year Vacation. I was unable to find the year this was filmed.


For more photos and reviews of Day 3,4 & 5, visit my blog Conversations on Dance.

Enjoy, Yasmin

Day 2: International Bellydance Conference of Canada, 2010

Day 2 of the 2010 International Bellydance Conference of Canada started out at 9am with Anatomy of Bellydance by Dr. Aurora Ongaro, professional chiropractor as well as Artistic Director of edVenture Arts Academy in Edmonton, Canada. Her presentation focused primarily on explaining the interaction of muscle groupings around the shoulder, back, abdominals and feet. For each area, she explained common problem areas encountered by new students and discussed methods of safe execution or training. For example, instead of crunches for improving belly rolls, she recommends core strengthening exercises that involve an unstable surface. Or for students complaining that backbends pinch, remind them to stabilize the back muscles by engaging front abs. To free up more muscles in the abdominal and back muscles, she recommends using hamstrings instead of lower abs to tuck the pelvis. As long as the student doesn't lock their knees or squeeze their glutes while engaging the hamstrings, they will safely be able to tuck their pelvis. She encourages students to cultivate body awareness by having them poke and prod their muscles to determine when muscles are properly engaged. Strong dancers must have solid body awareness and some of this responsibility includes understanding how muscles work together.

Anatomy of Bellydance lecture was followed by Rhythmic Notation for Bellydancers by Dr. George Sawa. This musician is a master. He began the lecture by covering the history of notation over the centuries starting with the system of Ishaq al-Mawsili (died in 850) to the Prosodic System of Al-Kindi (died 870) to the Precise System of al-Farabi (d. 950) to the Pre-Modern Arabic Era to the system of Safiyy al-Din (d. 1924). After the historical significance of each system, Dr. Sawa described the system he developed that notates each drum pattern by a visual circle that moves through each dumm, takk and rest in a continuous circle.



He played examples of several rhythmic patterns from his CD's Egyptian Music Appreciation and Practice for Bellydancers. The 2 CD set released two weeks ago includes an extensive booklet explaining all 21 rhythms used in Egyptian music (rather than the subset included in most rhythm CDs for dancers), Melodic Modes, Musical Forms and full color photos of 35 instruments. Side note: The tambourine percussionist creating embellishments over the drum rhythm in the CDs is in his 80s and has performed with Samia Gamal, Taheyya Carioca, Mohammad Abdel-Wahab, Farid el-Atrash and toured worldwide with Feyrouz. That's reason enough to get this learning tool.

For more photos and reviews of Day 2, visit my blog Conversations on Dance.
Enjoy,
Yasmin

Day 1: International Bellydance Conference of Canada, 2010

Long travel day today. Up at 4:30am, at the Austin airport by 5:30 and then off to Toronto. Lily and I were travel buddies and we made it to our hotel at 4pm that afternoon. Stacey and Rania took later flights and will be arriving close to midnight. By 8am tomorrow, we'll be out the door to a full day of lectures, workshops and performances at the 2010 International Bellydance Conference of Canada.

At tonight's opening gala performance, Yasmina Ramzy of Arabesque Dance Academy and host of the International Bellydance Conference announced that Mahmoud Reda and Khairiyya Mazin,the featured Egyptian instructors, were unable to make it to the conference because of the volcanic ash grounding airtravel over Europe. Here are short bio write ups taken from the IBCC website.

Mahmoud Reda is the pioneer of theatre dance in Egypt. In 1959 he founded the world renowned Reda Troupe. By the mid 60s the troupe had over 150 members including, dancers and musicians. As soloist, choreographer, and artistic director, he was instrumental in creating a legitimate theatrical dance genre that embraced many styles. He has choreographed more than 300 dances including for many Egyptian feature films, and has starred in three musicals directed by his late brother Ali Reda, two of which are major productions and are regarded as mile stones in the history of Egyptian cinema. With the troupe he has performed in prestigious theatres in more than 60 countries such as the Royal Albert Hall in London, The Olympia in Paris, Carnegie Hall in New York and Stanislavski in Moscow.

Khairiyya Yusuf Mazin is the youngest of the famous Banat Mazin, one of the last exponents of Ghawazi dance, which is perhaps the primary origin of Egyptian "belly dance." She is the sole remaining practitioner of the authentic dances of the Nawari Ghawazi of Upper Egypt. When Khairiyya Mazin retires, one of the most distinctive traditions of Ghawazi dance may come to an end. The Ghawazi are the famed female dancers described so often in Western travelers' accounts since the 18th century, and probably the major wellspring of Egyptian danse orientale.

What a true disappointment not to have the opportunity to learn from these legends. I had been truly looking forward to studying with the now 80 year old dance legend and choreographer Mahmoud Reda. But the show must go on and there will be plenty of amazing experiences ahead in the next few days of dance.

Photos and more reviews from the conference posted on my blog, Conversations on Dance. Enjoy!

Yasmin

One Hour with Suhaila

I’m still mentally and emotionally processing one of the most memorable events of my dance training life: my first private lesson with Suhaila to work on my personal choreography for the Advanced Performer Recital in December. Before the hour arrived, I was nervous. However, my goal was to remain open and receptive during the lesson; to do what Suhaila asked of me to the best of my ability without holding back one ounce of effort. My choreography, I knew, was not even close to brilliant, although I had put many hours of work into visualization, emotional perspective, isolation choices, foot work and stage patterns. It came as no surprise that Suhaila was able to look at what I had done and quickly inject a new level of life and power into my piece. I’m still sore several days later from the amount of energy and movement I tried to create in response to her suggestions!

This hour reinforced yet again why I have dedicated the past eight years to studying Suhaila’s format: there is always more. More depth, more range, more options, more freedom, more expression… What was also particularly exciting was the fact that this was my choreography (with my emotional perspective and interpretation), and Suhaila was helping me with adjustments to help ensure that the audience could feel what it is I’d like to express. In my opinion, I am a lucky dancer indeed to have had this kind of feedback. Watching video of myself and trying to make adjustments on my own would never have gotten me as far as we did in just one hour. I thought I was breathing... but I need to breathe deeper. I thought my movement had come from an emotional perspective and interpretation of the music… but I have to go even further and understand “the why” of every single moment / movement. There were a lot of other improvements as well in the areas of body positioning, technique, movement initiation, dynamics and sentiment.

What Suhaila really changed in that hour was not just my choreography, but my perspective, yet again, on me/dance/bellydance. For years, I have chased the intangible "how" to take a performance from OK to good; or from good to great. There is still a lot of work ahead of me to incorporate my newfound, yet heightened awareness of the principles Suhaila asked me to apply to my choreography. Not only am I more excited about this particular piece, but look forward to applying (or attempting to apply) these same concepts to future projects (including improvisation). Maybe one day I'll be able to live up to my own, new, higher expectations of myself. One thing is for sure - I'm going to keep trying.

--Stacey

Suhaila's blog about the L4 show: http://www.suhailainternational.com/blog/?p=408

Sabaya Invited to the 2010 International Bellydance Convention of Canada

We are pleased that Sabaya has been invited to perform on the main stage at the 2010 International Bellydance Convention of Canada. The convention is held in Toronto on April 21 -25 and features bellydance legend Mahmoud Reda from Egypt as well as Jillina, Sera Solstice, Delilah, Yasmina Ramzy and other well-known instructors.

What is Tribal Style Bellydance?

This short documentary film asks leaders in the tribal bellydance field to answer the following questions:

"How do you think your style differs from other styles of bellydance.
What is it like?
How would you describe it to a general audience?"

I found this video to be less valuable for answering the question "What is Tribal Style Bellydance" and a more insightful commentary about the interviewed dancers' personas off stage compared to their onstage personas as well as how they interpret their individual dance styles.

Enjoy!
Yasmin

Suhaila says it like it is at the L3 prep.

Reported by Yasmin

On doing your thang:
"You'll never be able to please the bellydance audience, so why even try?"
"Will they really get you? Who cares what they think. Do what you need to do."
"Don't you dare ever bellydance to please me---- ever!"
"When Mozart was criticized in his day, they complained that he played too many notes."
"Be innovative."
"I never present work knowing that people will get it. It will take 15-20 years before people get it. It took 20 years for people to get Dances of the Sultan. "
"You can get away with almost anything if you dance it with honest, integrity, intelligence.... and you don't suck."
"I say: let them hate me!"
"The only way we are going to raise the level of the dance is to raise the expectations visually and physically."
"Represent the music, don't just make patterns to please the audience."
"I want you out of the box and not safe."

Personal choreography techniques to help a dancer push through barriers:
Take out all bellydance movement from the choreography.
Take 2 choreographies, change them, and mash 'em up.
Find 2 pieces of music and dance the same way for each song.
Dance the entire song in one spot. You can turn in one spot around yourself, but no traveling.
Hum the song.
Dance without the music and count it outloud.
Exhaust all angles of possibility, even if you go back to your first version of the piece.
Physicalize a taste. How would you dance the emotion of food, for example.
Tell the story.
Listen to the music and physicalize what you hear.
Watch a piece as if you were looking down from the ceiling. Notice your floor patterns.

Understand where you are within your dance
Isolate what you are doing and identify the level at which you dance.
Identify the level of other dancers that you watch.
Dance above your level for your mentors. Dance below your level for your paying audience.

Meisner Acting technique:
"Observing somebody is not the same as experiencing them."
"Taking classes with Meisner changed my life."

Question to Suhaila: What is your favorite choreography from your repertoire?
Suhaila: I don't like any of them. But that is not the point. I love them because they represent a moment in time. A moment in my life.