Re-posted from Yasmin's blog:
Conversations on Dance: Inspiration, the Creative Habit, and the Artistic Journey
I just realized that inspiration is a synonym for inhalation. Never quite thought about it that way.
1. (noun) inspiration
arousal of the mind to special unusual activity or creativity
Synonyms: divine guidance, breathing in, intake, aspiration, inhalation, brainchild, stirring
Note to self: Next time I'm feeling uninspired on my creative journey, take a deep breath.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Miwa Matreyek's Glorious Visions
Re-posted from Yasmin's blog:
Conversations on Dance: Inspiration, the Creative Habit, and the Artistic Journey
Miwa Matreyek, I salute you. I salute your imagination. I also salute your uncanny ability to share the world within your heart to anyone who is fortunate to see your magic.
To those who have not seen the creative mystery of Miwa Matreyek, take eleven minutes to watch this video of illusion and reality, of movement and shapes within the medium of experimental animation, video projection, music, and performance art. Even after multiple viewings, Matreyek continues to strike me with her imagination, presentation and storytelling. The goddess spirit in her glorious vision reminds me how it was, how it is, and how it can be.
The video projection technique Matreyek uses and the process of inserting herself in the animation and story is fascinating and fantastical. Imagine how utterly amazing this technique would be to tell the stories within One Thousand and One Nights. I also am inspired to incorporate this projection technique into a performance of belly dance to enhance the dance movement with luscious colors, organic shapes, stories, silhouettes, and far away memories.
Yes, this is another TED talk. I've said it before and I will say it again: TED, how I love thee!
Conversations on Dance: Inspiration, the Creative Habit, and the Artistic Journey
Miwa Matreyek, I salute you. I salute your imagination. I also salute your uncanny ability to share the world within your heart to anyone who is fortunate to see your magic.
To those who have not seen the creative mystery of Miwa Matreyek, take eleven minutes to watch this video of illusion and reality, of movement and shapes within the medium of experimental animation, video projection, music, and performance art. Even after multiple viewings, Matreyek continues to strike me with her imagination, presentation and storytelling. The goddess spirit in her glorious vision reminds me how it was, how it is, and how it can be.
The video projection technique Matreyek uses and the process of inserting herself in the animation and story is fascinating and fantastical. Imagine how utterly amazing this technique would be to tell the stories within One Thousand and One Nights. I also am inspired to incorporate this projection technique into a performance of belly dance to enhance the dance movement with luscious colors, organic shapes, stories, silhouettes, and far away memories.
Yes, this is another TED talk. I've said it before and I will say it again: TED, how I love thee!
Monday, September 6, 2010
Amy Tan on Creativity
Re-posted from Yasmin's blog: Conversations on Dance: Inspiration, the Creative Habit, and the Artistic Journey
Oh, TED, how I love thee. Technology, Entertainment and Design. Three of my favorite topics merged into, among other outlets, annual conferences and a free online video website of short talks by domain experts that make you go 'hmmmmm." I could peruse TED for hours on end and get my mind and heart poked, prodded and inspired. The TED video in this post is Amy Tan's humorous exploration and explanation of her creative process.
Amy Tan is a Chinese-American writer who penned several best-selling novels, including The Joy Luck Club and The Kitchen God's Wife. Mother/Daughter relationships are a central theme in The Joy Luck Club and also a central theme in her TED talk about developing her creativity.
Other constants on her creative path include synchronicity, uncertainty, moral ambiguity, chance and experience. She poses open-ended questions about where creativity might come from. Could it perhaps stem from a muse chromosome, some cosmic enlightenment, experience from past lives, childhood trauma, identity crisis, and/or neurological quirks such as psychosis or depression?
Once again, creativity's shadowy companion seems to be some shade of fear. If you visit Amy Tan's website, you'll find a section called Anxiety Tip of the Day with the caption "Don't worry, Be Anxious." In the following two quotes from Amy Tan, her fears include The Internal Censor and Anxiety. Who hasn't felt these particular shadowy companions?
1. "When I say we, I don't mean you necessarily... I mean me and my right brain, my left brain and the one that's in between that is the censor and tells me what I'm saying is wrong."
2. "There are at least eleven levels of anxiety and they all operate at the same time."
She ends her talk with conviction in hints from the universe and the lack of an absolute truth. Uncertainty is a good thing, she says. This is supported by the title of Tan's website blog "Blur of the Moment: Lack of Clarity is a Writer's Truth." The more Tan is aware of serendipitous events, the more of them occur and the greater focus she receives as she searches for particles of truth. Not an absolute truth, mind you, but particles of truth.
Oh, TED, how I love thee. Technology, Entertainment and Design. Three of my favorite topics merged into, among other outlets, annual conferences and a free online video website of short talks by domain experts that make you go 'hmmmmm." I could peruse TED for hours on end and get my mind and heart poked, prodded and inspired. The TED video in this post is Amy Tan's humorous exploration and explanation of her creative process.
Amy Tan is a Chinese-American writer who penned several best-selling novels, including The Joy Luck Club and The Kitchen God's Wife. Mother/Daughter relationships are a central theme in The Joy Luck Club and also a central theme in her TED talk about developing her creativity.
Other constants on her creative path include synchronicity, uncertainty, moral ambiguity, chance and experience. She poses open-ended questions about where creativity might come from. Could it perhaps stem from a muse chromosome, some cosmic enlightenment, experience from past lives, childhood trauma, identity crisis, and/or neurological quirks such as psychosis or depression?
Once again, creativity's shadowy companion seems to be some shade of fear. If you visit Amy Tan's website, you'll find a section called Anxiety Tip of the Day with the caption "Don't worry, Be Anxious." In the following two quotes from Amy Tan, her fears include The Internal Censor and Anxiety. Who hasn't felt these particular shadowy companions?
1. "When I say we, I don't mean you necessarily... I mean me and my right brain, my left brain and the one that's in between that is the censor and tells me what I'm saying is wrong."
2. "There are at least eleven levels of anxiety and they all operate at the same time."
She ends her talk with conviction in hints from the universe and the lack of an absolute truth. Uncertainty is a good thing, she says. This is supported by the title of Tan's website blog "Blur of the Moment: Lack of Clarity is a Writer's Truth." The more Tan is aware of serendipitous events, the more of them occur and the greater focus she receives as she searches for particles of truth. Not an absolute truth, mind you, but particles of truth.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Sabaya to Perform at Rachel Brice and Mardi Love Workshop
It’s been a big summer for Sabaya Bellydance Collective. Our recent first place competition win was followed in quick succession by our 5 year anniversary at Sahara Nights and then the honor to have been asked (again) to dance at the Rachel Brice and Mardi Love workshop the last weekend of September in Austin, Texas.
Here is a clip of Sabaya’s performance as the opening act for The Indigo (the touring and teaching dance group of Rachel Brice, Mardi Love and Zoe Jakes) when they last came through Austin in 2007.
Here is a clip of Sabaya’s performance as the opening act for The Indigo (the touring and teaching dance group of Rachel Brice, Mardi Love and Zoe Jakes) when they last came through Austin in 2007.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
We are thrilled to announce that Sabaya won first place in the medium troupe category at the Choreography Project for Middle Eastern Dance 2010 hosted by Z-Helene and Rick Fink. All the late late nights in the dance studio paid off!
We performed three pieces for the choreography project competition. The first was a pop song called Abou Ali, then came a drum piece, and the finale was an energetic remix of Toba. We utilized the following three approaches to creating these choreographies.
1. For Abou Ali, we divided the song into distinct sections and assigned one section to one dancer. Each Sabaya dancer was responsible for creating the choreography for an assigned section on our own time. At rehearsal, we would present our choreographed sections and teach it to the other Sabaya dancers. This took just over a month. After we learned the various sections, we strung them back to back and performed the whole piece. As we glued it together, it was important to remain open and communicative about which parts really worked, were difficult, didn’t mesh or needed adapting. We needed to be particularly flexible when we began adding complex stage formations and transitions.
For me, the formations and transitions were the most fun. In my section, I knew that I wanted to have a Rockette line that moved 360 degrees while maintaining the straight line. It was playful, fun, and it worked. A definite crowd surprise.
I also wanted to see if I could have a long phrase that was all about creating figure 8 curves in a continuous line that traveled up and down the body and out different diagonals without stopping. Kind of like when liquid dancers dance with an invisible ball that “rolls” around their body. This was my attempt at the bellydance version.
What was revealing about this method of choreographing was that these natural movements for me were difficult for some of my fellow Sabaya dancers to integrate into their body. I experienced this in the reverse too. For example, some movements that Stacey presented in her choreographed section felt very awkward in my body. Her section included counter clockwise pelvic squares downbeat front with counter clockwise torso squares downbeat front (and down). I felt this one to look really clumsy on me, but in troupe dancing it doesn’t matter how a movement looks on one dancer. What matters most is how the same movement looks spread across the group of dancers. We strive to make it harmonious.
The full blog post describing the two remaining choreography techniques and more photos are available on Yasmin's blog: Conversations on Dance.
We performed three pieces for the choreography project competition. The first was a pop song called Abou Ali, then came a drum piece, and the finale was an energetic remix of Toba. We utilized the following three approaches to creating these choreographies.
1. For Abou Ali, we divided the song into distinct sections and assigned one section to one dancer. Each Sabaya dancer was responsible for creating the choreography for an assigned section on our own time. At rehearsal, we would present our choreographed sections and teach it to the other Sabaya dancers. This took just over a month. After we learned the various sections, we strung them back to back and performed the whole piece. As we glued it together, it was important to remain open and communicative about which parts really worked, were difficult, didn’t mesh or needed adapting. We needed to be particularly flexible when we began adding complex stage formations and transitions.
For me, the formations and transitions were the most fun. In my section, I knew that I wanted to have a Rockette line that moved 360 degrees while maintaining the straight line. It was playful, fun, and it worked. A definite crowd surprise.
I also wanted to see if I could have a long phrase that was all about creating figure 8 curves in a continuous line that traveled up and down the body and out different diagonals without stopping. Kind of like when liquid dancers dance with an invisible ball that “rolls” around their body. This was my attempt at the bellydance version.
What was revealing about this method of choreographing was that these natural movements for me were difficult for some of my fellow Sabaya dancers to integrate into their body. I experienced this in the reverse too. For example, some movements that Stacey presented in her choreographed section felt very awkward in my body. Her section included counter clockwise pelvic squares downbeat front with counter clockwise torso squares downbeat front (and down). I felt this one to look really clumsy on me, but in troupe dancing it doesn’t matter how a movement looks on one dancer. What matters most is how the same movement looks spread across the group of dancers. We strive to make it harmonious.
The full blog post describing the two remaining choreography techniques and more photos are available on Yasmin's blog: Conversations on Dance.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
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.
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
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
Friday, April 23, 2010
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
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
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