By PIA CATTON
Published: August 1, 2007
When filmmakers make movies about dance on stage — be it ballet or modern — the results are usually a bit of a let down: The backstage drama winds up with more (and better) stage time than the performances.
But when it comes to social dance, Hollywood deserves a fair measure of praise. Movies that incorporate or revolve around social dance are distinctly of their own time. And without movies to show how people danced at a given moment in history, the style of that era would exist only in photography and memory.
Imagine the extreme frustration that would befall today's grandparents if they could only show their grandchildren photographs of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. A still image of those two slim figures tapping out a duet or waltzing together across the room would show the style of the day and the surroundings, but none of the quality of the movement.
Of course, the average couple going out for a spin on a Friday night in 1949, the year that "The Barkleys of Broadway" opened, couldn't possibly dance as well as this professional pair. But Fred and Ginger represented a standard of elegance and — given the cornball plots to fill the time between the dancing — enough romance to send the audience into flights of fancy.
In the modern era, perhaps the greatest film to capture social dance is "Saturday Night Fever" (1977). The scenes in the Brooklyn nightclub give us glimpses of lively group dances, some of which are interrupted by the flashy stylings of the local hotshot, Tony Manero, played by the exceptionally gifted John Travolta. Though his home-grown style looks spontaneous on the dance floor, the rehearsal scenes let the viewer in on the trick: Tony and his partners practice quite a lot. What he creates in the studio pushes the form forward when he takes it public.
But "Saturday Night Fever" is also brutally realistic about life, love, and sex. These young women and men don't know where they're going, and only the boy who can dance — the artist — can see a way out of the borough. The film uses the vehicle of dance to show how modern society was changing and expectations were expanding, which makes it much more than a film about dance.
The plot of "Flashdance" (1983) brings high and low dance into a culture clash. Exotic dancer Alex Owens (Jennifer Beals) wants to get into the local ballet company. Lacking ballet technique and a rule-abiding temperament, she breaks in by way of attitude. The dance that is captured here is more about strip dancing than fox trotting, but her workouts and the culminating audition scene are examples of a jazzbased style that was popular at the time. And whereas in "Striptease" (1996), Demi Moore also had some creative, moody stripper acts set to popular Annie Lennox songs, nothing beats "Flashdance" for that infamous gush of water.
By contrast, social dance is at the center of the plot of "Footloose" (1984). A sleepy small town, in which the most important church pastor has forbidden dance, is disrupted when the sexy, daring Ren McCormack (Kevin Bacon) arrives from the big city. He leads the high school students in a reasoned protest in favor of a prom with dancing.
Ren gets the girl and the prom, but the fun part is watching his buddy Willard (Chris Penn) learn how to dance. The teaching starts from the need to understand rhythm and then to have the confidence to create something personal. At the prom, the exuberant dance moves suggest that the rest of the teens — who have previously not been allowed to dance — have been secretly practicing, too. There is partnering, individual showing off, and even a littlebreak-dancing, which considering that the Midwestern town depicted was almost lily-white, was probably not entirely accurate.
But the '80s were the era of breakdancing — and any film about dance needed it. The film "Breakin'" (1984) brought jazz and breakdancing together. "Beat Street" (1984) emphasized the role of the DJ. Neither film may live large in the annals of cinema, but their purpose was to capitalize on the interest in a new urban dance form. By putting breakdancing at the center of the action, the filmmakers gave a national audience to something that was only emerging in cities. And they gave modern films about street dance, such as "You Got Served" (2004), a jumping off point to incorporate the explosion of gang culture.
Though films such as "Grease" (1978) and "Dirty Dancing" (1987) became hits within the musicalfilm genre, both look back to other eras rather than explore the contemporary. "Grease" opened only one year after "Saturday Night Fever," but how different the happy version of the '50s looks in comparison to the grittiness and reality of Brooklyn in the late 1970s. "Dirty Dancing" took a retrospective look at 1963 in the Catskills, but launched the new (and supremely annoying) song "(I've Had) the Time of My Life" onto the radio.
As different as all these films are, the one element connecting films about social dancing — be they retrospective or of their time — is the idealistic message that dancing is a sort of healing activity. It can bring families together, elevate one's social standing, and open minds. And if that's true, we could use a little more of it — in film and in real life, too.
Source: NY Sun
Thursday, 9 August 2007
Leaps to Freedom
By SHILPA SEBASTIAN R.
Photo: Sampath Kumar G.P.
Published: Aug 07
For Jaap Van Manen, dance is not only a way of life, but also something that helps you break free from hangups
Jaap Van Manen from Netherlands, turns on the music and tells the five dancers to move. Move, they do, with each one following not the music but their own body rhythm. Neither is conscious of the other, and all moves are independent and at their own pace.
Jaap is watching; his face cradled in his palms. He watches every move intensely. The music stops, he calls the dancers and tells them: “You stayed in your own space till now, but now if you make eye contact with the others around you, what will happen?”
“We start to interact with the others through movement,” comes the response, which pleases Jaap so much that he claps his hand and turns on the music again. Suddenly you notice that there is a smile on each dancers’ face as they make eye contact with the others and they seem to be aware of what the other is doing and try to choreograph their own body movement to blend with the other’s. Now they all move as one unit.
“You see dance is such a beautiful tool. You just have to open the window and let the person find his own way using it,” says this man who is a theologian, dance teacher and “life coach”.
For him, dance is not only a way of life, but also something that helps you “break free and overcome all your inhibitions. I do not dance with them but only act as a facilitator who gives them ideas and help them discover their own space. You have to become a child with your movement and not an inhibited adult ,” explains Jaap.
With a true blue Christian upbringing, he took to theology to discover spirituality and according to him “spirituality is broader than a religion. Religion specifies god and the ways to him. It is like breaking that one source into pieces. Spirituality is important for me as it is the source of any work. Dance is also a way to find that spirituality. It is more about the self. But when you go deep into that self you are bound to discover your connection to the supernatural because the self in you is connected to that large source of life,” he says.
Jaap started a dance company called Mobile in Netherlands in 1998 with the aim to “develop a person’s potential and dance with a flow. Our goal is for people (in companies) to move and develop themselves, so that they behave authentically and act naturally.” He uses themes as an impulse for movement. For instance, “I can use an element like water and ask the dancer to move smoothly like a river or like a roaring ocean. The dancer thereby moves with an image in her mind. This way you can express the theme water in its different moods”.
He feels bad about the current lifestyle that has taken people away from movement.
“Dance and movement are innate. Our body is designed for movement — walk, run, jump, but because of our education and the lifestyle we have restricted our movement.” So Jaap is very happy when he has a person with no dance background walking into his class.
“If it is a workshop for adults then I take them back to their childhood. My class is all about opening up the self with movement. If I find the person a bit too rigid only then will I dance along, yet as an example and not as a model for that person to imitate me. If he does copy me then how can he evolve from within?”
If this principle is applied then Indian classical dance is all about fixed movement and expressions and hand gestures. So does it mean that Indian dance is not evolved?
“If dance is used as a tool to make someone free and aware of themselves, then its duty is fulfilled. Coaching should not be like setting yourself some goals, like business or for success. But as a true teacher I will forget myself and the development of the other person becomes important,” explains Jaap, who has worked with children, adults and elderly people in “different settings” for more than 20 years. At Stichting de Santenkraam — a workshop for biblical spirituality and creativity, he combined theology and dance and worked as a choreographer.
Jaap now looks forward to work in India, and his focus is not just the dancers “but for anyone who has a passion for movement. Even people who want to learn it for therapeutic values or for those who want to discover themselves can walk into my class,” he says. Jaap can be contacted on jaapmobile@hetnet.nl or info@dancecoaching.nl. Jaap’s workshop in the city was organised by Rainbow Inc.
This column features those who choose to veer off the beaten track.
Source: The Hindu
Photo: Sampath Kumar G.P.
Published: Aug 07
For Jaap Van Manen, dance is not only a way of life, but also something that helps you break free from hangupsJaap Van Manen from Netherlands, turns on the music and tells the five dancers to move. Move, they do, with each one following not the music but their own body rhythm. Neither is conscious of the other, and all moves are independent and at their own pace.
Jaap is watching; his face cradled in his palms. He watches every move intensely. The music stops, he calls the dancers and tells them: “You stayed in your own space till now, but now if you make eye contact with the others around you, what will happen?”
“We start to interact with the others through movement,” comes the response, which pleases Jaap so much that he claps his hand and turns on the music again. Suddenly you notice that there is a smile on each dancers’ face as they make eye contact with the others and they seem to be aware of what the other is doing and try to choreograph their own body movement to blend with the other’s. Now they all move as one unit.
“You see dance is such a beautiful tool. You just have to open the window and let the person find his own way using it,” says this man who is a theologian, dance teacher and “life coach”.
For him, dance is not only a way of life, but also something that helps you “break free and overcome all your inhibitions. I do not dance with them but only act as a facilitator who gives them ideas and help them discover their own space. You have to become a child with your movement and not an inhibited adult ,” explains Jaap.
With a true blue Christian upbringing, he took to theology to discover spirituality and according to him “spirituality is broader than a religion. Religion specifies god and the ways to him. It is like breaking that one source into pieces. Spirituality is important for me as it is the source of any work. Dance is also a way to find that spirituality. It is more about the self. But when you go deep into that self you are bound to discover your connection to the supernatural because the self in you is connected to that large source of life,” he says.
Jaap started a dance company called Mobile in Netherlands in 1998 with the aim to “develop a person’s potential and dance with a flow. Our goal is for people (in companies) to move and develop themselves, so that they behave authentically and act naturally.” He uses themes as an impulse for movement. For instance, “I can use an element like water and ask the dancer to move smoothly like a river or like a roaring ocean. The dancer thereby moves with an image in her mind. This way you can express the theme water in its different moods”.
He feels bad about the current lifestyle that has taken people away from movement.
“Dance and movement are innate. Our body is designed for movement — walk, run, jump, but because of our education and the lifestyle we have restricted our movement.” So Jaap is very happy when he has a person with no dance background walking into his class.
“If it is a workshop for adults then I take them back to their childhood. My class is all about opening up the self with movement. If I find the person a bit too rigid only then will I dance along, yet as an example and not as a model for that person to imitate me. If he does copy me then how can he evolve from within?”
If this principle is applied then Indian classical dance is all about fixed movement and expressions and hand gestures. So does it mean that Indian dance is not evolved?
“If dance is used as a tool to make someone free and aware of themselves, then its duty is fulfilled. Coaching should not be like setting yourself some goals, like business or for success. But as a true teacher I will forget myself and the development of the other person becomes important,” explains Jaap, who has worked with children, adults and elderly people in “different settings” for more than 20 years. At Stichting de Santenkraam — a workshop for biblical spirituality and creativity, he combined theology and dance and worked as a choreographer.
Jaap now looks forward to work in India, and his focus is not just the dancers “but for anyone who has a passion for movement. Even people who want to learn it for therapeutic values or for those who want to discover themselves can walk into my class,” he says. Jaap can be contacted on jaapmobile@hetnet.nl or info@dancecoaching.nl. Jaap’s workshop in the city was organised by Rainbow Inc.
This column features those who choose to veer off the beaten track.
Source: The Hindu
Friday, 3 August 2007
The DNA of Dance
AVPR1a and SLC6A4 Gene Polymorphisms Are Associated with Creative Dance Performance (research article)
By: Rachel Bachner-Melman, Christian Dina, Ada H. Zohar, Naama Constantini, Elad Lerer, Sarah Hoch, Sarah Sella, Lubov Nemanov, Inga Gritsenko, Pesach Lichtenberg, Roni Granot, Richard P. Ebstein
Published: September 30, 2005
Synopsis
Dancing, integrally related to music, likely has its origins close to the birth of Homo sapiens. The authors hypothesized that there are differences in aptitude, propensity, and need for dancing that may be based on differences in common genetic polymorphisms. Identifying such differences may lead to an understanding of the neurobiological basis of dancing.
Variants of the serotonin transporter and the arginine vasopressin receptor 1a genes were examined in performing dancers, elite athletes, and nonathletes/nondancers. The serotonin transporter regulates the level of serotonin, a brain transmitter that contributes to spiritual experience. The vasopressin receptor has been shown in many animal studies to modulate social communication and affiliative behaviors. Notably, dancers scored high on the Tellegen Absorption Scale, a correlate of spirituality, and the Reward Dependence factor in Cloninger's Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire, a measure of empathy, social communication, and need for social contact. Significant differences were observed in allele frequencies for both genes when dancers were compared to athletes as well as to nondancers/nonathletes. These two genes were also associated with scores on the Tellegen Absorption Scale and Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire Reward Dependence, suggesting that the association between these genes and dance is mediated by personality factors reflecting the social communication, courtship, and spiritual facets of the dancing phenotype.
Introduction
Dance, an art form closely allied to music, has been little studied from the neuroscience or genetic perspective, despite its significance in all cultures throughout the ages. Dance, like music, is an activity dating to prehistoric times that is sometimes a sacred ritual, sometimes a form of communication, and sometimes an important social and courtship activity; finally, dance is an art form that exists in every culture and manifests diverse paths [1]. Dance, as an expressive art form, is often considered inherently creative, especially when compared with a “nonartistic” domain. It is also a cultural form that results from creative processes that manipulate human bodies in space and time (“embodiment”). In many ways, dance is also a part of music, to which it is integrally related. Finally, professional dancers possess an exceptional talent, and as noted by Kalbfleisch [2], “Exceptional talent is the result of interactions between goal-directed behavior and nonvolitional perceptual processes in the brain that have yet to be fully characterized and understood by the fields of psychology and cognitive neuroscience.”
Dance may appear to be an unusual phenotype for human molecular genetics studies, but it is no more so than two closely related phenotypes, music [3] and athletic performance [4−6], that have both become subjects of molecular research. There is accumulating contemporary interest in the neuroscience of music [3,7−11] providing “proof of principle” that a widespread pursuit historically considered as part the human art and cultural heritage also has a solid basis in neuroscience, evolution, and genetics. Both music and athletic performance are complex phenotypes, the presentation of which is molded by environment and genes (and their interaction), especially in elite performers. A good example is absolute pitch, a relatively “clean” musical phenotype, of which the occurrence in approximately 20% of professional musicians is dependent not only on intrinsic ability but also on age of onset and intensity of musical training [11]. Similarly for athletic performance, evidence has accumulated over the past three decades for a strong genetic influence on human physical performance, with an emphasis on two sets of physical traits, cardiorespiratory and skeletal muscle function, that are particularly important for performance in a variety of sports [4]. A number of individual genetic variants associated with elite athletes have been provisionally identified, but there is little argument that elite athletes as well as elite musicians likely possess other characteristics related to personality and emotion that also contribute to their performance.
We suggest the notion that the “dance” phenotype is no more difficult to define than other complex human behavioral phenotypes (schizophrenia, attention deficit, personality, violence, and others) that have been shown to be both heritable and amenable to genetic analysis. Dancers fulfill a set of criteria with considerable face validity (similar in principle to the usual Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders–style “symptom checklist” [12]) that both identifies and distinguishes one disorder from another. For example, the US Department of Labor suggests that the following qualities, inter alia, are required to be a professional dancer: flexibility, agility, coordination, grace, a sense of rhythm, a feeling for music, and a creative ability to express oneself through movement [13].
In our ongoing studies of the genetic basis of human personality [14−16], we have recruited currently performing dancers (n = 85) who train for at least 10 h per week, because we thought that a study of this group would help us understand why some individuals are endowed with creative and artistic abilities or inclinations. Toward this end, dancers were characterized using both psychosocial instruments and common genetic polymorphisms. Of particular interest are the Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire (TPQ) [17] and the Tellegen Absorption Scale (TAS) [18], which, respectively, measure aspects of social communication (TPQ Reward Dependence) and spirituality (TAS), personality facets important in the dance phenotype.
We investigated two polymorphic genes that we hypothesized to add to artistic creativity: the arginine vasopressin 1a receptor (AVPR1a) and the serotonin transporter (SLC6A4). The SLC6A4 long promoter allele is more efficient at the level of transcript, producing more transporter protein that presumably more effectively removes serotonin from the synapse [19]. Both common intron 2 VNTR repeats (10 and 12) enhance transcription [20], although individual repeat elements differ in their activity in embryonic stem cell models [21]. In lower vertebrates, the promoter region repeat elements of the AVPR1a receptor determine brain-specific expression patterns and are responsible for differences in patterns of social communication across species [22]. In humans, the functional significance of the promoter repeats remains to be elucidated, although association between these repeats and social communication in humans was recently suggested [14,23,24].
We considered that AVPR1a might contribute to the dance phenotype, reflecting this gene's role in affiliative, social, and courtship behaviors [25], activities that are vital in many kinds of human dancing. Dancing also taps into human spiritual resources as evidenced by the role of dancing in sacred rituals [1]; it has been shown that serotonin plays a role in human spiritual experiences [26]. Additionally, use of ecstasy, a serotonergic neurotoxin, at rave dances and dance clubs [27] further links serotonin to both dancing and states of altered consciousness, two phenomena also linked in the absence of drugs. Finally, many studies show that serotonin enhances the release of vasopressin in the brain [28], suggesting the notion that these two genes, AVPR1a and SLC6A4, are also likely to exhibit epistasis, or gene−gene interactions, in association studies that reflect their interaction at the level of individual neurons as well as on the plane of neurotransmitter pathways. Interestingly, serotonin and vasopressin interact in the hypothalamus to control communicative behavior [29].
NB: Please follow the link below to read the whole paper.
Source: Public Library of Science (Genetics)
By: Rachel Bachner-Melman, Christian Dina, Ada H. Zohar, Naama Constantini, Elad Lerer, Sarah Hoch, Sarah Sella, Lubov Nemanov, Inga Gritsenko, Pesach Lichtenberg, Roni Granot, Richard P. Ebstein
Published: September 30, 2005
“With the creation of the universe, the dance too came into being, which signifies the union of the elements. The round dance of the stars, the constellation of planets in relation to the fixed stars, the beautiful order and harmony in all its movements, is a mirror of the original dance at the time of creation.” - Lucian of Samosata (~125 to 180 A.D.), On Dance (De Saltatione)
Synopsis
Dancing, integrally related to music, likely has its origins close to the birth of Homo sapiens. The authors hypothesized that there are differences in aptitude, propensity, and need for dancing that may be based on differences in common genetic polymorphisms. Identifying such differences may lead to an understanding of the neurobiological basis of dancing.
Variants of the serotonin transporter and the arginine vasopressin receptor 1a genes were examined in performing dancers, elite athletes, and nonathletes/nondancers. The serotonin transporter regulates the level of serotonin, a brain transmitter that contributes to spiritual experience. The vasopressin receptor has been shown in many animal studies to modulate social communication and affiliative behaviors. Notably, dancers scored high on the Tellegen Absorption Scale, a correlate of spirituality, and the Reward Dependence factor in Cloninger's Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire, a measure of empathy, social communication, and need for social contact. Significant differences were observed in allele frequencies for both genes when dancers were compared to athletes as well as to nondancers/nonathletes. These two genes were also associated with scores on the Tellegen Absorption Scale and Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire Reward Dependence, suggesting that the association between these genes and dance is mediated by personality factors reflecting the social communication, courtship, and spiritual facets of the dancing phenotype.
Introduction
Dance, an art form closely allied to music, has been little studied from the neuroscience or genetic perspective, despite its significance in all cultures throughout the ages. Dance, like music, is an activity dating to prehistoric times that is sometimes a sacred ritual, sometimes a form of communication, and sometimes an important social and courtship activity; finally, dance is an art form that exists in every culture and manifests diverse paths [1]. Dance, as an expressive art form, is often considered inherently creative, especially when compared with a “nonartistic” domain. It is also a cultural form that results from creative processes that manipulate human bodies in space and time (“embodiment”). In many ways, dance is also a part of music, to which it is integrally related. Finally, professional dancers possess an exceptional talent, and as noted by Kalbfleisch [2], “Exceptional talent is the result of interactions between goal-directed behavior and nonvolitional perceptual processes in the brain that have yet to be fully characterized and understood by the fields of psychology and cognitive neuroscience.”
Dance may appear to be an unusual phenotype for human molecular genetics studies, but it is no more so than two closely related phenotypes, music [3] and athletic performance [4−6], that have both become subjects of molecular research. There is accumulating contemporary interest in the neuroscience of music [3,7−11] providing “proof of principle” that a widespread pursuit historically considered as part the human art and cultural heritage also has a solid basis in neuroscience, evolution, and genetics. Both music and athletic performance are complex phenotypes, the presentation of which is molded by environment and genes (and their interaction), especially in elite performers. A good example is absolute pitch, a relatively “clean” musical phenotype, of which the occurrence in approximately 20% of professional musicians is dependent not only on intrinsic ability but also on age of onset and intensity of musical training [11]. Similarly for athletic performance, evidence has accumulated over the past three decades for a strong genetic influence on human physical performance, with an emphasis on two sets of physical traits, cardiorespiratory and skeletal muscle function, that are particularly important for performance in a variety of sports [4]. A number of individual genetic variants associated with elite athletes have been provisionally identified, but there is little argument that elite athletes as well as elite musicians likely possess other characteristics related to personality and emotion that also contribute to their performance.
We suggest the notion that the “dance” phenotype is no more difficult to define than other complex human behavioral phenotypes (schizophrenia, attention deficit, personality, violence, and others) that have been shown to be both heritable and amenable to genetic analysis. Dancers fulfill a set of criteria with considerable face validity (similar in principle to the usual Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders–style “symptom checklist” [12]) that both identifies and distinguishes one disorder from another. For example, the US Department of Labor suggests that the following qualities, inter alia, are required to be a professional dancer: flexibility, agility, coordination, grace, a sense of rhythm, a feeling for music, and a creative ability to express oneself through movement [13].
In our ongoing studies of the genetic basis of human personality [14−16], we have recruited currently performing dancers (n = 85) who train for at least 10 h per week, because we thought that a study of this group would help us understand why some individuals are endowed with creative and artistic abilities or inclinations. Toward this end, dancers were characterized using both psychosocial instruments and common genetic polymorphisms. Of particular interest are the Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire (TPQ) [17] and the Tellegen Absorption Scale (TAS) [18], which, respectively, measure aspects of social communication (TPQ Reward Dependence) and spirituality (TAS), personality facets important in the dance phenotype.
We investigated two polymorphic genes that we hypothesized to add to artistic creativity: the arginine vasopressin 1a receptor (AVPR1a) and the serotonin transporter (SLC6A4). The SLC6A4 long promoter allele is more efficient at the level of transcript, producing more transporter protein that presumably more effectively removes serotonin from the synapse [19]. Both common intron 2 VNTR repeats (10 and 12) enhance transcription [20], although individual repeat elements differ in their activity in embryonic stem cell models [21]. In lower vertebrates, the promoter region repeat elements of the AVPR1a receptor determine brain-specific expression patterns and are responsible for differences in patterns of social communication across species [22]. In humans, the functional significance of the promoter repeats remains to be elucidated, although association between these repeats and social communication in humans was recently suggested [14,23,24].
We considered that AVPR1a might contribute to the dance phenotype, reflecting this gene's role in affiliative, social, and courtship behaviors [25], activities that are vital in many kinds of human dancing. Dancing also taps into human spiritual resources as evidenced by the role of dancing in sacred rituals [1]; it has been shown that serotonin plays a role in human spiritual experiences [26]. Additionally, use of ecstasy, a serotonergic neurotoxin, at rave dances and dance clubs [27] further links serotonin to both dancing and states of altered consciousness, two phenomena also linked in the absence of drugs. Finally, many studies show that serotonin enhances the release of vasopressin in the brain [28], suggesting the notion that these two genes, AVPR1a and SLC6A4, are also likely to exhibit epistasis, or gene−gene interactions, in association studies that reflect their interaction at the level of individual neurons as well as on the plane of neurotransmitter pathways. Interestingly, serotonin and vasopressin interact in the hypothalamus to control communicative behavior [29].
NB: Please follow the link below to read the whole paper.
Source: Public Library of Science (Genetics)
Monday, 16 July 2007
In Iraq, This Art Takes Courage
By Michael Luo
Published: Tuesday, October 31, 2006
BAGHDAD: The members of the national dance troupe of Iraq are performers without an audience. They rehearse daily, but hardly ever put on a show.
Yet each turn of the hip and dip at the waist in their choreographed pieces has become weighted with a dangerous new reality, even as they wait for the chaos around them to subside so they can perform again. In today's Iraq, with conservative religious parties and radical militias exerting growing influence over every aspect of life, even dancing is an act of bravery.
"Society is overwhelmed by these religious ideologies," said Tariq Ibrahim, a male dancer in the Baghdad troupe, the Iraqi National Folklore Group. "Now a woman on the street without a head scarf attracts attention. What about a woman onstage dancing?"
Together they are a band of 10 women and 15 men from varied religious backgrounds. Once they toured the world together. Today they are simply trying to survive, hoping one day to thrive again as a troupe. But the religiosity sweeping Iraq does not bode well for their future.
Female participation in folk dancing is considered haram, or forbidden, in Islam. Ayatollah al-Sistani, the leading Shiite cleric in Iraq, has issued strict guidelines against dancing in various situations. The country's Shiite-led government, the dancers said, is naturally trying to marginalize them.
"Religion in its essence does not match with art," said Fouad Thanoon, the group's director and lead choreographer. "So when religion and government come together, that will affect art very much."
The group has more immediate worries about extremists. Recently one of its members, Bushra Yousif, 21, a petite woman with delicate features who has been with the group for six years, received a note at home warning her to leave within 48 hours. A bullet was included in the envelope.
She was probably singled out because of her profession, she said, but she will continue to attend rehearsals every day. She loves dancing too much, she said, describing it as the highest form of art to "deliver a message through your body."
"Dying for this group would be like being martyred," she said, adding that it is a risk she accepts.
The group, which began in 1971, is dedicated to preserving the folk dancing heritage of Iraq, performing traditional dances drawn from across that country's history and geography. The troupe's first two decades were golden years, when dancers trained with master instructors from overseas and frequently went on international tours.
In 1980 the dancers performed at the United Nations in New York and visited Paris. They have gone to Italy, Japan and China - 60 countries in all - and won numerous prizes along the way.
The economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations in the early 1990s brought most of that to a halt. But just a year before the American-led invasion in 2003, the group enjoyed a rebirth with a burst of freedom under Saddam Hussein's government, performing almost every week here.
"The audiences were huge," Thanoon, the group's director said. "The theaters were overbooked."
But the group has been in suspended animation since the invasion began. It has performed just four times in Iraq and made two brief trips to Jordan and Dubai since 2003. The violence that surrounds it makes holding performances impossible.
"It is absurd," Ibrahim said. "It is not logical to have a performance group that only practices."
The dance troupe had mainly supported itself with ticket sales before the fall of Saddam's government, but when performances ended that became impossible. The current government has not compensated for that loss, the dancers said. They receive tiny stipends, amounting to about $140 a month, but even that is not guaranteed. The money is usually barely enough to cover each dancer's rent. Because the dancers rehearse every day from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., it is almost impossible for them to get second jobs.
The present government, controlled by conservative religious parties, cares little for the arts, al-Damalouji said, so it is not inclined to support groups like the dance troupe.
"Iraq is without a doubt an Islamic society, but Islam is not our only culture," she said. "All the other cultures are being denied by this government. There is an attempt to change Iraqi culture in general."
In this climate the dancers said they must censor themselves. The group recently played a small role in a theatrical production in support of the country's national reconciliation plan, put on for some employees of the Ministry of Culture, but Thanoon advised his dancers, for their own sake, to minimize any shaking of their hips or shoulders. The result was a rigid routine that seemed more martial than elegant.
Most of the women in the group go to elaborate lengths to hide their occupation from their neighbors, even though some of their faces are well known in Iraq from their performances on television under the old government.
Subhi, who lives in a mostly Shiite neighborhood dominated by militiamen, said she told her neighbors that she had quit her dancing and was working as a receptionist.
On a recent trip to Jordan for a cultural festival, she had her husband load her luggage in the car in the middle of the night. Even her husband's family did not know that she was going to perform. She told them she was visiting her brother in Kirkuk.
Dumoaa Jamal was with the group for 10 years, but her uncle forced her to quit after the invasion because he deemed it too dangerous. But she returned three months ago, and tries to allay his fears by making sure she comes to rehearsals dressed in inconspicuous clothing and a head scarf hiding her long flowing hair.
"I wish it could be 24 hours a day," she said about the group's rehearsals. "When I enter the theater, it is as if everything from outside is gone. It is as if I have entered a different world."
Madeeh Qasim and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times in Baghdad contributed reporting.
Source: International Herald Tribune
Published: Tuesday, October 31, 2006
BAGHDAD: The members of the national dance troupe of Iraq are performers without an audience. They rehearse daily, but hardly ever put on a show.
Yet each turn of the hip and dip at the waist in their choreographed pieces has become weighted with a dangerous new reality, even as they wait for the chaos around them to subside so they can perform again. In today's Iraq, with conservative religious parties and radical militias exerting growing influence over every aspect of life, even dancing is an act of bravery.
"Society is overwhelmed by these religious ideologies," said Tariq Ibrahim, a male dancer in the Baghdad troupe, the Iraqi National Folklore Group. "Now a woman on the street without a head scarf attracts attention. What about a woman onstage dancing?"
Together they are a band of 10 women and 15 men from varied religious backgrounds. Once they toured the world together. Today they are simply trying to survive, hoping one day to thrive again as a troupe. But the religiosity sweeping Iraq does not bode well for their future.
Female participation in folk dancing is considered haram, or forbidden, in Islam. Ayatollah al-Sistani, the leading Shiite cleric in Iraq, has issued strict guidelines against dancing in various situations. The country's Shiite-led government, the dancers said, is naturally trying to marginalize them.
"Religion in its essence does not match with art," said Fouad Thanoon, the group's director and lead choreographer. "So when religion and government come together, that will affect art very much."
The group has more immediate worries about extremists. Recently one of its members, Bushra Yousif, 21, a petite woman with delicate features who has been with the group for six years, received a note at home warning her to leave within 48 hours. A bullet was included in the envelope.
She was probably singled out because of her profession, she said, but she will continue to attend rehearsals every day. She loves dancing too much, she said, describing it as the highest form of art to "deliver a message through your body."
"Dying for this group would be like being martyred," she said, adding that it is a risk she accepts.
The group, which began in 1971, is dedicated to preserving the folk dancing heritage of Iraq, performing traditional dances drawn from across that country's history and geography. The troupe's first two decades were golden years, when dancers trained with master instructors from overseas and frequently went on international tours.
In 1980 the dancers performed at the United Nations in New York and visited Paris. They have gone to Italy, Japan and China - 60 countries in all - and won numerous prizes along the way.
The economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations in the early 1990s brought most of that to a halt. But just a year before the American-led invasion in 2003, the group enjoyed a rebirth with a burst of freedom under Saddam Hussein's government, performing almost every week here.
"The audiences were huge," Thanoon, the group's director said. "The theaters were overbooked."
But the group has been in suspended animation since the invasion began. It has performed just four times in Iraq and made two brief trips to Jordan and Dubai since 2003. The violence that surrounds it makes holding performances impossible.
"It is absurd," Ibrahim said. "It is not logical to have a performance group that only practices."
The dance troupe had mainly supported itself with ticket sales before the fall of Saddam's government, but when performances ended that became impossible. The current government has not compensated for that loss, the dancers said. They receive tiny stipends, amounting to about $140 a month, but even that is not guaranteed. The money is usually barely enough to cover each dancer's rent. Because the dancers rehearse every day from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., it is almost impossible for them to get second jobs.
The present government, controlled by conservative religious parties, cares little for the arts, al-Damalouji said, so it is not inclined to support groups like the dance troupe.
"Iraq is without a doubt an Islamic society, but Islam is not our only culture," she said. "All the other cultures are being denied by this government. There is an attempt to change Iraqi culture in general."
In this climate the dancers said they must censor themselves. The group recently played a small role in a theatrical production in support of the country's national reconciliation plan, put on for some employees of the Ministry of Culture, but Thanoon advised his dancers, for their own sake, to minimize any shaking of their hips or shoulders. The result was a rigid routine that seemed more martial than elegant.
Most of the women in the group go to elaborate lengths to hide their occupation from their neighbors, even though some of their faces are well known in Iraq from their performances on television under the old government.
Subhi, who lives in a mostly Shiite neighborhood dominated by militiamen, said she told her neighbors that she had quit her dancing and was working as a receptionist.
On a recent trip to Jordan for a cultural festival, she had her husband load her luggage in the car in the middle of the night. Even her husband's family did not know that she was going to perform. She told them she was visiting her brother in Kirkuk.
Dumoaa Jamal was with the group for 10 years, but her uncle forced her to quit after the invasion because he deemed it too dangerous. But she returned three months ago, and tries to allay his fears by making sure she comes to rehearsals dressed in inconspicuous clothing and a head scarf hiding her long flowing hair.
"I wish it could be 24 hours a day," she said about the group's rehearsals. "When I enter the theater, it is as if everything from outside is gone. It is as if I have entered a different world."
Madeeh Qasim and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times in Baghdad contributed reporting.
Source: International Herald Tribune
Tuesday, 3 July 2007
Achieving the Ideal Bellydance Posture
by Cinthia (??)
published: Sept 22, 2006 (??)
For all of you aspiring belly dancers out there: here’s how to improve your dance posture and get everyone’s attention.
Stand up with your back against a wall. Lift your chest, keeping your shoulders down and your neck stretched tall. Your feet should be hip-width apart with the back of your heels touching the wall. Bend your knees (and keep them bent no matter what!) Keep your upper back resting against the wall.
Now, the key part: take one of your hand and slide it behind you in the small of your lower back. It is very likely that you’ve got a gap between your hand and the wall, which means that you are arching and need to align your lower back against the wall. If your hand can’t fit in there because your entire back is touching the wall, congratulations, you’ve got the straight back fundamental for the ideal belly dancing posture
How to align your lower back against the wall:
Put your hand on your tailbone (coccyx) and push down on it until your pelvis tilts away from the wall and every vertebrae in your back has contact with the wall. Notice that keeping your knees nicely bent helps a lot! Remember to keep your upper back to the wall as you do this so that you are not bending your upper body forward.
Also, the chest should remain lifted and the weight of the shoulders pushed down until you feel some resistance in your back. The lift of the rib cage will bring strong opposition from your back muscles, which are pulling down. You know you are doing this right when you start to feel some tension on your lats (muscles right below the shoulder blades). If you feel your lats pulling down and lengthening, it’s working, girls (and boys)! After all this hard work, the persistent arch should have disappeared - or gradually be disappearing - by now. You may not get there for a while, but the more you push your body, the closer you’ll get to your goal. Keep pushing!
If you think you’ve got it, let yourself get used to the feeling of a straight back, bent knees and a lifted upper body. Hold the position and then slowly release. Pay attention to your body’s natural tendency to arch. Repeat over and over until you start to get a feel of what your muscles have to do each time in order to make the right posture happen. It may feel unnatural and stiff, but once you practice keeping this posture at all times, you will eventually get used to it and it will become second nature.
I assure you, getting this posture right will give you a totally different look as a dancer. When you are able to hold yourself like this, you will not only be able to command attention easily on the dance floor, but you will also have better control of most belly dancing movements and steps, including spins and turns (where a straight back is absolutely essential). And last but not least, once you get comfortable with your new posture, getting into it will immediately make you feel more confident about yourself and about your dancing.
Good luck!!
Source: Wannabe Nothing
P/S: She's not a pro or teacher, but I just wanna save this here to read later.
published: Sept 22, 2006 (??)
For all of you aspiring belly dancers out there: here’s how to improve your dance posture and get everyone’s attention.
Stand up with your back against a wall. Lift your chest, keeping your shoulders down and your neck stretched tall. Your feet should be hip-width apart with the back of your heels touching the wall. Bend your knees (and keep them bent no matter what!) Keep your upper back resting against the wall.
Now, the key part: take one of your hand and slide it behind you in the small of your lower back. It is very likely that you’ve got a gap between your hand and the wall, which means that you are arching and need to align your lower back against the wall. If your hand can’t fit in there because your entire back is touching the wall, congratulations, you’ve got the straight back fundamental for the ideal belly dancing posture
How to align your lower back against the wall:
Put your hand on your tailbone (coccyx) and push down on it until your pelvis tilts away from the wall and every vertebrae in your back has contact with the wall. Notice that keeping your knees nicely bent helps a lot! Remember to keep your upper back to the wall as you do this so that you are not bending your upper body forward.
Also, the chest should remain lifted and the weight of the shoulders pushed down until you feel some resistance in your back. The lift of the rib cage will bring strong opposition from your back muscles, which are pulling down. You know you are doing this right when you start to feel some tension on your lats (muscles right below the shoulder blades). If you feel your lats pulling down and lengthening, it’s working, girls (and boys)! After all this hard work, the persistent arch should have disappeared - or gradually be disappearing - by now. You may not get there for a while, but the more you push your body, the closer you’ll get to your goal. Keep pushing!
If you think you’ve got it, let yourself get used to the feeling of a straight back, bent knees and a lifted upper body. Hold the position and then slowly release. Pay attention to your body’s natural tendency to arch. Repeat over and over until you start to get a feel of what your muscles have to do each time in order to make the right posture happen. It may feel unnatural and stiff, but once you practice keeping this posture at all times, you will eventually get used to it and it will become second nature.
I assure you, getting this posture right will give you a totally different look as a dancer. When you are able to hold yourself like this, you will not only be able to command attention easily on the dance floor, but you will also have better control of most belly dancing movements and steps, including spins and turns (where a straight back is absolutely essential). And last but not least, once you get comfortable with your new posture, getting into it will immediately make you feel more confident about yourself and about your dancing.
Good luck!!
Source: Wannabe Nothing
P/S: She's not a pro or teacher, but I just wanna save this here to read later.
Wednesday, 20 June 2007
Belly Dancers by the Bay
Text and pictures: Tim Coleman
A titillating trip to San Francisco and its tattooed belly dance troupes, Fat Chance, Ultra Gypsy and Indigo.
Published in: Skin&Ink Jul 07 and Taetowier-Magazin (German) Jul 07
Translation from English to German: Petra Tilg
Re-translation from German to English: Ursel Meyer (Tribester)
Note from Ursel: Please bear in mind that this text is a re-translation of the original translation, and that it can’t exactly reconstruct the original text. Potential mistakes or misquotes may occur due to these circumstances. Thank you.
Five years ago, when I first wrote about the dancers of Fat Chance, there were only a few tattooed bellydance troupes. (Re-translators note: either the author or the original translator has to be mistaken here, as his first article on Fat Chance was published in the November 1996 issue of the Taetowier Magazin. I know because I own that issue, too.) But things have changed since. Nowadays there are tattooed troupes all over the US. For this article I met with three of the most talented from the (San Francisco) Bay Area: Fat Chance, Ultra Gypsy and Indigo.
Fat Chance – The Pioneers
All eyes are on the wave of dancers, gliding gracefully into the room. Flowers adorn their hair, hands play zills, and traditional costumes reveal exquisitely tattooed waists. Welcome to an exclusive event in San Francisco: the 20 year anniversary of Fat Chance Belly Dance, one of the most gifted bellydance troupes in America, that has more than anybody else contributed to inspiring a blending of the art of tattooing and this ancient dance form.
“People keep telling me that our dance and our body art impress them profoundly. They feel so inspired that they change their lives radically to include both into their lives”, explains Carolena Nericchio, founder of Fat Chance.
Just like they were the pioneers of the new tattoo aesthetic in bellydance, Fat Chance have also introduced a new dance style, “American Tribal”.”In traditional bellydance the steps are improvised by the dancer”, explains Carolena, “in American Tribal the dancers move in formation while the leader calls out the steps for the others. We use codified steps, and we don’t digress from them.” Six of the eight dancers are tattooed. When the founding members first met they were astonished when they discovered that most of them had been tattooed by the same artist. Her name is Vyvyn Lazonga. “It felt as if our tattoos created the strong bond between us, that brought us together”, confesses Carolena, “we thought it so strange and exciting”.
It is not surprising that some of Carolena's tattoos are inspired by Middle Eastern culture. The blue diamond on her back, done by Bill Salmon, originates from patterns on amulets of the Tuareg, a North African tribe. The hand of Fatima is a symbol that is used in the whole Arab hemisphere to repel evil spirits. The Arab word “ghawazee” on her back has two meanings: dancer and prostitute.
Not only in the Arab hemisphere people connect bellydance and sexuality. Western club owners have debased bellydance for decades by announcing performances in ridiculing ways as cheap vaudeville acts, sexually stimulating or openly erotic. Outsiders all too easily misunderstand the undulating movements of bellydance as sexual animation. This assumption enraged any dancer that I talked to.
Ultra Gypsy – The “Sisterhood”
El Rio, a bar in San Francisco’s Mission District, is packed. The crowd waits patiently. Suddenly a group of beautifully costumed women glides out of the shadows and onto the stage, accompanied by a firework of folk rhythms. This is Ultra Gypsy, another one of the famous and talented bellydance troupes of the Bay Area, that perform at parties, in clubs and in theaters. The founder, Jill Parker, started to learn the dance in 1988. Today Ultra Gypsy consists of 13 members, five of them are heavily tattooed.
The name of the troupe bears witness to Jill’s fascination for the culture of Gypsies. “Gypsies were always at the fringes of society”, she explains, “I like that, and I fully identify with their lives as outsiders. Gypsies are tribal people. They have much strength and a strong company.” A characteristic that she finds as well in the world of bellydance. “Ultra Gypsy is like a family. We are a sisterhood”, she explains, “we have a strong connection. None of us wants to make big money by dancing. We fulfill our artistic dreams, and that can be risky. You have to love what you do, and the people who work with you as well, otherwise you’ve got a problem.”
Jill believes that their tattoos contribute to the atmosphere within the troupe. “I think it is important, because it demonstrates our will to show ourselves, bear art on our bodies and tell the world something about who we are.”
Jill got tattooed before she discovered bellydance. Freddy Corbin did her biggest tattoo, an elegant grape-vine that winds around her hips.
Jill remembers how it was when she went to a bellydance class for the first time. “When I entered this room full of strong women, who were sensual without being competitive, I knew immediately that this was what I wanted to do”, she says, “ and many women who come to my class for the first time feel the same. It is a very deep and healing feeling.”
Indigo - Bellydance and Cabaret
It is late afternoon. I’m sitting in a café in Berkeley and waiting for the appearance of two members of Indigo, another great tattooed bellydance troupe from San Francisco. Rachel Brice, the founder, and her best friend Zoe stream laughing and giggling through the door. I wave with an issue of the Taetowier-Magazin (or is it Skin&Ink?) and they grab their coffee and come to me. During the interview they share the microphone and present such a funny double-feature that my sides begin to hurt. “Don’t worry”, says Rachel, “we’re always like that, especially on stage”.
For both women it was love at first sight when they first saw bellydance at the California Renaissance Fairs. To Rachel it happened when she saw Hahbi ‘Ru dancing. “I saw them, and I was so touched it brought tears into my eyes. I felt something release inside me, and I wept and wept. The next day I started taking lessons. I never stopped dancing ever since.”
Currently only Rachel and Zoe are heavily tattooed. Zoe lifts part of her top to show a sherry bloom (cherry blossom?) design on her shoulder, done by Philip Milic of Braindrops. On her back there’s a crowned fairy with an eye at the center of the crown. “What does the eye mean?” I ask. “It stands for the third or the spiritual eye,” Zoe replies. “Yeah, Zoe has three eyes” jokes Rachel. “It may sound odd,” explains Zoe, “but it stands for a spiritual connection that I have with myself and the world around me.” “Honey, you’re cheesy,” Rachel japes, and both start to giggle once more.
Now it’s Rachel’s turn to show her wonderful flower design by Tex of Cold Steel, that winds around her muscular belly. Some Sanskrit letters are artfully worked into it. “They originated in the yoga sutras, written by the Indian mahatma Patangali,” Rachel explains, “they refer to the necessity of practicing yoga consistently and in humbleness for a long time, to reach your goal.”
2003 Rachel founded The Indigo Dance Company. Where does this unusual name come from? “It’s such a beautiful word and so full of spiritual meanings,” explains Rachel, “the root is Indian, and some people believe that bellydance originates in India, so that is a connection. But also the Tuareg in North Africa dye their clothing with indigo, and I’m enthused with their aesthetics. Then indigo is a royal color, even indigo as tattoo ink. There’s so much in it.”
“We love calling our dance style Dark Cabaret,” Zoe adds, “we draw our inspiration from the time period between 1890 and 1920. When women like Mata Hari and Ruth Saint Denis took up bellydance and interpreted it in their own ways.”
When Zoe and Rachel were studying with Ultra Gypsy, Jill Parker didn’t only teach them to become better bellydancers, but she also inspired them to get more tattoos. “When I danced with Jill, “ remembers Rachel, “I only wanted to watch her tattoo wind around her hips. It was so beautiful. And I thought I had to work on myself more.”
Since Indigo got told that they could get a tax refund for their tattoos, they feel motivated even more. “Yeah, we want to thank George Bush for paying our tattoos,” jokes Zoe. “Yes, thank you, George,” Rachel adds, “you’re no good otherwise, but this was really cool!”
Indigo are delighted that bellydance is spreading so fast all over the USA, and with it the tattoo aesthetic. “You know, it’s unbelievable,” says Rachel, “but I found out that some grannies in my classes consider getting tattooed for the first time in their lives. Women in their sixties and seventies who have discovered bellydance for themselves are now getting their first tattoos, and their grandchildren as well – oh my God, ain’t this cool?”
Source: an Ultra Gypsy forum
A titillating trip to San Francisco and its tattooed belly dance troupes, Fat Chance, Ultra Gypsy and Indigo.
Published in: Skin&Ink Jul 07 and Taetowier-Magazin (German) Jul 07
Translation from English to German: Petra Tilg
Re-translation from German to English: Ursel Meyer (Tribester)
Note from Ursel: Please bear in mind that this text is a re-translation of the original translation, and that it can’t exactly reconstruct the original text. Potential mistakes or misquotes may occur due to these circumstances. Thank you.
Five years ago, when I first wrote about the dancers of Fat Chance, there were only a few tattooed bellydance troupes. (Re-translators note: either the author or the original translator has to be mistaken here, as his first article on Fat Chance was published in the November 1996 issue of the Taetowier Magazin. I know because I own that issue, too.) But things have changed since. Nowadays there are tattooed troupes all over the US. For this article I met with three of the most talented from the (San Francisco) Bay Area: Fat Chance, Ultra Gypsy and Indigo.
Fat Chance – The Pioneers
All eyes are on the wave of dancers, gliding gracefully into the room. Flowers adorn their hair, hands play zills, and traditional costumes reveal exquisitely tattooed waists. Welcome to an exclusive event in San Francisco: the 20 year anniversary of Fat Chance Belly Dance, one of the most gifted bellydance troupes in America, that has more than anybody else contributed to inspiring a blending of the art of tattooing and this ancient dance form.
“People keep telling me that our dance and our body art impress them profoundly. They feel so inspired that they change their lives radically to include both into their lives”, explains Carolena Nericchio, founder of Fat Chance.
Just like they were the pioneers of the new tattoo aesthetic in bellydance, Fat Chance have also introduced a new dance style, “American Tribal”.”In traditional bellydance the steps are improvised by the dancer”, explains Carolena, “in American Tribal the dancers move in formation while the leader calls out the steps for the others. We use codified steps, and we don’t digress from them.” Six of the eight dancers are tattooed. When the founding members first met they were astonished when they discovered that most of them had been tattooed by the same artist. Her name is Vyvyn Lazonga. “It felt as if our tattoos created the strong bond between us, that brought us together”, confesses Carolena, “we thought it so strange and exciting”.
It is not surprising that some of Carolena's tattoos are inspired by Middle Eastern culture. The blue diamond on her back, done by Bill Salmon, originates from patterns on amulets of the Tuareg, a North African tribe. The hand of Fatima is a symbol that is used in the whole Arab hemisphere to repel evil spirits. The Arab word “ghawazee” on her back has two meanings: dancer and prostitute.
Not only in the Arab hemisphere people connect bellydance and sexuality. Western club owners have debased bellydance for decades by announcing performances in ridiculing ways as cheap vaudeville acts, sexually stimulating or openly erotic. Outsiders all too easily misunderstand the undulating movements of bellydance as sexual animation. This assumption enraged any dancer that I talked to.
Ultra Gypsy – The “Sisterhood”
El Rio, a bar in San Francisco’s Mission District, is packed. The crowd waits patiently. Suddenly a group of beautifully costumed women glides out of the shadows and onto the stage, accompanied by a firework of folk rhythms. This is Ultra Gypsy, another one of the famous and talented bellydance troupes of the Bay Area, that perform at parties, in clubs and in theaters. The founder, Jill Parker, started to learn the dance in 1988. Today Ultra Gypsy consists of 13 members, five of them are heavily tattooed.
The name of the troupe bears witness to Jill’s fascination for the culture of Gypsies. “Gypsies were always at the fringes of society”, she explains, “I like that, and I fully identify with their lives as outsiders. Gypsies are tribal people. They have much strength and a strong company.” A characteristic that she finds as well in the world of bellydance. “Ultra Gypsy is like a family. We are a sisterhood”, she explains, “we have a strong connection. None of us wants to make big money by dancing. We fulfill our artistic dreams, and that can be risky. You have to love what you do, and the people who work with you as well, otherwise you’ve got a problem.”
Jill believes that their tattoos contribute to the atmosphere within the troupe. “I think it is important, because it demonstrates our will to show ourselves, bear art on our bodies and tell the world something about who we are.”
Jill got tattooed before she discovered bellydance. Freddy Corbin did her biggest tattoo, an elegant grape-vine that winds around her hips.
Jill remembers how it was when she went to a bellydance class for the first time. “When I entered this room full of strong women, who were sensual without being competitive, I knew immediately that this was what I wanted to do”, she says, “ and many women who come to my class for the first time feel the same. It is a very deep and healing feeling.”
Indigo - Bellydance and Cabaret
It is late afternoon. I’m sitting in a café in Berkeley and waiting for the appearance of two members of Indigo, another great tattooed bellydance troupe from San Francisco. Rachel Brice, the founder, and her best friend Zoe stream laughing and giggling through the door. I wave with an issue of the Taetowier-Magazin (or is it Skin&Ink?) and they grab their coffee and come to me. During the interview they share the microphone and present such a funny double-feature that my sides begin to hurt. “Don’t worry”, says Rachel, “we’re always like that, especially on stage”.
For both women it was love at first sight when they first saw bellydance at the California Renaissance Fairs. To Rachel it happened when she saw Hahbi ‘Ru dancing. “I saw them, and I was so touched it brought tears into my eyes. I felt something release inside me, and I wept and wept. The next day I started taking lessons. I never stopped dancing ever since.”
Currently only Rachel and Zoe are heavily tattooed. Zoe lifts part of her top to show a sherry bloom (cherry blossom?) design on her shoulder, done by Philip Milic of Braindrops. On her back there’s a crowned fairy with an eye at the center of the crown. “What does the eye mean?” I ask. “It stands for the third or the spiritual eye,” Zoe replies. “Yeah, Zoe has three eyes” jokes Rachel. “It may sound odd,” explains Zoe, “but it stands for a spiritual connection that I have with myself and the world around me.” “Honey, you’re cheesy,” Rachel japes, and both start to giggle once more.
Now it’s Rachel’s turn to show her wonderful flower design by Tex of Cold Steel, that winds around her muscular belly. Some Sanskrit letters are artfully worked into it. “They originated in the yoga sutras, written by the Indian mahatma Patangali,” Rachel explains, “they refer to the necessity of practicing yoga consistently and in humbleness for a long time, to reach your goal.”
2003 Rachel founded The Indigo Dance Company. Where does this unusual name come from? “It’s such a beautiful word and so full of spiritual meanings,” explains Rachel, “the root is Indian, and some people believe that bellydance originates in India, so that is a connection. But also the Tuareg in North Africa dye their clothing with indigo, and I’m enthused with their aesthetics. Then indigo is a royal color, even indigo as tattoo ink. There’s so much in it.”
“We love calling our dance style Dark Cabaret,” Zoe adds, “we draw our inspiration from the time period between 1890 and 1920. When women like Mata Hari and Ruth Saint Denis took up bellydance and interpreted it in their own ways.”
When Zoe and Rachel were studying with Ultra Gypsy, Jill Parker didn’t only teach them to become better bellydancers, but she also inspired them to get more tattoos. “When I danced with Jill, “ remembers Rachel, “I only wanted to watch her tattoo wind around her hips. It was so beautiful. And I thought I had to work on myself more.”
Since Indigo got told that they could get a tax refund for their tattoos, they feel motivated even more. “Yeah, we want to thank George Bush for paying our tattoos,” jokes Zoe. “Yes, thank you, George,” Rachel adds, “you’re no good otherwise, but this was really cool!”
Indigo are delighted that bellydance is spreading so fast all over the USA, and with it the tattoo aesthetic. “You know, it’s unbelievable,” says Rachel, “but I found out that some grannies in my classes consider getting tattooed for the first time in their lives. Women in their sixties and seventies who have discovered bellydance for themselves are now getting their first tattoos, and their grandchildren as well – oh my God, ain’t this cool?”
Source: an Ultra Gypsy forum
Wednesday, 6 June 2007
Afghanistan Exhibition Provokes Questions
By ROBIN POGREBINPublished: June 6, 2007
The National Geographic Society has struck a $1 million deal with the Afghan government to bring a rare cache of gold artifacts to the United States in a traveling exhibition. But some cultural experts who have followed the negotiations are questioning whether Afghanistan is being properly compensated.
Plans call for the ancient Afghan pieces — part of the storied 2,000-year-old Bactrian hoard — to be displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, although contracts have not yet been signed by those institutions.
The National Geographic Society and the Afghan government signed a protocol accord over the weekend in Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, outlining an exhibition schedule that would begin in May 2008 at the National Gallery. The document calls for Afghanistan to receive $1 million as well as 40 percent of “total revenue,” which is defined as exhibition revenue, minus expenses.
Lynne Munson, the former deputy chairwoman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, which helped finance the cataloging of the Afghan treasures, said the arrangement would leave Afghanistan with “40 percent of absolutely nothing,” because expenses would be significant.
“This is a travesty,” she said in a telephone interview from Washington. “The Bactrian hoard is simply the most valuable possession of the poorest people on earth. To ask them to lend it and give so little in return is unconscionable.”
She said she had ceased working for the endowment in 2005 because of internal conflicts within the agency over arrangements for the show.
The protocol accord signed over the weekend says that the exhibition revenue going to the Afghans will be derived from the fees paid by the museums as hosts of the show and from corporate sponsorships. It does not guarantee them proceeds from ticket, catalog or merchandise sales.
Reached by telephone in Washington, Terry D. Garcia, the executive vice president of the National Geographic Society’s mission programs, said that the financial terms “were dictated by the Afghans.”
He said that no decision had been made on proceeds from the merchandising or the catalog sales. He added, “Those categories of revenue are in fact included in what the Afghans would receive.”
Ana Rosa Rodriguez, executive director of the Society for the Preservation of Afghanistan’s Cultural Heritage, said in a telephone interview from Kabul that she felt the society had taken advantage of a country that has endured nearly three decades of violent upheaval.
“I think it is my duty to express my concerns about this deal,” Ms. Rodrguez said, complaining of “the unacceptable manner” in which “a prestigious American society has dealt with a postconflict country with a devastated cultural heritage.”
The collection includes more than 20,000 pieces of gold jewelry, funeral ornaments and personal items from the Silk Road culture of Bactria, an ancient nation that covered parts of what is now Afghanistan. The hoard was discovered in 1978 by a Russian-Greek archaeologist, Viktor Sarianidi, at a grave site in Tillia-Tepe, in northern Afghanistan. The works blend Greek, Bactrian and nomadic traditions, reflecting Afghanistan’s historical position at the crossroads of ancient civilizations. The treasures were only sporadically displayed over the next decade and then packed away. Then, in 1989, when Afghanistan’s last Communist president was facing a growing insurgency by the Islamic rebels known as the mujahedeen and the imminent withdrawal of Soviet troop support, he ordered that the treasures be hidden. He was ousted in 1992, and for years it was widely assumed that the gold had been looted or destroyed and would never resurface.
The treasures were unearthed from a bank vault beneath a former royal palace in Kabul in 2004. They were among the few examples of Afghanistan’s rich cultural heritage to survive decades of war. The collection had been kept hidden by curators and employees of the Kabul Museum at tremendous personal risk under the fractious mujahedeen and then the Taliban, who ruled from 1996 to 2001.
“It’s a compelling story, not just of the Silk Road but also the work of these modern-day heroes,” Mr. Garcia said. “We think people are going to love it.”
But Ms. Munson said that if the show proved to be a blockbuster, an impoverished Afghanistan should reap more of the benefit.
When an exhibition of 130 objects from Tutankhamen’s tomb began touring in 2004, the Egyptian government set out to clear $10 million in every city visited and to take more than 50 percent of the gross revenue.
Thomas Hoving, who pioneered the museum blockbuster concept as director of the Metropolitan Museum from 1967 to 1977, said Afghanistan should have held out for more. “They don’t get enough money,” he said.
“The Egyptians are getting all admissions, 80 percent of the sales in the shop, and they should have patterned it after that,” Mr. Hoving said. “Or a flat fee of a million a venue. The entity that ought to get most of the bucks should be Afghanistan.”
Mr. Garcia declined to discuss how the traveling objects would be insured.
He said the museums had each signed a letter of commitment regarding the artifacts, though only the National Gallery would confirm this. “They’ve all expressed their keen interest and hope to be a venue,” Mr. Garcia said, adding, “We’re working on contract negotiations.”
The protocol signed by the society and the Afghan government stipulates that a new museum would be selected should any of the four museums not be able to play host to the exhibition. Ms. Munson said she was concerned that this could lead to the objects’ being displayed at an insufficiently secure location.
Mr. Garcia said the National Gallery was expected to be the lead museum, subject to completion of the agreement.
Asked about its plans, the National Gallery said through a spokeswoman, “The National Gallery of Art is interested but has nothing to confirm at this time.” The Asian Art Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts both referred calls to the National Geographic Society. Harold Holzer, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Museum, would not comment on any agreement but added, “This would make a valuable contribution to the exhibition schedule.”
The accord signed last weekend calls for the exhibition to run at the National Gallery from May 25 to Sept. 7, 2008; at the Asian Art Museum from Oct. 17, 2008, to Jan. 25, 2009; at the Museum of Fine Arts from Feb. 22 to May 17, 2009; and at the Met from June 14 to Sept 17, 2009.
“The timing sequence is subject to change till we become able to work through scheduling,” Mr. Garcia said. The agreement with the society was signed by Afghanistan’s information and culture minister, Abdul Karim Khoram, Mr. Garcia said.
About 100 of the Bactrian gold objects were recently on display at the Musée Guimet in Paris, along with 131 objects from three other Afghan archaeological collections, and are now in Turin. The terms of that exhibition were unclear.
The new show is to be overseen by Frederik Hiebert, an archaeologist formerly affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania who specializes in Silk Road artifacts and is a fellow at the National Geographic Society. Mr. Hiebert led the effort to compile an inventory of the collection in 2004. The National Endowment for the Humanities helped underwrite the project with two $30,000 grants.
The society also paid for Omar Sul tan, an Afghan exile and archaeologist, to assist Mr. Hiebert in his dealings with the Afghans. Mr. Sultan became Afghanistan’s deputy culture minister in January 2005, while still a consultant to the National Geographic Society. He also led a committee responsible for selecting the institutions that would display the objects.
“Did this create a conflict of interest?” Ms. Munson asked. “We’ll never know.”
But Mr. Garcia said in response: “Our selection as organizer of the exhibition was made by the full Afghan exhibition committee, and approved by the minister of information and culture, Minister Khoram. The process had the full support of the entire committee as well as the ambassador to the U.S., Said Jawad.” He said that the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, “was aware and fully supportive of the process.”
Ms. Munson said that during a 2005 trip she made to Kabul, Omara Khan Massoudi, who leads Afghanistan’s Museums Ministry and is now the director of the Kabul Museum, expressed concern about how the National Geographic Society had handled the inventory of the hoard.
“Mr. Omara Khan Massoudi told me repeatedly and in no uncertain terms that he thought National Geographic had disrespected the Afghans and their objects during the inventory,” she said. “Massoudi said the Afghans had no more need for National Geographic. So that they’re being awarded the exhibition means something has gone awry.”
Asked about his position by telephone, Mr. Massoudi said, “It’s out of my hands,” but declined to elaborate.
Ms. Munson suggested that there should have been an open competition among museums for the show to assure maximal revenue to aid in Afghanistan’s cultural reconstruction, and that the National Endowment for the Humanities should have exerted greater oversight.
“Instead it seems we’ve ended up with a National Geographic monopoly and a very poor deal for the Afghans,” she said.
Source: The New York Times
View: Afghan Rediscovered Treasures
Learning to Dance, One Chunk at a Time
By DIANE SOLWAY
Published: May 27, 2007
LAST month in a studio at American Ballet Theater, Angel Corella was studying the former Ballet Theater star Gelsey Kirkland as she showed him sequences from the second act of “The Sleeping Beauty,” a new production set to have its premiere this week at the Metropolitan Opera House.
One of the world’s finest dancers, whose powerhouse technique and dramatic intensity propelled him from his native Spain to American Ballet Theater when he was still a teenager, Mr. Corella also has a rare, less visible gift: he is able to reproduce a dance simply by seeing it once — not only his part, but everybody else’s too. After observing Ms. Kirkland, he was soon following behind her, humming as he mirrored her movements. Forty minutes after they began, he had the hundreds of steps down cold.
But for Mr. Corella and the other Ballet Theater dancers, knowing the steps of a dance is just the first phase in perfecting it. They must also convey the intention and feeling of the works they perform, which, in a repertory company like theirs, run from classical to modern to brand new. During the 2006-7 season alone, the dancers have rotated regularly through 21 works by choreographers as varied as Marius Petipa, Frederick Ashton, George Balanchine, Agnes de Mille, Jerome Robbins, Twyla Tharp and Lar Lubovitch.
That dancers can remember such a wide range of steps, roles and styles is sometimes forgotten in the awe produced by a great performance; the seeming effortlessness of it all suggests that each phrase and combination is spontaneous and not a memorized series of steps. But in getting to that point, most dancers share a relatively similar path, first learning the choreography and then adding layers of detail and color. Finally, they absorb the work so completely that its elements literally become automatic, leaving the dancer’s brain free to focus on the moment-by-moment nuances of the performance.
Dancers call it muscle memory. And while it obviously manifests itself physically as far as dance is concerned, what actually happens, according to neuroscientists, is that the movements become thoroughly mapped in the brain, creating a shorthand between thinking and doing. We may speak of a musician’s fingers or a winemaker’s nose, yet the resulting product is all the brain’s doing, explained Daniel Glaser, a neuroscientist who works at the Wellcome Trust, a philanthropic organization devoted to health care based in London. “Of course you need a body to dance,” he said. “But as dancers transition from conscious awareness of a newly acquired routine to the automatic performance of it, the brain is not doing any less work.”
Dr. Glaser is one of a handful of neuroscientists who have studied dancers as a way to understand the body’s relationship to the brain, and vice versa, better. Because classical ballet relies on certain discrete movements that a dancer must repeat thousands of time throughout a career, the brains of dancers, it turns out, are exquisitely sensitive to seeing movements they’ve rehearsed. If they see someone performing an arabesque, for example, certain motor areas of their brains respond as if they were themselves performing the step.
But before they get anywhere near muscle memory, dancers must first, as they like to say, get the dance into their bodies. This was uppermost in the minds of Ballet Theater’s dancers last month as they prepared for the current Met season. Some were learning new roles; others were refreshing their memory of works they had already performed.
In one studio, Marcelo Gomes led David Hallberg, the company’s newest principal dancer, and his fellow principal Gillian Murphy through their opening entrance and the pas de deux from Ashton’s one-act “The Dream.” The pair were to play the regal fairies Oberon and Titania, and Mr. Gomes, who has danced only Oberon, knew both parts. As they followed behind him, sketching his moves, Mr. Gomes gave a master class in cognitive learning — or so it seemed to an outsider.
First he demonstrated each role, calling out verbal cues (“You look at the moon”), ballet positions (“Put her in fourth”) and movements (“You’re doing bourrées and saying ‘no’ at the same time”), and then described in more detail the impetus for the movement (“As you back up, you’re scheming, and we see it on your face”), all the while humming the Mendelssohn score and counting the beats (“One and two and three, tee-ta-tee-ta-tee”).
Within the hour they had learned most of it. The next day they rehearsed with the ballet mistress, Georgina Parkinson, adjusting movements as she called out visual images and described the intention of a particular moment. The 10-minute duet requires great stamina, and the quality of any step can vary depending on its speed and texture: fast, slow, honey or molasses.
Ms. Parkinson wanted to see more lushness and amplitude in the lovers’ sensual choreography. “You need to explode,” she told Ms. Murphy, advising her to rely more on her back muscles as she flitted her arms madly about. Mr. Hallberg, who does not have Mr. Corella’s gift of being able to learn steps from sight alone, looked on. “It’s not in my body yet,” he said. “I’m just trying to get the feeling of it.”
Where initially dancers see one move and then another, eventually they merge the steps into phrases and then into longer sequences. Brain scientists refer to this process as “chunking.” Dr. Glaser likens it to learning to tie a shoelace. First you think “left over right, right under left,” and then you make a bow. But once you’ve learned the steps, they become one seamless movement.
“What dancers are able to do, which you and I cannot,” he said, “is to take a set of those moves and turn that into one long phrase and then take a dozen of those phrases and put them into one long movement.”
Karen Bradley, a movement analyst who directs the graduate dance program at the University of Maryland, said: “No two dancers chunk the same way. Some do it rhythmically, some consider spatial configurations, some think about weight shifts, some rely on imagery, and some follow an inner monologue.”
After his third rehearsal for “The Dream” — about three hours of studio time — Mr. Hallberg could run through the pas de deux with Ms. Murphy nonstop. “This means that it’s not only in the body,” he said. “But it’s nowhere near performance value. Now you can add yourself into the performance.”
For that, the dancers rely on Ballet Theater’s coaches, many of whom have danced the works themselves and can help the dancers create a performance that resonates with an audience.
That was the lesson the ballet mistress Irina Kolpakova was trying to impart last month to Mr. Gomes and Veronika Part, the opening-night leads in the new production of “Sleeping Beauty,” staged by Ms. Kirkland; Kevin McKenzie, the company’s artistic director; and Michael Chernov, with choreography after Petipa. A former Kirov ballerina and celebrated Princess Aurora, Ms. Kolpakova, 74, frowned as she watched the pair run through their pas de deux. “It’s very nice, but where is your feeling?” she asked, and then demonstrated what she wanted. Following behind her, the younger dancers were all taut, sinewy limbs and unlined faces; it was in Ms. Kolpakova’s expressive face and articulate phrasing that the choreography came alive.
“You work your muscle memory in rehearsal so that when you get onstage it’s only your brain and your emotions working,” Mr. Corella said. “You don’t think about what the body is doing anymore. When I go into the wings, I can’t remember what I’ve done. I don’t remember if my foot was pointed.”
But not all dancers achieve this every time, he added: “They stay in the rehearsal period. You can see that they’re thinking if their leg is in the right place.”
Scientists say motor learning like Mr. Corella’s can actually be observed in the brain. To know precisely where our bodies are in space at any given moment — an ability called propioception — our brain receives signals about the length of each muscle and the angle of each joint and “does a kind of mental trigonometry,” said Prof. Patrick Haggard of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College, London. Professor Haggard, who has measured the brain activity of ballet dancers using brain scanners, observes that dancers “have better propioception than the rest of us.”
“Those brain signals seem to be of a particularly high quality in dancers,” he said.
For many dancers, music can be a helpful prompt for muscle memory, enabling them to recall dances they did years ago. “It all comes at once,” said Mr. Corella, describing his response to familiar music.
But music can trip up dancers too, as the ballerina Julie Kent discovered while rehearsing the new “Sleeping Beauty” with Ms. Kirkland. Ms. Kent had danced the version by Kenneth MacMillan many times, and as Ms. Kirkland demonstrated a different position of the arms, Ms. Kent tried to resist her body’s natural impulses. “Your conscious thought has to override the stored memory and say, ‘No, it’s not that, it’s this,’ ” she said.
A self-described slow learner, Ms. Kent, 38, recalled that early in her career she didn’t perform a new work because she couldn’t remember the steps. Occasionally, she still forgets them. In rehearsals with Mr. Gomes, 27, a quick study and her partner this week in “The Dream,” she acknowledged that “I drive him crazy, because sometimes I’ll just blank. But I tell him, ‘Wait until you get to my age and you have all these ballets in your head.’ ”
Frederic Franklin, 93, can attest to that. Mr. Franklin is among the last of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo stars of the 1930s and has one of the most prodigious memories in dance. After watching a rehearsal at American Ballet Theater studios last month, he jabbed his temple. “It’s all in here,” he said. Even now, he added, “when I’m watching them, I can feel my muscles doing it.”
Source: The New York Times
Published: May 27, 2007
LAST month in a studio at American Ballet Theater, Angel Corella was studying the former Ballet Theater star Gelsey Kirkland as she showed him sequences from the second act of “The Sleeping Beauty,” a new production set to have its premiere this week at the Metropolitan Opera House.
One of the world’s finest dancers, whose powerhouse technique and dramatic intensity propelled him from his native Spain to American Ballet Theater when he was still a teenager, Mr. Corella also has a rare, less visible gift: he is able to reproduce a dance simply by seeing it once — not only his part, but everybody else’s too. After observing Ms. Kirkland, he was soon following behind her, humming as he mirrored her movements. Forty minutes after they began, he had the hundreds of steps down cold.
But for Mr. Corella and the other Ballet Theater dancers, knowing the steps of a dance is just the first phase in perfecting it. They must also convey the intention and feeling of the works they perform, which, in a repertory company like theirs, run from classical to modern to brand new. During the 2006-7 season alone, the dancers have rotated regularly through 21 works by choreographers as varied as Marius Petipa, Frederick Ashton, George Balanchine, Agnes de Mille, Jerome Robbins, Twyla Tharp and Lar Lubovitch.
That dancers can remember such a wide range of steps, roles and styles is sometimes forgotten in the awe produced by a great performance; the seeming effortlessness of it all suggests that each phrase and combination is spontaneous and not a memorized series of steps. But in getting to that point, most dancers share a relatively similar path, first learning the choreography and then adding layers of detail and color. Finally, they absorb the work so completely that its elements literally become automatic, leaving the dancer’s brain free to focus on the moment-by-moment nuances of the performance.
Dancers call it muscle memory. And while it obviously manifests itself physically as far as dance is concerned, what actually happens, according to neuroscientists, is that the movements become thoroughly mapped in the brain, creating a shorthand between thinking and doing. We may speak of a musician’s fingers or a winemaker’s nose, yet the resulting product is all the brain’s doing, explained Daniel Glaser, a neuroscientist who works at the Wellcome Trust, a philanthropic organization devoted to health care based in London. “Of course you need a body to dance,” he said. “But as dancers transition from conscious awareness of a newly acquired routine to the automatic performance of it, the brain is not doing any less work.”
Dr. Glaser is one of a handful of neuroscientists who have studied dancers as a way to understand the body’s relationship to the brain, and vice versa, better. Because classical ballet relies on certain discrete movements that a dancer must repeat thousands of time throughout a career, the brains of dancers, it turns out, are exquisitely sensitive to seeing movements they’ve rehearsed. If they see someone performing an arabesque, for example, certain motor areas of their brains respond as if they were themselves performing the step.
But before they get anywhere near muscle memory, dancers must first, as they like to say, get the dance into their bodies. This was uppermost in the minds of Ballet Theater’s dancers last month as they prepared for the current Met season. Some were learning new roles; others were refreshing their memory of works they had already performed.
In one studio, Marcelo Gomes led David Hallberg, the company’s newest principal dancer, and his fellow principal Gillian Murphy through their opening entrance and the pas de deux from Ashton’s one-act “The Dream.” The pair were to play the regal fairies Oberon and Titania, and Mr. Gomes, who has danced only Oberon, knew both parts. As they followed behind him, sketching his moves, Mr. Gomes gave a master class in cognitive learning — or so it seemed to an outsider.
First he demonstrated each role, calling out verbal cues (“You look at the moon”), ballet positions (“Put her in fourth”) and movements (“You’re doing bourrées and saying ‘no’ at the same time”), and then described in more detail the impetus for the movement (“As you back up, you’re scheming, and we see it on your face”), all the while humming the Mendelssohn score and counting the beats (“One and two and three, tee-ta-tee-ta-tee”).
Within the hour they had learned most of it. The next day they rehearsed with the ballet mistress, Georgina Parkinson, adjusting movements as she called out visual images and described the intention of a particular moment. The 10-minute duet requires great stamina, and the quality of any step can vary depending on its speed and texture: fast, slow, honey or molasses.
Ms. Parkinson wanted to see more lushness and amplitude in the lovers’ sensual choreography. “You need to explode,” she told Ms. Murphy, advising her to rely more on her back muscles as she flitted her arms madly about. Mr. Hallberg, who does not have Mr. Corella’s gift of being able to learn steps from sight alone, looked on. “It’s not in my body yet,” he said. “I’m just trying to get the feeling of it.”
Where initially dancers see one move and then another, eventually they merge the steps into phrases and then into longer sequences. Brain scientists refer to this process as “chunking.” Dr. Glaser likens it to learning to tie a shoelace. First you think “left over right, right under left,” and then you make a bow. But once you’ve learned the steps, they become one seamless movement.
“What dancers are able to do, which you and I cannot,” he said, “is to take a set of those moves and turn that into one long phrase and then take a dozen of those phrases and put them into one long movement.”
Karen Bradley, a movement analyst who directs the graduate dance program at the University of Maryland, said: “No two dancers chunk the same way. Some do it rhythmically, some consider spatial configurations, some think about weight shifts, some rely on imagery, and some follow an inner monologue.”
After his third rehearsal for “The Dream” — about three hours of studio time — Mr. Hallberg could run through the pas de deux with Ms. Murphy nonstop. “This means that it’s not only in the body,” he said. “But it’s nowhere near performance value. Now you can add yourself into the performance.”
For that, the dancers rely on Ballet Theater’s coaches, many of whom have danced the works themselves and can help the dancers create a performance that resonates with an audience.
That was the lesson the ballet mistress Irina Kolpakova was trying to impart last month to Mr. Gomes and Veronika Part, the opening-night leads in the new production of “Sleeping Beauty,” staged by Ms. Kirkland; Kevin McKenzie, the company’s artistic director; and Michael Chernov, with choreography after Petipa. A former Kirov ballerina and celebrated Princess Aurora, Ms. Kolpakova, 74, frowned as she watched the pair run through their pas de deux. “It’s very nice, but where is your feeling?” she asked, and then demonstrated what she wanted. Following behind her, the younger dancers were all taut, sinewy limbs and unlined faces; it was in Ms. Kolpakova’s expressive face and articulate phrasing that the choreography came alive.
“You work your muscle memory in rehearsal so that when you get onstage it’s only your brain and your emotions working,” Mr. Corella said. “You don’t think about what the body is doing anymore. When I go into the wings, I can’t remember what I’ve done. I don’t remember if my foot was pointed.”
But not all dancers achieve this every time, he added: “They stay in the rehearsal period. You can see that they’re thinking if their leg is in the right place.”
Scientists say motor learning like Mr. Corella’s can actually be observed in the brain. To know precisely where our bodies are in space at any given moment — an ability called propioception — our brain receives signals about the length of each muscle and the angle of each joint and “does a kind of mental trigonometry,” said Prof. Patrick Haggard of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College, London. Professor Haggard, who has measured the brain activity of ballet dancers using brain scanners, observes that dancers “have better propioception than the rest of us.”
“Those brain signals seem to be of a particularly high quality in dancers,” he said.
For many dancers, music can be a helpful prompt for muscle memory, enabling them to recall dances they did years ago. “It all comes at once,” said Mr. Corella, describing his response to familiar music.
But music can trip up dancers too, as the ballerina Julie Kent discovered while rehearsing the new “Sleeping Beauty” with Ms. Kirkland. Ms. Kent had danced the version by Kenneth MacMillan many times, and as Ms. Kirkland demonstrated a different position of the arms, Ms. Kent tried to resist her body’s natural impulses. “Your conscious thought has to override the stored memory and say, ‘No, it’s not that, it’s this,’ ” she said.
A self-described slow learner, Ms. Kent, 38, recalled that early in her career she didn’t perform a new work because she couldn’t remember the steps. Occasionally, she still forgets them. In rehearsals with Mr. Gomes, 27, a quick study and her partner this week in “The Dream,” she acknowledged that “I drive him crazy, because sometimes I’ll just blank. But I tell him, ‘Wait until you get to my age and you have all these ballets in your head.’ ”
Frederic Franklin, 93, can attest to that. Mr. Franklin is among the last of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo stars of the 1930s and has one of the most prodigious memories in dance. After watching a rehearsal at American Ballet Theater studios last month, he jabbed his temple. “It’s all in here,” he said. Even now, he added, “when I’m watching them, I can feel my muscles doing it.”
Source: The New York Times
Wednesday, 30 May 2007
Egyptian belly dance 'in crisis'
By Malcolm Brabant
BBC News, Cairo
Published: Wednesday, 30 March 2005, 12:45 GMT 13:45 UK
Exponents of the art of belly dancing - a unique element of Egypt's national cultural heritage - believe it is undergoing a crisis and is in danger of being driven underground.
Two years ago, the government banned foreign dancers from performing, but has recently done a U-turn and allowed them back.
One of the country's former belly dancing divas, Nagwa Fouad, is now calling for the establishment of an academy to preserve the art.
Dressed in a turquoise harem outfit, Iranian-born Liza Laziza practices in her studio high above the Corniche alongside the River Nile.
Liza is a world-renowned belly dancer who came to Cairo five years ago to fulfil a dream of living where her art began many centuries ago.
Even to my unpractised eye, it is clear she is a fine exponent, combining grace, interpretation and sensuality.
Declining art
But Liza has not performed on one of Egypt's great dancing stages for two years.
"The dance, from what I see, is at the moment rapidly fading in the background, whereas before, it was right up front," she says.
"It's very serious and I'm part of what's going on. I'm part of the big decline that's going on in the dance."
During the ban on foreign dancers, Liza was forced to teach for a living.
Now she is free to perform again, but she has had trouble finding a suitable platform for her talent.
"Egypt has been the central nervous system of the dance for a long time now," she says.
"It's not as great as it used to be and that's because of the climate of the times, socially, economically, religiously.
"And there isn't any education on the dance in Egypt, so I really do predict it fading into the background as we speak."
'Part of Egypt'
One of Liza's students is a Saudi Arabian woman who must be in her 50s, who has taken up the dance for the benefit of her husband.
She prefers to remain anonymous for fear of shocking relatives in her arch-conservative homeland.
"Like the Sphinx or pyramids, belly dancing is part of Egyptian culture and it would be a shame to lose it," she says.
On board a Nile river boat, about 200 tourists are taking a two-hour-long supper cruise.
The highlight of the evening's entertainment is supposed to be a demonstration of belly dancing by a 27-year-old Egyptian dancer called Wafaa Fowzi.
To borrow the words of Jerry Lee Lewis, there's a whole lotta shaking going on - but none of the sinewy grace of Liza Laziza.
Miss Fowzi believes that Miss Laziza and her Saudi Arabian pupil are scare-mongering.
Brilliant moves
"I'm not worried about the dance. It can't really die out in Egypt. It's an important part of our popular heritage," she says.
Nagwa Fouad used to be one of Egypt's belly dancing divas.
She is of indeterminate age, and went into retirement about five years back.
Madame Nagwa is very worried that subtleties of an art dating back to Pharonic times are being lost and she wants Egypt to set up a national academy to teach the dance properly.
"What you are seeing nowadays is just shaking, which is very Turkish," she says.
"Egyptian dancing has many more brilliant movements, which is why there must be an academy to teach it, where I could lend my expertise."
But belly dancers here worry no one will take heed and that their cultural heritage will be consigned to history along with the pyramids, Tutankhamen and that great seductress Cleopatra.
Source: BBC
BBC News, Cairo
Published: Wednesday, 30 March 2005, 12:45 GMT 13:45 UK
Exponents of the art of belly dancing - a unique element of Egypt's national cultural heritage - believe it is undergoing a crisis and is in danger of being driven underground.Two years ago, the government banned foreign dancers from performing, but has recently done a U-turn and allowed them back.
One of the country's former belly dancing divas, Nagwa Fouad, is now calling for the establishment of an academy to preserve the art.
Dressed in a turquoise harem outfit, Iranian-born Liza Laziza practices in her studio high above the Corniche alongside the River Nile.
Liza is a world-renowned belly dancer who came to Cairo five years ago to fulfil a dream of living where her art began many centuries ago.
Even to my unpractised eye, it is clear she is a fine exponent, combining grace, interpretation and sensuality.
Declining art
But Liza has not performed on one of Egypt's great dancing stages for two years.
"The dance, from what I see, is at the moment rapidly fading in the background, whereas before, it was right up front," she says.
"It's very serious and I'm part of what's going on. I'm part of the big decline that's going on in the dance."
During the ban on foreign dancers, Liza was forced to teach for a living.
Now she is free to perform again, but she has had trouble finding a suitable platform for her talent.
"Egypt has been the central nervous system of the dance for a long time now," she says.
"It's not as great as it used to be and that's because of the climate of the times, socially, economically, religiously.
"And there isn't any education on the dance in Egypt, so I really do predict it fading into the background as we speak."
'Part of Egypt'
One of Liza's students is a Saudi Arabian woman who must be in her 50s, who has taken up the dance for the benefit of her husband.
She prefers to remain anonymous for fear of shocking relatives in her arch-conservative homeland.
"Like the Sphinx or pyramids, belly dancing is part of Egyptian culture and it would be a shame to lose it," she says.
On board a Nile river boat, about 200 tourists are taking a two-hour-long supper cruise.
The highlight of the evening's entertainment is supposed to be a demonstration of belly dancing by a 27-year-old Egyptian dancer called Wafaa Fowzi.
To borrow the words of Jerry Lee Lewis, there's a whole lotta shaking going on - but none of the sinewy grace of Liza Laziza.
Miss Fowzi believes that Miss Laziza and her Saudi Arabian pupil are scare-mongering.
Brilliant moves
"I'm not worried about the dance. It can't really die out in Egypt. It's an important part of our popular heritage," she says.
Nagwa Fouad used to be one of Egypt's belly dancing divas.
She is of indeterminate age, and went into retirement about five years back.
Madame Nagwa is very worried that subtleties of an art dating back to Pharonic times are being lost and she wants Egypt to set up a national academy to teach the dance properly.
"What you are seeing nowadays is just shaking, which is very Turkish," she says."Egyptian dancing has many more brilliant movements, which is why there must be an academy to teach it, where I could lend my expertise."
But belly dancers here worry no one will take heed and that their cultural heritage will be consigned to history along with the pyramids, Tutankhamen and that great seductress Cleopatra.
Source: BBC
Monday, 28 May 2007
Born to Dance?
Published: Circa February, 2006
By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News
Professional dancers are born with at least two special genes that give them a leg up on the rest of us, according to a new study.
Recent research also has suggested that intelligence, athletic ability and musical talent are linked to our genes and brain hard-wiring.
With dancing added to the list, the evidence indicates that certain individuals are born with a predisposition to specific behaviors and talents, and that at least some of these qualities may represent evolved attributes.
"I think that dancing is an evolved trait," said Richard Ebstein, who led the recent study, published in a recent Public Library of Science Genetics journal. "Animals have courtship dances and I think that human dancing represents the further development of a very ancient animal trait."
Ebstein, a psychology professor at Hebrew University's Scheinfeld Center for Genetic Studies, said, "Also the fact that dancing is universal and existed in all human societies, even those communities of man separated geographically by tens of thousands of years (native Australians, native Americans, Africans, Eurasians) attests to the very early origin of dance in our evolution as a species."
First, find your dancers
Ebstein, doctoral student Rachel Bachner-Melman and their colleagues examined the DNA of 85 currently performing dancers and their parents. They then did the same thing for 91 competitive athletes and 872 people who neither regularly dance nor often participate in sports.
The scientists discovered that dancers tend to possess variants of two genes that are involved in the transmission of information between nerve cells.
One of the identified genes is a transporter of serotonin, a brain transmitter that contributes to spiritual experience. The second is a receptor of the hormone vasopressin, which many studies suggest modulates social communication and human bonding.
"People are born to dance," Ebstein told Discovery News. "They have (other) genes that partially contribute to musical talent, such as coordination, sense of rhythm. However, the genes we studied are more related to the emotional side of dancing - the need and ability to communicate with other people and a spiritual side to their natures that not only enable them to feel the music, but to communicate that feeling to others via dance."
Ebstein believes some adults may possess the special gene variants, but they perhaps never nurtured the related skills or recognized their hidden talent.
He said, "Many of us surely have the ability, but for a hundred reasons never exploited that particular talent."
Ebstein explained that the identified genes seem to be linked to every form of dancing, from tap to hula, since all usually involve social communication and connecting to music or rhythms.
Other factors to consider
Irving Gottesman, a senior fellow in psychology at the University of Minnesota and an emeritus professor from the University of Virginia, is one of the world's leading experts on genes as they relate to human behavior and psychology.
Through prior research papers sent to Discovery News, Gottesman emphasized that genes are only one part of "complex causality" systems that make us who we are. For example, Gottesman confirmed that intelligence can be in our genes, but that socioeconomic considerations, such as a quality education, can have a greater influence on a person's intellect.
Ebstein agreed that genes were not the whole story. He said those of us without a twinkle-toed predisposition can still become good dancers, since "it's not only a question of having the right genes, but also training and motivation, that make professional dancers."
Source: Discovery News, ABC.net.au
By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News
Professional dancers are born with at least two special genes that give them a leg up on the rest of us, according to a new study.
Recent research also has suggested that intelligence, athletic ability and musical talent are linked to our genes and brain hard-wiring.
With dancing added to the list, the evidence indicates that certain individuals are born with a predisposition to specific behaviors and talents, and that at least some of these qualities may represent evolved attributes.
"I think that dancing is an evolved trait," said Richard Ebstein, who led the recent study, published in a recent Public Library of Science Genetics journal. "Animals have courtship dances and I think that human dancing represents the further development of a very ancient animal trait."
Ebstein, a psychology professor at Hebrew University's Scheinfeld Center for Genetic Studies, said, "Also the fact that dancing is universal and existed in all human societies, even those communities of man separated geographically by tens of thousands of years (native Australians, native Americans, Africans, Eurasians) attests to the very early origin of dance in our evolution as a species."
First, find your dancers
Ebstein, doctoral student Rachel Bachner-Melman and their colleagues examined the DNA of 85 currently performing dancers and their parents. They then did the same thing for 91 competitive athletes and 872 people who neither regularly dance nor often participate in sports.
The scientists discovered that dancers tend to possess variants of two genes that are involved in the transmission of information between nerve cells.
One of the identified genes is a transporter of serotonin, a brain transmitter that contributes to spiritual experience. The second is a receptor of the hormone vasopressin, which many studies suggest modulates social communication and human bonding.
"People are born to dance," Ebstein told Discovery News. "They have (other) genes that partially contribute to musical talent, such as coordination, sense of rhythm. However, the genes we studied are more related to the emotional side of dancing - the need and ability to communicate with other people and a spiritual side to their natures that not only enable them to feel the music, but to communicate that feeling to others via dance."
Ebstein believes some adults may possess the special gene variants, but they perhaps never nurtured the related skills or recognized their hidden talent.
He said, "Many of us surely have the ability, but for a hundred reasons never exploited that particular talent."
Ebstein explained that the identified genes seem to be linked to every form of dancing, from tap to hula, since all usually involve social communication and connecting to music or rhythms.
Other factors to consider
Irving Gottesman, a senior fellow in psychology at the University of Minnesota and an emeritus professor from the University of Virginia, is one of the world's leading experts on genes as they relate to human behavior and psychology.
Through prior research papers sent to Discovery News, Gottesman emphasized that genes are only one part of "complex causality" systems that make us who we are. For example, Gottesman confirmed that intelligence can be in our genes, but that socioeconomic considerations, such as a quality education, can have a greater influence on a person's intellect.
Ebstein agreed that genes were not the whole story. He said those of us without a twinkle-toed predisposition can still become good dancers, since "it's not only a question of having the right genes, but also training and motivation, that make professional dancers."
Source: Discovery News, ABC.net.au
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