I Praise the Dance

I praise the dance,

for it frees people from the heaviness of matter

and binds the isolated to community.

I praise the dance, which demands everything:

health and a clear spirit and a buoyant soul.

Dance is a transformation of space, of time, of people,

who are in constant danger of becoming all brain,

will, or feeling.

Dancing demands a whole person,

one who is firmly anchored in the center of his life,

who is not obsessed by lust for people and things

and the demon of isolation in his own ego.

Dancing demands a freed person,

one who vibrates with the equipoise of all his powers.

I praise the dance.

O man, learn to dance,

or else the angels in heaven will not know

what to do with you.

- Saint Augustine

Your Dance Bag

The first night of every Level 1 class, I do a brief orientation with the students.  We go over simple studio layout (where's the bathroom, water fountain...), etiquette (being on time, no shoes in the studio, etc), how the session will go (that we run in 6-week repeats, finger cymbals week 3...), and I briefly touch on the idea of having a dance bag.  For Level 1 dancers, the bag is super simple--your finger cymbals, water bottle, and notebook.

As your dance world grows, so does your bag!  A little secret: I love bags. Not purses, BAGS. I love shopping for bags, assessing all their internal organizational pockets for their purpose...it goes right along with my love of office supplies and closet organizers, I suppose. I love everything to have its little "home". But I digress...

So once you have progressed past Level 1, what are some other common items to find in your dance bag?  Here is a checklist of potential things to keep in your dance bag at all times:

Fresh take on a TEDTalk - impulses

Two months ago, I posted a TEDTalk which featured Benjamin Zander talking about getting modern audiences to love classical music.  I didn't tie it into anything dancey, I just really was moved by the video and wanted to share.

Today I was trolling Blogrolls for some new dancey blogs to read, and I came across "The Tribal Way", written by a gal named Chella. She watched the same video a month later, and had a brilliant observation to make connecting Zander's discussion of "impulses" to learning and refining tribal bellydance.

"Zander notes how the learning of a skill progresses. The novice puts an impulse, an emphasis or concentration if you will, on every key. They have to think about each note as a separate entity. As their skill increases, they don't have to think so much about each note - their fingers know where to go and the emphasis is on fewer notes. Finally they become so proficient that they place even emphasis on an entire phrase of notes - one impulse for an entire stretch of music. This is where the magic happens! The notes are smooth, beautifully running into one another with no hesitation.

This idea of impulses can be applied to dance as well. A beginner concentrates on each facet of each move, and you can see it in their bodies - the concentration as they move between each motion. There's nothing wrong of course, this is just the start and I'm sure we all looked a little jerky and robotic in the very beginning. However, when you look at a professional dancer - Carolena Nericcio, Rachel Brice, etc - you will see no impulse, no jerky hesitant movements. Their motions run gracefully together in a stream of dance.

You can see this easily when you watch videos of Fat Chance Belly Dance, and other extremely skilled troupes as well. Why do they seem so graceful? So in sync and smooth?  Other troupes may do the exact same movements, but you cannot deny the certain 'je ne sais quoi' that FCBD possesses. Well, now you do know what - they have so few impulses. Their skill has grown so great that they are playing their instrument with only one impulse."

The rest of her excellent post is HERE. Enjoy!

Ollin Arageed by Hamza El Din

A song we often dance to in slow in class, Ollin Arageed by Hamza El Din, has a beautiful history behind it.

"Hamza El Din - Ollin Arageed
A Nubian percussion performance, played for a person only once in a lifetime--at the celebration of a first wedding--the rythm composed of three different beats on the tar, accompanied by a melodie handclapping, feet beating on the ground, and, traditionally, singing and the noise of women's jewelry in their soft movements to those rythms (sic)."

Hear the whole song on YouTube HERE
Buy the song yourself HERE
Thanks to the beautiful Amel Tafsout for passing along this link!



Side note, this was a popular song played by The Grateful Dead. You can hear a snippet of the live version played at Gizah HERE

Inspirational Troupe - Persephone Dance Co.

Sometimes we feel our wind is taken from our sails when we don't have a hearty group of dancers to stage.  Less bodies on stage translates into less staging options, less sound, less color, and sometimes less energy.  If you want to see a troupe that really knows how to rock a stage with only a few dancers--three in this performance at Tribal Fest last year--then look no further than Persephone Dance Company out of San Jose, CA!  In this performance, they showcase both the "dynamic simplicity" of ATS movement and the variety of interpretation and staging that a trio can use on stage to great effect.
(Shay's cautionary note: The Turkish drops in the first part of this performance, while stunning, are *extremely dangerous* and take a lot of strength, flexibility, and preparation to learn. If you wish to learn this move, please do so under the supervision of a trusted instructor.)