Masha Archer and the San Francisco Classic Dance Troupe

Masha Archer's daughter, Larissa, has been taking classes with FatChance Bellydance! And what's more, she has become more active in discussion groups around the web, answering questions, and SHARING PHOTOS from her mother's collection. She has given me permission to post them to be linked at the TribalBellydance.org website. The DRD site will host the gallery, but you can find more resources, galleries, articles, and tutorials at TribalBellydance.org. Thanks to Larissa, we can enjoy these blasts from the past on our tribal family tree!

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

A Tale of Life and Bellydancing - Rebaba of Hahbi 'Ru

Gilded Serpent is always full of such amazing gems.  I have recommended it many times before, and continue to advocate frequent visits to see what treasures you find about bellydance past and present.  Yes, I know it continues to be difficult on the eyes design-wise, but..the articles! The interviews! The photos! Lynette has really turned her labor of love into a go-to resource for so much fantastic firsthand accounts of bellydance history and evolution.

My most recent find?  An article written by Rita Alderucci, a.k.a. Rebaba of Hahbi 'Ru.  A gorgeous woman and dancer, with a difficult past of addiction, which she shares very candidly in this piece.

"It was at this low point in my life that my nearest and dearest, both my immediate family and my Hahbi’Ru family, came to my rescue in the unwanted form of an intervention to save my life.  With nothing but love and fear for my life they put their foots down, and took away the last connection I was desperately trying to hold on to which was dancing.  I had convinced no one but myself that I could keep dancing in that horrible condition. Thank God, they were brave enough and scared enough to say “NO MORE”, and do the one thing that would force me to get the help I needed, take the dance away.

...

In my story that follows I will take you on my life journey, the good and the bad, dancing and then not dancing.  I hope this will entertain you as well as help you understand a little about the illness of addiction."

I actually never knew that she had been a member of Bal Anat (there are some photos of her at 13 years old when she began to perform with them within the article!)

"Her classes gave us so much more than just a Belly dance.  Jamila, with her wonderful story telling and strong hand as a teacher gave me, and many like me, a new and fantastic feminist life-path that was strong and woman-dominated. It gave me a sense of pride and self-esteem for the very first time in my life.  It was the first time in my short life that far that I felt truly special, beautiful, and talented!  I was mature enough to realize that I wasn’t alone in my new found sense of self-worth.   Many young American women who began taking Jamila’s Belly dance classes at this time had similar experiences."

These snippets are from the first installment of her story, but get this...the story is told in SEVEN PARTS (with more to come I hope--the most recent installment was posted as recently as 1/4/12)!  There are seven articles written about her journey in the dance and life, travels around the world, even her lovers and misadventures, and it is all fantastic.  You can find all seven articles at her bio page here
http://www.gildedserpent.com/aboutuspages/RitaRebaba.htm#axzz1jI52w3W1

Mm Mm Monday - Latcho Drom

Oh happy day. Heaven of heavens!  Someone has put all of Latcho Drom (in parts, but all of it) up on YouTube...in high quality!  I had seen bits and bobs before, but usually low quality stuff that might as well have been on an old VHS.

What is Latcho Drom? It is a seminal documentary film made in the 90's about the Romani people, specifically tracing the travels of the "Gypsies" through India, Spain, Egypt, Turkey, Romania, etc.  In short, it is a visual and musical journey through the regions from which tribal bellydancers draw their fusion elements. There is much awesome music, much awesome dancing, much awesome costuming...and none of it is "costumed". These are The Real Thing.  And the worst part is that the video is no longer available except on old VHS.  They never made a DVD of it (though if someone did, they could make a small fortune from bellydancers alone).  In the meantime, we have YouTube. HOORAY!  Here they are:

Tribal Bellydance Music I Used To Love (and still do!!)

When I first began teaching, I had a 32-CD case full of music I had collected for listening and practice (and there was a lot more than that which didn't fit in those sleeves and stayed at home).  But among that collection, there were a few albums which were regularly used in my classes and performances--they were the 'must-have' albums for tribal dancers in those early days of the genre--which are still among my favorites today.  I thought I would share those titles with you, so if you don't already own them, you can fill out your musical collection if you are inspired.  Of course, you probably don't buy CD's very much these days, so I am linking to their MP3 downloads for your convenience. 

Article: Tribal Fusion Bellydance on Gilded Serpent

Have a read, and let me know what you think:

http://www.gildedserpent.com/cms/2010/11/03/jasmine-june-intro-tribal-fusion-belly-dance/

"The “fusion” in Tribal Fusion Belly Dance makes this dance genre elusive and tricky to define. Two dancers could have nothing in common except a few core movements and a couple costuming pieces, and yet both could define themselves as Tribal Fusion dancers. While this can be confusing, both to outsiders and to Tribal Fusion belly dancers, the freedom that fusion grants is exactly what makes the genre so attractive.

The other side of the coin is that sometimes Tribal Fusion Belly Dance is interpreted to be completely open-ended. This can lead to dancers changing or ignoring technique, musicality, and proper training. 

Since Tribal Fusion Belly Dance is a relatively new dance form, it is especially important to treat the genre with a level of professionalism, or else one runs the risk of discrediting the work of dancers who have dedicated their lives to creating and elevating Tribal Fusion Belly Dance."

Brief history of sword dancing

From Mish Mish via BellyTalk, a NW discussion group for bellydancers. It is confirmed by what Jamila told us at her weeklong, that she was essentially the one who conceived the sword as a bellydance prop:

"In Turkey and Arabic countries, dancing with a sword is done mainly by men as a display of skill in combat or to prepare for battle. My troupe used to have a Druse from Lebanon who did a spectacular sword dance his father had taught him and I have seen videos of a Persian dance troupe where the men feign battle and dance in unison.

Dancing while balancing a sword on your head has become popular in the United States with soloists and troupes but there is no such tradition in Arabic countries where balancing something on your head is a part of daily life, so it's no big deal The idea for this dance can be traced back to Jamila Salimpour and her seminal dance troupe, Bal Anat who became famous performing at the Renaissance Fair in California in the 1970's. Jamila was inspired by an Oriental painting from the late l9th Century by French artist Jean Leon Gerome of a group of musicians and a dancer, probably a ghawazee, dancing with a sword balanced on her head and another held in her hand. The swords belonged to the Turkish soldiers in the background who had undoubtedly hired the dancers to entertain them. A replica of this painting appears on Aisha Ali's recording of "Music of the Ghawazee" As Jamila's influence spread throughout the USA, so to did the practise of balancing a sword on your head."

Spoon's take on the evolution of Bellydance

Tribe isn't as dead as many people think, and over on Shira's tribe, there has been a lot of eager discussion about bellydance fusion and its legitimacy as bellydance. Some purists posit that it is an insult to the cultures from which bellydance comes from to change it or fuse it in any way. I have long held the belief that the nature of human culture is that things grow, change, and evolve over time just by being brought into a new environment. Nothing stays the same, and in the world today it is even more true--we are becoming a global culture where things will mix and mingle and change whether we want them to or not.

Now I *DO* agree that some fusions have moved so far away from bellydance, it doesn't fit the genre any more. And I agree that a lot of these more recent "infractions" are being perpetuated under the mistaken moniker of tribal. But that is another topic altogether. This particular post by Spoon addresses the idea of "change as insult" quite well and I wanted to share.

Jamila weeklong, here I come

It's finally in the works. My registration is in, and I am going to the Jamila weeklong next month. Booking flights and hotel next, along with Renee who will be a TA that week so we are traveling together. I love these bonding travels with Renee, where we get to dig into our passion for dance together and share in it on a deeper level than the day-to-day grind of teaching and running a troupe.

The workshop itself? As soon as the first one was announced, I knew it was just an absolute "must do" for me. While I don't agree with the claim that Jamila was a "tribal dancer" as we understand it today, her influence is completely and inarguably inseparable from the evolution of tribal as we know it--her aesthetics and fusion of cultures was the inspiration for tribal and fusions of our day--and I am eager to dig into those roots and see how it influences my dancing today. It was that kind of "faux-kloric" dancing that got me excited about bellydance in the first place (studying with Aleili, from old school Yaleil) and I am excited to explore those roots in greater depth!

A little bit about Masha I hadn't read before after the jump.

Wow! Jamila brief bio video!

I don't think I ever saw this before. What a gem!

Digging your own roots...

RE: historical dance, ethnic dance, authentic dance, etc

I definitely feel tied to the idea that what I am doing has roots in something larger and older than myself. There is some romanticism in it, sure, but for me, it is not about legitimizing what I do with that connection, but instead honoring a legacy of art and community, and at the same time making it relevant to my own art and community today. I am not interested in re-creating something from the past in my dance (as a former SCA member and costumer, I do like studying the details and recreating historical costume and such as a hobby, just not in my dance)

I definitely feel a lack of historical context in my own ethnicity, and there is something grounding in feeling like I have taken something passed down from history and molding it into something current and relevant for myself and my audiences. That's my two cents.