Published: February 03, 2007
Writer: Nadia De Leon
The Healing Powers of Middle Eastern Dance
The concept that Belly Dance can be healing, that it is a fine form of exercise and that it fosters the general well being of women, is and has been widely accepted, since its origins in the Middle East all the way to contemporary dance studios in the
U.S. This fact is easily confirmed through many lines in books about the history and sociology of Middle-Eastern Dance, as well as by the vast number of websites that talk about Belly Dance as a healing tool for today's women.
There is not a single book completely dedicated to Belly Dance's therapeutic qualities, in fact there are not many books generally dealing with Belly Dance at all. Nevertheless, there are plenty of the materials on the Internet with anecdotic information in the form of journals or casual articles. These sources talk about personal experiences of how practicing Belly Dance brings many physiological and psychological benefits. The scope of all these sources only goes as far as Belly Dance's healing powers, but it does not address Belly Dance utilized as Dance Therapy. By this I mean that although Belly Dance is used widely as a form of informal therapy, I have not been able to find material regarding its use in a strict format of physical or psychotherapy, by a therapist, much less following the parameters and foundations of professional Dance/Movement Therapy. Even so, I did find enough material to confirm many aspects of said "healing powers" of Belly Dance, which I explore in detail below.
Physiological Benefits
Because Belly Dance is an aerobic exercise, practicing it regularly burns calories, helping dancers regulate body weight, and improves cardiovascular fitness, which in turn prevents respiratory complications, as well as heart disease. Belly Dance is a strength-and-conditioning exercise for many muscles, such as the quadriceps and hamstrings, and all the muscles of the shoulder, arm and wrist involved in arm movements. Belly Dance especially strengthens the muscles of the torso: the abdominal, pelvic, lumbar and gluteus muscles, which in turn improve the dancer's posture. It is well known that good posture is the first step for a chain of many physiological benefits for the human body. Because Belly dance improves both cardiovascular fitness and posture, it also develops appropriate circulation and regulates breathing, which in turn augments the oxygen levels in the blood, and prevents circulation and digestion complications.
The stretching and strengthening of all the muscles involved in Belly Dance, as well as the cardiovascular work out, help relieve muscle tension. Mastering the complex and layered isolation movements of Belly Dance constitutes an intense training of neuromuscular paths, which in turn improves the dancer's coordination. There are many testimonials that affirm that the frequent practice of Belly Dance eases and prevents menstrual pains, as well as strengthening the muscles and improving the fitness endurance of women in preparation for giving birth.[1][2] Finally, I must refer to the very interesting testimonial of a woman who found Belly Dance to be the best therapy to help her deal with Hypothyroidism helping her feel "fully alive and healthy" [3], as well as a Belly Dancer who was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and found the dance helpful to her physical condition[4].
Psychological Benefits Because Dance/Movement Therapy is a form of psychotherapy, I focused my research on the inherent psychological benefits of Belly Dance. Many of the psychological benefits of practicing Belly Dance often are both cause and consequence of the holistic approach of Belly Dance's philosophy, theory and techniques. Belly Dance is an art that blurs the solid and somehow arbitrary lines that Western culture and society places between mind and body. Belly Dance helps the women who practice it to experience harmony by overcoming the polarity of thinking about themselves as fragmented pieces of spirit versus flesh, and thoughts versus emotions, by seeing themselves as "whole women". Interestingly enough, the science of Dance Therapy also shares this holistic approach, by blurring the lines between mind/language and body/movement, by uplifting movement as a valid form of expression, and by showing that not only neurological maturation, experiences and learning cause change in movement behavior, but that change in movement behavior can also change the psyche. Consequently, practicing Belly Dance, and the whole of its movement vocabulary, so foreign and novel for Western women, "rewires" women into a state of all-encompassing emotional well being. It connects the core of their identities in womanhood, in loving their bodies, and in being comfortable with their femininity and sensuality. And it does all this collectively, with a group of other women who shower acceptance on each other.
In my opinion the first and foremost benefit of the practice of Belly Dance is the fact that it cultivates a positive body image and boosts self-esteem.[5] From that fact stem many other psychological benefits. The positive body image built through Belly Dance is based on the acceptance of the image of ourselves in the mirror, on the courage to dance in front of other people, and on the milestone of revealing our bellies. This is all possible because Belly Dance is a dance that reveres the female body in all shapes and sizes.[6] The personal appreciation of self-identity and enhancement of self-esteem has roots in the Dance/Movement Therapy concept that asserts that people must be comfortable in their bodies in order to move their bodies. I found that many Belly Dance instructors, who are not therapists, unknowingly and instinctively apply the Dance/Movement Therapy method called Body-Ego Technique, a predominantly nonverbal educational and therapeutic approach to establishing, reestablishing and/or maintaining body image and self-identity by learning and experiencing a variety of goal-directed physical movement patterns.[7]
Another important psychological benefit of Belly Dance, often underappreciated, is stress relief. The benefit of practicing Belly Dance periodically may lay in the simple fact of dedicating some time to ourselves. Belly Dance is an exercise and art particularly suitable to fulfill the role of a space and time to look for inner peace and harmony, such as that of meditation, and other currently popular options such as yoga and taiji. Many women who practice Belly Dance affirm that after a class they feel completely cleansed, with renewed energy and patience, grounded, and that Belly Dance class is the one time in which they can leave all their worries outside the door and rejoice in an activity they personally enjoy. This particularly helpful in today's Western society were women are expected to rise to the expectations of professional success without undermining their roles as nurturers, wives and mothers. Stress is the cause of many psychological and physiological afflictions women suffer today, and Belly Dance's value to counterbalance life's stress cannot be overestimated.
In my research I found articles, quotes, and anecdotes of women who experienced Belly Dance as emotional healing while recovering from breast cancer or uterine cancer. I found it fascinating because all these women from the U.S. to Australia, who had very different personal experiences with cancer, all shared something in common: they had undergone either mastectomy or hysterectomy surgeries.[8] There is some information regarding dance therapy being used all over the world to enhance the recovery of cancer survivors in plenty of oncology centers and hospitals all over the world.[9] Nevertheless, something distinct stands out: when the type of dance being used for this healing therapy is Belly Dance, the survivors/dancers are almost always women who went through a surgery that makes them feel "less of a woman", a surgery that undermines their personal feelings of femininity and their identity as women. No wonder these women choose Belly Dance over other dance forms to help them heal from such experiences!
Belly Dance is also used as a means of therapy for eating disorders. The reason for this is very obvious: most people suffering from eating disorders have a distorted body image with which they are not satisfied. As explained above, Belly Dance is an optimal art and exercise to build a positive body image and befriend our own bodies. Additionally, Belly Dance is not an art form that venerates slim bodies, or demands uncommon extraordinary abilities from the dancers' bodies. It is a dance that not only values, but also needs and longs for curves. It is a dance built with movements that come naturally to women, and that run smoothly through the human body. I have not been able to find information on Belly Dance utilized as the main therapy form for the treatment of eating disorders. Nevertheless, there is plenty of information about women who found Belly Dance helpful in healing from and overcoming anorexia and bulimia.[10]
Like many other enjoyable forms of exercise, Belly Dance is an exceptionally useful therapy to help treat depression.[11] The release of endorphins affects the brain chemistry, improving the dancer's mood. Practicing Belly Dance also heightens creativity, lowers stress, and helps regulate metabolism and sleep patterns, all factors that affect clinical depression.[12] Belly Dance is practiced in a comfortable non-threatening environment. A proficient Belly Dance instructor is supportive and puts little pressure on her students. All of this results in student's feelings of fulfillment and improvement of self- confidence.
The last topic I would like to address is the usefulness of Belly Dance as a healing process for survivors of sexual abuse. Belly Dance teaches women how to embody their sexuality, how to overcome shame, and how to love, celebrate and be proud of their bodies. Belly Dance is a reaffirmation of the beauty and sacredness of love, sex, passion, pleasure and fertility. Additionally, Belly Dance, as any other art form, can be a way to express anger and other inner feelings.[13] Although it may take years for the healing process to occur, Belly Dancing has helped many women resolve their issues with sexuality and their own bodies.[14]
Belly Dance is a valid means of therapy through movement. It obviously has the power to touch women's emotional core, and generate change, evolutions and revolutions in our psyche by connecting us to a higher archetype of femininity. Getting in touch with this inner power through Belly Dance starts a healing domino effect that runs like the fertile overflow of a river, gently running through the dancer's body, mind and spirit, flooding them with well being and strength.
[1] Vargas Dinicu, Carolina (Morocco), Belly Dancing and Childbirth, Sexology Magazine, 1964.
[2] Vargas Dinicu, Carolina (Morocco), Giving to Light- Dancing the baby into the world, Habibi, Winter 1996, Vol. 15, No. 1.
[3] Stricklin, Pat. "Belly Dance to Inspire Healing" Column #4, Belly Dancing as Healing Dance, June 2002, http://www.visionarydance.com, as of October, 2005.
[4] Amy. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Belly Dance. http://www.dreamingofjeannie.com.au/chronic%20fatigue%20syndrome.html, as of November, 2005.
[5] Stricklin, Pat. Belly Dancing and Cultural Influences on Body Image. http://www.visionarydance.com/cultural_influence.html, as of November, 2005.
[6] Delilah. Reviving Ophelia Through Belly Dancing " Can belly dance offer young women a more positive self image?" http://visionarydance.com/ophelia.html, as of November, 2005.
[7] Salkin, Jeri, Body Ego Technique; an educational and therapeutic approach to body image and self identity, Charles C. Tomage Publisher, Illinois, U.S.A., 1973.
[8] McAghon, Monica. "Danse Orientale for Mastectomy Recovery". Healing Dance Testimonials,http://www.tahya.com/danceheals.html, as of October 2005.
[9] Clay, Jean. "Danse Orientale aided my recovery and renewed my joy for the gift of life". Healing Dance Testimonials,http://www.tahya.com/danceheals.html, as of October 2005.
[10] Izzo, Kim; Marsh, Cere, Belly Dance- Overcoming Bulimia, Filmakers Library, NY, 22 min. video.
[11] Lafata, Lorraine. "Belly Dancing as a Healing Dance", 2000, http://www.visionarydance.com as of October, 2005.
[12] Lara (Clinical Psychologist), Psychological Benefits of Belly Dancing, http://www.dreamingofjeannie.com/psychologicial.html, as of November, 2005.
[13] Maria, Anna "Embodied Sexuality & Female Power" Column #3, Belly Dancing as Healing Dance, March 2002, http://www.visionarydance.com, as of October, 2005.
[14] Lipschitz, Lucy. How Middle-Eastern Dance gave me recovery. http://www.lucylipschitz.com/medrecov.html, as of November, 2005.
Source: Associated Content
Monday, 11 May 2009
How Can Belly Dance Benefit You?
Published: January 08, 2009
By: A. Writer
Belly dancing is a great way to strengthen your body while you learn an amazing dance form that has been around for hundreds of years. Many people are afraid to take up belly dance for a variety of reasons. Some people think they are bad dancers, other
people think they don't have the right body for it, and still more people are afraid of the negative associations attached to belly dancers.
The truth is that belly dancing has an undeserved bad reputation. Over the years, Hollywood has portrayed belly dancers as adult entertainers, similar to strippers. In many period movies, belly dancers are portrayed as exotic sex slaves, contrasted to repressed women in black veils.
In reality, belly dancing consists of tribal dance forms from all over the Middle East, and further. It originates from dance forms the Roma gypsies brought from India and took with them everywhere they traveled. It was generally a communal dance form used in celebration, rather than a solo performer.
In the past century, the West has co-opted belly dance and transformed the art into something completely different. More recently, some belly dancers have been working to take back the dance form and have control over the way they are portrayed. Fat Chance Belly Dance is one such dance company. Some people try to restore the original moves and costumes of the tribal dance, while others try to expand it. There is even a large underground movement of Goth belly dancers.
Besides the rich and interesting history, there are many reasons to take up belly dancing. It is great for your internal muscles strength. The muscle isolations practiced in belly dance will help you strengthen your core, which can help you have better digestion and even lessen the pain of childbirth.
Belly dance is one of the few dance forms that is great for women with any body type. While ballet requires a slender figure, belly dance is wonderful for women with curves. There is no benefit to having any particular body type, since belly dance is all about the internal strength in your body.
You will probably not develop six pack abs and a perfectly svelte body through belly dance. But you will gain internal strength, have fun, and participate in a cultural dance that has a rich history. To find some classes, look at your local gyms, nearby colleges, and dance studios. If there are no classes or teachers in your area, check online for one of the many instructional belly dance DVDs.
Source: Associated Content
By: A. Writer
Belly dancing is a great way to strengthen your body while you learn an amazing dance form that has been around for hundreds of years. Many people are afraid to take up belly dance for a variety of reasons. Some people think they are bad dancers, other
people think they don't have the right body for it, and still more people are afraid of the negative associations attached to belly dancers.
The truth is that belly dancing has an undeserved bad reputation. Over the years, Hollywood has portrayed belly dancers as adult entertainers, similar to strippers. In many period movies, belly dancers are portrayed as exotic sex slaves, contrasted to repressed women in black veils.
In reality, belly dancing consists of tribal dance forms from all over the Middle East, and further. It originates from dance forms the Roma gypsies brought from India and took with them everywhere they traveled. It was generally a communal dance form used in celebration, rather than a solo performer.
In the past century, the West has co-opted belly dance and transformed the art into something completely different. More recently, some belly dancers have been working to take back the dance form and have control over the way they are portrayed. Fat Chance Belly Dance is one such dance company. Some people try to restore the original moves and costumes of the tribal dance, while others try to expand it. There is even a large underground movement of Goth belly dancers.
Besides the rich and interesting history, there are many reasons to take up belly dancing. It is great for your internal muscles strength. The muscle isolations practiced in belly dance will help you strengthen your core, which can help you have better digestion and even lessen the pain of childbirth.
Belly dance is one of the few dance forms that is great for women with any body type. While ballet requires a slender figure, belly dance is wonderful for women with curves. There is no benefit to having any particular body type, since belly dance is all about the internal strength in your body.
You will probably not develop six pack abs and a perfectly svelte body through belly dance. But you will gain internal strength, have fun, and participate in a cultural dance that has a rich history. To find some classes, look at your local gyms, nearby colleges, and dance studios. If there are no classes or teachers in your area, check online for one of the many instructional belly dance DVDs.
Source: Associated Content
An Introduction to Belly Dance
Published: February 03, 2007
Writer: Nadia De Leon
Authentic Belly Dance is not the deceptive immoral dance of seduction that western Hollywood-influenced stereotypes would have us believe. Belly Dance has been misrepresented by cabaret dancers and incorrectly portrayed to the public by the media. In reality, Belly Dance is a natural, earthly, beneficial, enjoyable and completely ethical dance that honors women and femininity. The proper term for this dance, which can both be a highly disciplined art as well as a form of casual exercise and entertainment, is Oriental Dance. The first American teachers disliked the word "belly dance" because of its wrong sexual connotation and focus on the women's torsos and not on their dancing technique. In her article Roots the well-known and respected teacher Morocco (Carolina Vargas Dinicu), who has more than thirty years studying, performing and teaching Belly Dance, states: "To use the disgusting misnomer 'belly dance' is not only incorrect, it is an insult equivalent to calling Flamenco 'cockroach killing'"[1]. Nowadays, the term Belly Dance has been accepted by many teachers and reclaimed by new dancers because the body part where the movements are focused is, indeed, the belly. And this has nothing to do with a seductive goal; in fact, it has to do with fertility.
Many dance scholars support a theory that places Belly Dance as the oldest dance in the history of humanity, stating that it originated as a fertility ritual thousands of years ago. They use as evidence for their theory 17,000 years-old rock engravings found in southern Italy, Greece and Egypt, as well as famous fertility goddesses/ women sculptures such as the Venus of Willendorf. Furthermore, some dance researchers, such as dancer, writer and editor Daniella Gioseffi in her book Earth Dancing, claim that Belly Dancing was originally a ritual form for the Mother Earth Goddess in primal matriarchal or polytheistic societies where the dance honored femininity and was passed down from mothers to daughters.
Another important theory about the origin of Belly Dance is the one based on its childbirth facilitation and training capabilities. Several dancers including the famed dance ethnologist La Meri, who traveled extensively throughout the Middle East for research and training purposes in the '20s and '30s, claim to have witnessed rituals in which a woman in labor is surrounded by other women who perform Belly Dancing in a sort of hypnotizing ritual for moral support.
Belly Dancing arrived to America as an imported cabaret spectacle referred to as Danse du ventre, which originated in the Middle East during the colonization of Africa by European countries. Referring to this degradation process, the Armenian dancer
Armen Ohanian states in her book The Dancer of Shamahka:
Thus in Cairo one evening I saw, with sick incredulous eyes, one of our most sacred dances degraded into a bestiality horrible and revolting. It is our poem of the mystery and pain of motherhood, which all true Asiatic men watch with reverence and humility, in the far corners of Asia where the destructive breath of the Occident has not yet penetrated. In this olden Asia, which has kept the dance in its primitive purity, it represents maternity, the mysterious conception of life, the suffering and the joy with which a new soul is brought in the world. Could any man born of woman contemplate this most holy subject, expressed in an art so pure and so ritualistic as our eastern dance, with less than profound reverence? Such is our Asiatic veneration of motherhood, that there are countries and tribes whose most sacred oath is sworn upon the stomach, because it is from this sacred cup that humanity has issued. But the spirit of the Occident had touched this holy dance, and it became the horrible 'danse du ventre' I heard the lean Europeans chuckling, I saw lascivious smiles upon even the lips of Asiatics, and I fled.
Even today in some Middle Eastern regions that remain unaffected by the influence of Western ways of thinking, women dance in a circle around a mother in labor to induce her to repeat the movements and to give her the psychological support showed in the live-giving gift in every woman's destiny. In the informal and familial settings of some Muslim societies, women still gather by themselves in a separate location to dance to the rhythms of the drums, have fun and interact. This traditional form of Belly Dance is called Raks-sharki. Nevertheless, in most of the Middle East the rise of Political Islam has led to more puritanical attitudes in general. Dancers who appear in public, dancing in front of men who are not family to them contradict orthodox Islamic values. As a result, the widely held notion that professional dancers are prostitutes is being reinforced through the Arab countries, from Afghanistan to Morocco. In Egypt the rise of Political Islam is creating a backlash against Belly Dance. By law, in the country that names itself as the place where Belly Dance was born, these dancers cannot dance in television, and police monitors live performances to ensure that the dancer's skirt ends below the knee and that the navel is covered, even if only with transparent material.[2]
These attitudes might sound opposite to our values of freedom and free will, but they are actually understandable given Arab religious and cultural values. Therefore, what I find strange is that here in the U.S. dancing Belly Dance could be a cause to suffer the weight of many prejudices. Dance should be respected as a universal language that allows us to better understand the cultures of others. The fact is, it is impossible to even try understanding cultures different to ours, or widen our concepts in general, if we do not start with an open mind that does not judge dances by the amount of clothes wore by the dancers instead of the cultural meaning attached to them. Once again, the dancer Morocco states this indignation in wonderful words in her article Roots:
When I first came into Oriental dance (...), I was drawn by the beauty of its music and movements and gave no thought to the possibility that it might be misinterpreted by ignorant or misinformed viewers. Innocent that I was, I assumed that the grace of a skilled dancer was sufficient to prove the beauty and legitimacy of this ancient art form. How wrong I was! I've lost count of the times that an erroneous and degrading value judgment of my morality and worthiness was made, based on (...) previous performances of those who, in every profession, cater to the lowest common denominator.[3]
The truth is that Belly dance does not only have many physiological benefits (including good posture, muscular strength, coordination, cardiovascular fitness, eases menstrual pains, improves circulation and digestion, and releases tension), it also has several psychological benefits. Most importantly, it improves self-image and confidence, which is a very important benefit, especially for young women. Belly Dance lets us get in contact with our body and accept it as it is. Belly Dance makes any thin or overweight woman enjoy feminine dancing. This acceptance of ourselves in front of the mirror image as much as in front of other people is more easily achieved in an "only girls" atmosphere. That's why many Belly Dance teachers, including myself, don't even aloud men in their studios. Second, Belly Dance also develops teamwork and a deep feeling of sisterhood among the members of a "dancing troupe". Tribal Belly Dance is danced in couples or larger groups where dance is improvised by the "cue-er", who is the woman on the front left corner. This title is shared because of the rotation of positions, resulting in a group dynamic in which the higher level of team work is reached with the synchronicity of the dancers.
Belly Dance can be a way of life, or something a woman does "just for kicks every other Friday night", but it is always beneficial to the women who practice it. Belly Dance has a way of seducing us, women, into the quest for the light of our own feminine identity, as well as constructing a place of belonging for that identity, in history, in society, regardless of the time, place and culture we come from. Belly Dance invokes and evokes the universal energy of womanhood from the astral collective consciousness into our striking present, into our sweat and skin, the tips of our fingers, and the rhythm of our hearts beating life.
[1] Vargas Dinicu, Carolina (Morocco), Roots, Habibi Vol.5 No.12
[2] Nieuwkerk, Karin van, A trade like any other: female singers and dancers in Egypt, Austin : University of Texas Press, 1995.
[3] Vargas Dinicu, Carolina (Morocco), Roots, Habibi Vol.5 No.12
Source: Associated Content
Writer: Nadia De Leon
Authentic Belly Dance is not the deceptive immoral dance of seduction that western Hollywood-influenced stereotypes would have us believe. Belly Dance has been misrepresented by cabaret dancers and incorrectly portrayed to the public by the media. In reality, Belly Dance is a natural, earthly, beneficial, enjoyable and completely ethical dance that honors women and femininity. The proper term for this dance, which can both be a highly disciplined art as well as a form of casual exercise and entertainment, is Oriental Dance. The first American teachers disliked the word "belly dance" because of its wrong sexual connotation and focus on the women's torsos and not on their dancing technique. In her article Roots the well-known and respected teacher Morocco (Carolina Vargas Dinicu), who has more than thirty years studying, performing and teaching Belly Dance, states: "To use the disgusting misnomer 'belly dance' is not only incorrect, it is an insult equivalent to calling Flamenco 'cockroach killing'"[1]. Nowadays, the term Belly Dance has been accepted by many teachers and reclaimed by new dancers because the body part where the movements are focused is, indeed, the belly. And this has nothing to do with a seductive goal; in fact, it has to do with fertility.
Many dance scholars support a theory that places Belly Dance as the oldest dance in the history of humanity, stating that it originated as a fertility ritual thousands of years ago. They use as evidence for their theory 17,000 years-old rock engravings found in southern Italy, Greece and Egypt, as well as famous fertility goddesses/ women sculptures such as the Venus of Willendorf. Furthermore, some dance researchers, such as dancer, writer and editor Daniella Gioseffi in her book Earth Dancing, claim that Belly Dancing was originally a ritual form for the Mother Earth Goddess in primal matriarchal or polytheistic societies where the dance honored femininity and was passed down from mothers to daughters.
Another important theory about the origin of Belly Dance is the one based on its childbirth facilitation and training capabilities. Several dancers including the famed dance ethnologist La Meri, who traveled extensively throughout the Middle East for research and training purposes in the '20s and '30s, claim to have witnessed rituals in which a woman in labor is surrounded by other women who perform Belly Dancing in a sort of hypnotizing ritual for moral support.
Belly Dancing arrived to America as an imported cabaret spectacle referred to as Danse du ventre, which originated in the Middle East during the colonization of Africa by European countries. Referring to this degradation process, the Armenian dancer
Armen Ohanian states in her book The Dancer of Shamahka:
Thus in Cairo one evening I saw, with sick incredulous eyes, one of our most sacred dances degraded into a bestiality horrible and revolting. It is our poem of the mystery and pain of motherhood, which all true Asiatic men watch with reverence and humility, in the far corners of Asia where the destructive breath of the Occident has not yet penetrated. In this olden Asia, which has kept the dance in its primitive purity, it represents maternity, the mysterious conception of life, the suffering and the joy with which a new soul is brought in the world. Could any man born of woman contemplate this most holy subject, expressed in an art so pure and so ritualistic as our eastern dance, with less than profound reverence? Such is our Asiatic veneration of motherhood, that there are countries and tribes whose most sacred oath is sworn upon the stomach, because it is from this sacred cup that humanity has issued. But the spirit of the Occident had touched this holy dance, and it became the horrible 'danse du ventre' I heard the lean Europeans chuckling, I saw lascivious smiles upon even the lips of Asiatics, and I fled.
Even today in some Middle Eastern regions that remain unaffected by the influence of Western ways of thinking, women dance in a circle around a mother in labor to induce her to repeat the movements and to give her the psychological support showed in the live-giving gift in every woman's destiny. In the informal and familial settings of some Muslim societies, women still gather by themselves in a separate location to dance to the rhythms of the drums, have fun and interact. This traditional form of Belly Dance is called Raks-sharki. Nevertheless, in most of the Middle East the rise of Political Islam has led to more puritanical attitudes in general. Dancers who appear in public, dancing in front of men who are not family to them contradict orthodox Islamic values. As a result, the widely held notion that professional dancers are prostitutes is being reinforced through the Arab countries, from Afghanistan to Morocco. In Egypt the rise of Political Islam is creating a backlash against Belly Dance. By law, in the country that names itself as the place where Belly Dance was born, these dancers cannot dance in television, and police monitors live performances to ensure that the dancer's skirt ends below the knee and that the navel is covered, even if only with transparent material.[2]
These attitudes might sound opposite to our values of freedom and free will, but they are actually understandable given Arab religious and cultural values. Therefore, what I find strange is that here in the U.S. dancing Belly Dance could be a cause to suffer the weight of many prejudices. Dance should be respected as a universal language that allows us to better understand the cultures of others. The fact is, it is impossible to even try understanding cultures different to ours, or widen our concepts in general, if we do not start with an open mind that does not judge dances by the amount of clothes wore by the dancers instead of the cultural meaning attached to them. Once again, the dancer Morocco states this indignation in wonderful words in her article Roots:
When I first came into Oriental dance (...), I was drawn by the beauty of its music and movements and gave no thought to the possibility that it might be misinterpreted by ignorant or misinformed viewers. Innocent that I was, I assumed that the grace of a skilled dancer was sufficient to prove the beauty and legitimacy of this ancient art form. How wrong I was! I've lost count of the times that an erroneous and degrading value judgment of my morality and worthiness was made, based on (...) previous performances of those who, in every profession, cater to the lowest common denominator.[3]
The truth is that Belly dance does not only have many physiological benefits (including good posture, muscular strength, coordination, cardiovascular fitness, eases menstrual pains, improves circulation and digestion, and releases tension), it also has several psychological benefits. Most importantly, it improves self-image and confidence, which is a very important benefit, especially for young women. Belly Dance lets us get in contact with our body and accept it as it is. Belly Dance makes any thin or overweight woman enjoy feminine dancing. This acceptance of ourselves in front of the mirror image as much as in front of other people is more easily achieved in an "only girls" atmosphere. That's why many Belly Dance teachers, including myself, don't even aloud men in their studios. Second, Belly Dance also develops teamwork and a deep feeling of sisterhood among the members of a "dancing troupe". Tribal Belly Dance is danced in couples or larger groups where dance is improvised by the "cue-er", who is the woman on the front left corner. This title is shared because of the rotation of positions, resulting in a group dynamic in which the higher level of team work is reached with the synchronicity of the dancers.
Belly Dance can be a way of life, or something a woman does "just for kicks every other Friday night", but it is always beneficial to the women who practice it. Belly Dance has a way of seducing us, women, into the quest for the light of our own feminine identity, as well as constructing a place of belonging for that identity, in history, in society, regardless of the time, place and culture we come from. Belly Dance invokes and evokes the universal energy of womanhood from the astral collective consciousness into our striking present, into our sweat and skin, the tips of our fingers, and the rhythm of our hearts beating life.
[1] Vargas Dinicu, Carolina (Morocco), Roots, Habibi Vol.5 No.12
[2] Nieuwkerk, Karin van, A trade like any other: female singers and dancers in Egypt, Austin : University of Texas Press, 1995.
[3] Vargas Dinicu, Carolina (Morocco), Roots, Habibi Vol.5 No.12
Source: Associated Content
Thursday, 19 March 2009
The Healing Power of Dance
by Nedra Bashira
The power of Middle Eastern Dance to benefit our physical and emotional well being has been proven effective time after time...music and dance have been used successfully to break through to victims of trauma.
Mentally stimulating, physically challenging and socially integrating, this art from has taken many women from the pits of depression to a stronger self, more aware of our potential as women to face challenges with a more positive outlook and a renewed self esteem.
The basic movements of the dance provide the perfect mix of isometric and isotonic resistance to shape our bodies without forming bulk muscle. Bellydance increases our endurance & strengthens our cardiovascular system with as much of a workout as any aerobics class. Our posture is improved which improves our overall health. Our joints and spine are nourished by the synovial fluid, thus resulting in less pain and stiffness from arthritis, and our bone density increases. When we engage in physical activity, our mental & emotional facilities also benefit.
Several years ago I would have never seen myself making the breakthroughs I do today with women who had suffered the cruelty of domestic violence.
I was one of those women.
On the day my husband was arrested for abusing me, the only thought in my mind was "What will I do now?" I was alone with two small children, the only family I had was far away and had busy lives of their own. For years I had been broken down piece by piece. Why did I stay, you ask? Why does anyone stay? There are many reasons... I was afraid, I was alone, and the threats, the things he would say, he would use any threat he could to "keep me in my place." The abuse was not only physical, it was mental, he was downright cruel and played terrible head games... it was so demeaning...
I will never forget the way I felt in the first few weeks, I had never felt so helpless in my life...No, I didn't want him back, there was no way he would ever change...the alcohol, the drugs, the crime... things he hid so well in the beginning... and frankly, I was so numb, I had no idea if I could ever love again.
For so long, I felt so guilty that I had let him push me around like that. He kept me from the things I loved, the people I loved, he closed me off even to my true self. I had become an empty shell...
One day on a walk into work I walked by the local dance studio, the music coming from within was intoxicating, the women were beautiful, young and old, all so full of joy and dancing without a care in the world... I stayed and watched a bit then went off to my job, a stressful job in a local pharmacy, answering phones, handling patients, managing inventory, preparing prescriptions as fast as possible with little or no help. My life was stressful, my job was stressful, the cost of working seemed silly when I gave almost my entire paycheck to pay for child care...I was at a point in my life where I wanted to give up... then I was diagnosed with cervical cancer... I was worn down and actually happy to have a break, even in illness...
For most of my adult life I had studied Yoga, but stopped after I had met my husband . Now, riddled with aggressive depression & constant pain, I found it hard to do anything, but I forced myself to start again, doing almost nothing...I played music again, I started to do more and more everyday...
Weeks go by, I walk up past the dance studio, class was just finishing up and everyone was happily talking with each other...wow, I had barely left the house to see another human in months. I was nervous to even be stepping in around other people. I was at the height of my depression, I didn't care how I looked, felt pretty miserable most of the time... but still, something told me to go in... and my life was changed from that point forward.
From the start of my first class, the dance took a hold of me like fire, I couldn't get enough. I had, of course, to follow my body and deal with healing from the cancer, but I truly believe that the dancing healed me, body, mind and soul...it helped me work out of my depression and got me around other people, I was physically challenged and I was forced to open my eyes and see just how beautiful I was, inside and out, the hatred & self-loathing dissolved. The damage from the relationship with my husband had made me feel ugly, worthless, good-for-nothing... but I was so wrong....I twisted and twirled and shimmied all the way to the stronger person I am today. I was relaxed, invigorated, healed.
Nowadays you will find me not only teaching and performing Middle Eastern Dance for the general public, but I am also working in the community at every opportunity to help those who have been in my shoes...doing workshops with bellydance, dance therapy, Yoga & pilates, teaching seminars, meeting one-on-one with clients. I like to bellydance and yoga out of my tool box to show these women that they ARE beautiful and that they have this strength and beauty and power right within themselves.
We focus on creating a quality of life that goes beyond just addressing our basic needs as humans, life without joy is empty...and that joy has to be found within ourselves first, before we can share it, it cannot be found in another person...
I want every woman to feel empowered and ready to take on the world on her own when she walks out of my office/studio...to know love & safety, and joy.
Source: The Hip Circle
The power of Middle Eastern Dance to benefit our physical and emotional well being has been proven effective time after time...music and dance have been used successfully to break through to victims of trauma.
Mentally stimulating, physically challenging and socially integrating, this art from has taken many women from the pits of depression to a stronger self, more aware of our potential as women to face challenges with a more positive outlook and a renewed self esteem.The basic movements of the dance provide the perfect mix of isometric and isotonic resistance to shape our bodies without forming bulk muscle. Bellydance increases our endurance & strengthens our cardiovascular system with as much of a workout as any aerobics class. Our posture is improved which improves our overall health. Our joints and spine are nourished by the synovial fluid, thus resulting in less pain and stiffness from arthritis, and our bone density increases. When we engage in physical activity, our mental & emotional facilities also benefit.
Several years ago I would have never seen myself making the breakthroughs I do today with women who had suffered the cruelty of domestic violence.
I was one of those women.
On the day my husband was arrested for abusing me, the only thought in my mind was "What will I do now?" I was alone with two small children, the only family I had was far away and had busy lives of their own. For years I had been broken down piece by piece. Why did I stay, you ask? Why does anyone stay? There are many reasons... I was afraid, I was alone, and the threats, the things he would say, he would use any threat he could to "keep me in my place." The abuse was not only physical, it was mental, he was downright cruel and played terrible head games... it was so demeaning...
I will never forget the way I felt in the first few weeks, I had never felt so helpless in my life...No, I didn't want him back, there was no way he would ever change...the alcohol, the drugs, the crime... things he hid so well in the beginning... and frankly, I was so numb, I had no idea if I could ever love again.
For so long, I felt so guilty that I had let him push me around like that. He kept me from the things I loved, the people I loved, he closed me off even to my true self. I had become an empty shell...
One day on a walk into work I walked by the local dance studio, the music coming from within was intoxicating, the women were beautiful, young and old, all so full of joy and dancing without a care in the world... I stayed and watched a bit then went off to my job, a stressful job in a local pharmacy, answering phones, handling patients, managing inventory, preparing prescriptions as fast as possible with little or no help. My life was stressful, my job was stressful, the cost of working seemed silly when I gave almost my entire paycheck to pay for child care...I was at a point in my life where I wanted to give up... then I was diagnosed with cervical cancer... I was worn down and actually happy to have a break, even in illness...
For most of my adult life I had studied Yoga, but stopped after I had met my husband . Now, riddled with aggressive depression & constant pain, I found it hard to do anything, but I forced myself to start again, doing almost nothing...I played music again, I started to do more and more everyday...Weeks go by, I walk up past the dance studio, class was just finishing up and everyone was happily talking with each other...wow, I had barely left the house to see another human in months. I was nervous to even be stepping in around other people. I was at the height of my depression, I didn't care how I looked, felt pretty miserable most of the time... but still, something told me to go in... and my life was changed from that point forward.
From the start of my first class, the dance took a hold of me like fire, I couldn't get enough. I had, of course, to follow my body and deal with healing from the cancer, but I truly believe that the dancing healed me, body, mind and soul...it helped me work out of my depression and got me around other people, I was physically challenged and I was forced to open my eyes and see just how beautiful I was, inside and out, the hatred & self-loathing dissolved. The damage from the relationship with my husband had made me feel ugly, worthless, good-for-nothing... but I was so wrong....I twisted and twirled and shimmied all the way to the stronger person I am today. I was relaxed, invigorated, healed.
Nowadays you will find me not only teaching and performing Middle Eastern Dance for the general public, but I am also working in the community at every opportunity to help those who have been in my shoes...doing workshops with bellydance, dance therapy, Yoga & pilates, teaching seminars, meeting one-on-one with clients. I like to bellydance and yoga out of my tool box to show these women that they ARE beautiful and that they have this strength and beauty and power right within themselves.
We focus on creating a quality of life that goes beyond just addressing our basic needs as humans, life without joy is empty...and that joy has to be found within ourselves first, before we can share it, it cannot be found in another person...
I want every woman to feel empowered and ready to take on the world on her own when she walks out of my office/studio...to know love & safety, and joy.
Source: The Hip Circle
Belly Dancing With More Belly
Reported by: Lauren Gress
Published: March 2, 2008
COLUMBIA - The ancient art of belly dancing is making a comeback in Mid-Missouri and perhaps via an unlikely group with more belly than some would expect.
Women practice belly dancing in dance studios all across the country, not just in Columbia. However, the participants in belly dance classes here are expectant or new mothers.
"I like the fact that I am getting back into shape after my pregnancy," dancer Jaime Farris said.
After having her first child, Dee Dee Farris-Folkerts began taking belly dancing lessons.
"I saw a tremendous difference in what birth was like after taking belly dance classes and building that mind-body connection," Farris-Folkerts said. "And thats where a real light bulb went off for me."
So a few years ago she began to teach belly dancing classes to pregnant women and the classes grew to include new mothers as well. Motherhip Belly dance was born and Farris-Folkerts had combined her love of belly dance and midwifery to help new moms and moms-to-be stay strong.
But Farris-Folkerts is not the first to use belly dance to help ease labor pains. Some historians say belly dance originated not as the sensual dance it has become in modern culture, but as a way for women to connect with other women and prepare their bodies for childbirth.
"As I became more involved in belly dance, parallels began to grow and grow," Farris-Folkerts said.
But learning how to move their bodies isn't the only reason women enjoy the Motherhip classes. It is practical for pregnant women to get a little bit of exercise and the dancing helps with balance.
"I'm excited to be able to take the class so that I can help my body be able to turn and move," dancer Anita Lee said.
Despite all the physical benefits of the class, the best part for women may just be getting time to prepare for their babies or spending time with their newborns.
The Motherhip classes take place every Friday evening and new women are always welcome.
Source: KOMU
Published: March 2, 2008
COLUMBIA - The ancient art of belly dancing is making a comeback in Mid-Missouri and perhaps via an unlikely group with more belly than some would expect.
Women practice belly dancing in dance studios all across the country, not just in Columbia. However, the participants in belly dance classes here are expectant or new mothers.
"I like the fact that I am getting back into shape after my pregnancy," dancer Jaime Farris said.
After having her first child, Dee Dee Farris-Folkerts began taking belly dancing lessons.
"I saw a tremendous difference in what birth was like after taking belly dance classes and building that mind-body connection," Farris-Folkerts said. "And thats where a real light bulb went off for me."So a few years ago she began to teach belly dancing classes to pregnant women and the classes grew to include new mothers as well. Motherhip Belly dance was born and Farris-Folkerts had combined her love of belly dance and midwifery to help new moms and moms-to-be stay strong.
But Farris-Folkerts is not the first to use belly dance to help ease labor pains. Some historians say belly dance originated not as the sensual dance it has become in modern culture, but as a way for women to connect with other women and prepare their bodies for childbirth.
"As I became more involved in belly dance, parallels began to grow and grow," Farris-Folkerts said.
But learning how to move their bodies isn't the only reason women enjoy the Motherhip classes. It is practical for pregnant women to get a little bit of exercise and the dancing helps with balance."I'm excited to be able to take the class so that I can help my body be able to turn and move," dancer Anita Lee said.
Despite all the physical benefits of the class, the best part for women may just be getting time to prepare for their babies or spending time with their newborns.
The Motherhip classes take place every Friday evening and new women are always welcome.
Source: KOMU
The Science of Dance Choreography: Cognitive scientists seek to quantify body movement
By Anne Marie Welsh
March 8, 2009
WATCH MEN: Students at UC San Diego using laptops take notes on dancers’ movements as Random Dance Company’s Wayne McGregor observes, far right.
Reporting from San Diego -- With a dozen high-def cameras and a couple of camcorders, plus pens, notebooks, sketch pads and laptops, more than 40 people spent three recent weeks in a black-box theater on the campus of UC San Diego documenting what was occurring there.
The object of their study was notoriously elusive: dance and the process of choreographic creation.
What happens, they wondered, when choreographer Wayne McGregor creates movement on (through? with?) the protean, hyper-articulated bodies of his Random Dance Company? How do the dancers visualize his cues? How do they respond to one another in the group dynamic? How do they remember? And how does he?
By the end of every day during those three weeks, each person in the theater had interviewed or been interviewed by others participating in a meticulously crafted experiment exploring the nature -- and role -- of cognition in creating dance.
Three years in the making, the experiment was initiated by Martin Wollesen, director of UCSD's ArtPower! presenting organization; carried forward by professor David Kirsh, director of the university's interactive cognition lab; and heartily supported by McGregor, Britain's leading contemporary choreographer.
"I feel like I'm in therapy 2 1/2 hours a day," the choreographer said before one early evening debriefing with Kirsh. "David's questions make you define terms, help you not to be woolly about the words you use. We're talking intimately about what I'm doing, about the body as a thinking body, about how it processes information and visualizes movement."
McGregor, also the Royal Ballet's resident choreographer and a much-sought-after opera director, created portions of his next piece, "Dyad 1909," while in San Diego with his company and support staff as ArtPower!'s first innovator-in-residence.
The residency kicked off with a performance by Random Dance of "Entity," a startling, virtuosic 2008 work, itself part of McGregor's ongoing inquiry into the relationship between the thinking mind and the moving body. The weeks of intensive investigation and creation were also part of a course taught by Kirsh, centered on creative and "distributed" -- meaning "group" -- cognition.
The investigation was designed to result, said Kirsh, "in a singular document of the process that will be available to others and analyzed for years to come."
Make a note of it
Like American dance innovator Merce Cunningham, McGregor has long been interested in what jump-starts his creative process. His company name, Random Dance, implies Cunningham's belief that random numbers can be as useful as logic, that chance and indeterminacy are core artistic tools.
McGregor said he'd "been fascinated with disruptions, diversions, randomness, incompleteness, the different set of intelligences involved in dance and the different ways of extracting information with the body."
At UCSD, he said, he became more aware of "what I'm giving attention to." He wanted to "understand how we're thinking about ideas, to extend and develop my cognitive capacity about the body" in hopes of developing new methods that would cut against any "formula motifs" or habitual ways of making.
One way to improve or change his choreographic techniques, he said, might "involve building images acoustically rather than visually." A week into the experiment, he had discovered that "the things we're taught to talk about in dance don't actually describe what's happening in the mind. I want to blast that vocabulary open."
The dancers, his "best group by far," were eager participants -- not passive guinea pigs but note-taking thinkers. Citing "their extraordinary techniques and capacity to do so much mentally," McGregor said he'd chosen the international troupe of seven men and four women for "their serpentine physicality" and "mental aptitude. They're all curious and open-minded."
Their daily activities created a continuous feedback loop. First thing in the morning, Kirsh interviewed the choreographer in general terms while the dancers warmed up during company class. (Dancers rotated teaching duties, but the class was always ballet, followed for some by rigorous sets of abdominal crunches.)
At 10:30, Kirsh's students, each assigned a dancer, filed in with their laptops and notebooks. Cameras were activated, a documentary filmmaker and the Random Dance research coordinator took their places, and McGregor set his dancers to work on a task, a riff, an idea, a rhythmic challenge.
Students' fingers flew across keyboards as they described gestures, moves, attitudes, dancer responses and adaptations that provoked questions they would ask later in the day about why and how. Some used a coding system developed by a graduate assistant. Others sketched.
During the afternoon creative session, McGregor and the dancers generated more movement, more phenomena to watch, record, analyze. Then the dancers, led by associate director Odette Hughes, recapped the day's new movement phrases. Last came the debriefings -- McGregor interviewed again by Kirsh, the dancers queried specifically and persistently by the students. All those interviews were videotaped too.
Creative cognition
When ArtPower!'s Wollesen first spread the word on campus that he was seeking neuroscientists, cognitive researchers and computer scientists for a possible collaboration, Kirsh showed sustained interest. When they met, Kirsh and McGregor had an almost immediate "mind meld," Wollesen recalled, and continued their dialogue over many meetings, delays and setbacks.
"I wondered whether such a project had electricity," Kirsh said during a lunch break. "Dance seemed such a fertile ground for exploration as disciplines are exploding. Many of us in the 21st century are exploring the same theme -- the different avenues by which humans rationally engage the world. In dance, it's not the apparent meaning of the artistic product that's of interest but the huge amount of rationality that goes into its creation."
Despite the loss of a large grant, Wollesen, Kirsh and McGregor persisted. In London, Kirsh watched McGregor and a group of Cambridge University scientists investigate the possibility of building computer software that could "think" in movement terms and intervene in the creative process.
In this country, postmodern dance pioneer Cunningham has been experimenting for nearly 20 years with the software program Life Forms and the cinematic (and video game) technique of motion capture. More recently, Cunningham has combined software-generated ideas for shapes and movement with his usual chance operations to create new choreography.
But McGregor and his research coordinator, Scott deLahunta, were after something different -- a new software program that could alter, break or reverse choreographic patterns and create new ones. During the London workshop, Kirsh said, "Wayne made a three-minute piece in under three hours. The scales fell from my eyes. It was such a magnificent instance of distributed creative cognition where the phenomena were dripping on the surface."
Translation: Dancers and choreographer together solve problems, generate movement and coordinate ideas before the choreographer chooses what to integrate into a completed structure.
That computer program is still in the works. But once McGregor, Kirsh and deLahunta had determined how they might do "an ethnographic study" of creative cognition, the UCSD performance, residency and course were scheduled. And now, having worked with Kirsh, the choreographer is exploring representations of movement in human minds and memories.
In a typical afternoon session, McGregor asked his company to improvise an arm combination involving sliding, folding and rotating one arm or both, the dancers working either singly or in pairs. As they invented, he soaked in ideas, sometimes moving among the dancers, sometimes trying out a sequence inspired by what he saw.
Within an hour, he had created an intricate gestural series performed at speeds seemingly impossible to execute, let alone duplicate; the dancers copied, learned, practiced, mastered the sequence.
McGregor next asked them to add the arm work to complex rhythms they had developed that morning for the legs. He superimposed detail (leg circles, foot beats, torso tilts). Then -- almost miraculously, it appeared -- McGregor structured the swift, counterintuitive motions with against-gravity torques, twists and undulations of the dancers' super-supple torsos, melding all that into a choreographic structure by calling the rhythmic cues for two dancers, then two more, then a larger group to enter with their parallel or counterpointed or echoing responses.
"It was a good day," he said later when interviewed by Kirsh, whose professional vocabulary does not include the word dancer Paolo Mangiola used when he was interviewed by a student team. Finding neither scientific language nor recalled movement to express what he had experienced in the rehearsal room with McGregor, the dancer called it "magic."
Participants were pleased, many exhilarated. Students interviewed said they were developing a methodology for real-time data collection replicable in other ethnographic fields -- including gymnastics training, human-computer interaction and primate communication.
Wollesen is looking toward teaming on another innovator-in-residence project with UCSD's Sixth College, devoted to performing arts and technology. And aside from McGregor's potential additions to an already mind-boggling choreographic tool kit, Kirsh sees practical applications emerging from their mutual investigation.
"I've made delightful and rich observations about giving and taking instruction that may help us learn how to improve the cognitive efficiency of instruction in other fields by making it multi-modal," he said. "We are learning how distributed memory has to be turned on to be retrieved. We are seeing that choreography is a form of sustained brainstorming with a leader being the constraint on the outcome.
"There are applications in a broad range of disciplines," Kirsh added. He cited psychology and the treatment of people, such as anorexics, with body image problems.
Source: LA Times
March 8, 2009
WATCH MEN: Students at UC San Diego using laptops take notes on dancers’ movements as Random Dance Company’s Wayne McGregor observes, far right.
Reporting from San Diego -- With a dozen high-def cameras and a couple of camcorders, plus pens, notebooks, sketch pads and laptops, more than 40 people spent three recent weeks in a black-box theater on the campus of UC San Diego documenting what was occurring there.
The object of their study was notoriously elusive: dance and the process of choreographic creation.
What happens, they wondered, when choreographer Wayne McGregor creates movement on (through? with?) the protean, hyper-articulated bodies of his Random Dance Company? How do the dancers visualize his cues? How do they respond to one another in the group dynamic? How do they remember? And how does he?
By the end of every day during those three weeks, each person in the theater had interviewed or been interviewed by others participating in a meticulously crafted experiment exploring the nature -- and role -- of cognition in creating dance.
Three years in the making, the experiment was initiated by Martin Wollesen, director of UCSD's ArtPower! presenting organization; carried forward by professor David Kirsh, director of the university's interactive cognition lab; and heartily supported by McGregor, Britain's leading contemporary choreographer.
"I feel like I'm in therapy 2 1/2 hours a day," the choreographer said before one early evening debriefing with Kirsh. "David's questions make you define terms, help you not to be woolly about the words you use. We're talking intimately about what I'm doing, about the body as a thinking body, about how it processes information and visualizes movement."
McGregor, also the Royal Ballet's resident choreographer and a much-sought-after opera director, created portions of his next piece, "Dyad 1909," while in San Diego with his company and support staff as ArtPower!'s first innovator-in-residence.
The residency kicked off with a performance by Random Dance of "Entity," a startling, virtuosic 2008 work, itself part of McGregor's ongoing inquiry into the relationship between the thinking mind and the moving body. The weeks of intensive investigation and creation were also part of a course taught by Kirsh, centered on creative and "distributed" -- meaning "group" -- cognition.
The investigation was designed to result, said Kirsh, "in a singular document of the process that will be available to others and analyzed for years to come."
Make a note of it
Like American dance innovator Merce Cunningham, McGregor has long been interested in what jump-starts his creative process. His company name, Random Dance, implies Cunningham's belief that random numbers can be as useful as logic, that chance and indeterminacy are core artistic tools.
McGregor said he'd "been fascinated with disruptions, diversions, randomness, incompleteness, the different set of intelligences involved in dance and the different ways of extracting information with the body."
At UCSD, he said, he became more aware of "what I'm giving attention to." He wanted to "understand how we're thinking about ideas, to extend and develop my cognitive capacity about the body" in hopes of developing new methods that would cut against any "formula motifs" or habitual ways of making.
One way to improve or change his choreographic techniques, he said, might "involve building images acoustically rather than visually." A week into the experiment, he had discovered that "the things we're taught to talk about in dance don't actually describe what's happening in the mind. I want to blast that vocabulary open."
The dancers, his "best group by far," were eager participants -- not passive guinea pigs but note-taking thinkers. Citing "their extraordinary techniques and capacity to do so much mentally," McGregor said he'd chosen the international troupe of seven men and four women for "their serpentine physicality" and "mental aptitude. They're all curious and open-minded."
Their daily activities created a continuous feedback loop. First thing in the morning, Kirsh interviewed the choreographer in general terms while the dancers warmed up during company class. (Dancers rotated teaching duties, but the class was always ballet, followed for some by rigorous sets of abdominal crunches.)
At 10:30, Kirsh's students, each assigned a dancer, filed in with their laptops and notebooks. Cameras were activated, a documentary filmmaker and the Random Dance research coordinator took their places, and McGregor set his dancers to work on a task, a riff, an idea, a rhythmic challenge.
Students' fingers flew across keyboards as they described gestures, moves, attitudes, dancer responses and adaptations that provoked questions they would ask later in the day about why and how. Some used a coding system developed by a graduate assistant. Others sketched.
During the afternoon creative session, McGregor and the dancers generated more movement, more phenomena to watch, record, analyze. Then the dancers, led by associate director Odette Hughes, recapped the day's new movement phrases. Last came the debriefings -- McGregor interviewed again by Kirsh, the dancers queried specifically and persistently by the students. All those interviews were videotaped too.
Creative cognition
When ArtPower!'s Wollesen first spread the word on campus that he was seeking neuroscientists, cognitive researchers and computer scientists for a possible collaboration, Kirsh showed sustained interest. When they met, Kirsh and McGregor had an almost immediate "mind meld," Wollesen recalled, and continued their dialogue over many meetings, delays and setbacks.
"I wondered whether such a project had electricity," Kirsh said during a lunch break. "Dance seemed such a fertile ground for exploration as disciplines are exploding. Many of us in the 21st century are exploring the same theme -- the different avenues by which humans rationally engage the world. In dance, it's not the apparent meaning of the artistic product that's of interest but the huge amount of rationality that goes into its creation."
Despite the loss of a large grant, Wollesen, Kirsh and McGregor persisted. In London, Kirsh watched McGregor and a group of Cambridge University scientists investigate the possibility of building computer software that could "think" in movement terms and intervene in the creative process.
In this country, postmodern dance pioneer Cunningham has been experimenting for nearly 20 years with the software program Life Forms and the cinematic (and video game) technique of motion capture. More recently, Cunningham has combined software-generated ideas for shapes and movement with his usual chance operations to create new choreography.
But McGregor and his research coordinator, Scott deLahunta, were after something different -- a new software program that could alter, break or reverse choreographic patterns and create new ones. During the London workshop, Kirsh said, "Wayne made a three-minute piece in under three hours. The scales fell from my eyes. It was such a magnificent instance of distributed creative cognition where the phenomena were dripping on the surface."
Translation: Dancers and choreographer together solve problems, generate movement and coordinate ideas before the choreographer chooses what to integrate into a completed structure.
That computer program is still in the works. But once McGregor, Kirsh and deLahunta had determined how they might do "an ethnographic study" of creative cognition, the UCSD performance, residency and course were scheduled. And now, having worked with Kirsh, the choreographer is exploring representations of movement in human minds and memories.
In a typical afternoon session, McGregor asked his company to improvise an arm combination involving sliding, folding and rotating one arm or both, the dancers working either singly or in pairs. As they invented, he soaked in ideas, sometimes moving among the dancers, sometimes trying out a sequence inspired by what he saw.
Within an hour, he had created an intricate gestural series performed at speeds seemingly impossible to execute, let alone duplicate; the dancers copied, learned, practiced, mastered the sequence.
McGregor next asked them to add the arm work to complex rhythms they had developed that morning for the legs. He superimposed detail (leg circles, foot beats, torso tilts). Then -- almost miraculously, it appeared -- McGregor structured the swift, counterintuitive motions with against-gravity torques, twists and undulations of the dancers' super-supple torsos, melding all that into a choreographic structure by calling the rhythmic cues for two dancers, then two more, then a larger group to enter with their parallel or counterpointed or echoing responses.
"It was a good day," he said later when interviewed by Kirsh, whose professional vocabulary does not include the word dancer Paolo Mangiola used when he was interviewed by a student team. Finding neither scientific language nor recalled movement to express what he had experienced in the rehearsal room with McGregor, the dancer called it "magic."
Participants were pleased, many exhilarated. Students interviewed said they were developing a methodology for real-time data collection replicable in other ethnographic fields -- including gymnastics training, human-computer interaction and primate communication.
Wollesen is looking toward teaming on another innovator-in-residence project with UCSD's Sixth College, devoted to performing arts and technology. And aside from McGregor's potential additions to an already mind-boggling choreographic tool kit, Kirsh sees practical applications emerging from their mutual investigation.
"I've made delightful and rich observations about giving and taking instruction that may help us learn how to improve the cognitive efficiency of instruction in other fields by making it multi-modal," he said. "We are learning how distributed memory has to be turned on to be retrieved. We are seeing that choreography is a form of sustained brainstorming with a leader being the constraint on the outcome.
"There are applications in a broad range of disciplines," Kirsh added. He cited psychology and the treatment of people, such as anorexics, with body image problems.
Source: LA Times
Sad goodbye to 'cosmopolitan' Cairo
By Christian Fraser
BBC News, Cairo
Tuesday, 17 March 2009
These days the centre of Cairo is a dusty, polluted, overcrowded metropolis. But in the 1940s it was a city full of style and culture, the beating heart of an Arab renaissance.
Downtown the bars and nightclubs flourished along the sweeping boulevards attracting all sorts of adventurers from around the world.
Since then many of the bars and cabaret clubs have fallen into disrepair and disrepute, as the Egyptians grow more observant of conservative Islam.
Some do survive; the Windsor Hotel is one of them. Built at the turn of the last century as the baths of the Egyptian royal family, it later served as a colonial club for the British officers.
Today the hotel's Barrel Bar is still popular with Europeans, even though it is now a picture of faded grandeur.
The old telephone exchange has survived in the reception. The cage elevator is still there, as are the Lufthansa posters which have adorned the hallways since the 1960s.
The hotel is run by the Doss family - largely by two brothers, Wasfi and Wafiq, and their sister Marileez.
"I remember these very chic cafes," said Marileez. "Downtown Cairo was the place to be seen. Everyone dressed up - I was still a young girl, but I remember that I felt so proud in my little dress and white socks.
"My parents would sit in the open-air cafes drinking a glass of wine or a glass of Ricard. It was all so very sophisticated."
"This area was full of clubs and cabarets," said Wafiq. "The Opera was just around the corner. This was very much the place to be seen.
"But most of these places have since disappeared, particularly those that faced out on to the street - people didn't want to see that any more."
City reinvented
The Sharezad club has survived the cull, but this belly-dancing venue is a far cry from its glorious heyday.
Inside there are heavy red velvet curtains and on the walls the photos of the some of the world's best belly-dancers, who once came here to shake their stuff.
Max Rodenbeck, journalist and author of Cairo, the City Victorious, says belly-dancing has faded out in the last 10 years.
"It has really suffered from the wave of conservatism that has passed over this place," Mr Rodenbeck says.
"You no longer go out to a nightclub and sit with your friends, put a bottle of whisky on the table and smoke lots of cigarettes. That's not what people do any more.
"In a way downtown Cairo has degentrified... but then if you look back at the long, long history of Cairo, you see that it is always reinventing itself.
"It's a cyclical pattern, where the rich have always moved to new places, somewhere fancier, abandoning whatever is old. If you unpack the city you will find one district after another that used to be fashionable."
Another writer who looks back with fondness on the Cairo of old is the author of the best-selling novel The Yacoubian Building.
Dr Alaa al-Aswany blames the slow death of downtown Cairo on the encroachment of conservative Islam.
"From the beginning of the 1980s it became very hard, sometimes impossible, for the owner to pass on the liquor licence to a son or a new owner," he said.
"I think it is all part of the government's attempts to counteract the fanatics - but they are doing in the wrong way. The government's trying to make the point they are as religious as the fanatics. It is silly really."
Unstylish, free, but sad
The one-time cosmopolitan flair of downtown Cairo has largely disappeared. The adventurers moved on and the middle and upper classes moved to the suburbs.
The bars and nightclubs of the 1940s and 1950s are consigned to history, as Egypt turns its face from the pleasures - some might say the vices - of the West.
You have to work hard to find the bars that survive.
There are no shimmering lights. Most are tucked away from the street in nondescript buildings without any windows.
One such club is the Hawaii, where each night people sneak down a darkly lit alley to drink beer and listen to the local pub singer.
One of those who drops in from time to time is journalist Sameer Atrash.
"People here really like to let off steam and have fun," he said.
"It is not very stylish. But remember these people live with so many restrictions in their lives - in here there are no restrictions. Anything goes."
In truth, the Hawaii experience all felt rather seedy - and sad.
Source: BBC
BBC News, Cairo
Tuesday, 17 March 2009
These days the centre of Cairo is a dusty, polluted, overcrowded metropolis. But in the 1940s it was a city full of style and culture, the beating heart of an Arab renaissance.
Downtown the bars and nightclubs flourished along the sweeping boulevards attracting all sorts of adventurers from around the world.
Since then many of the bars and cabaret clubs have fallen into disrepair and disrepute, as the Egyptians grow more observant of conservative Islam.
Some do survive; the Windsor Hotel is one of them. Built at the turn of the last century as the baths of the Egyptian royal family, it later served as a colonial club for the British officers.
Today the hotel's Barrel Bar is still popular with Europeans, even though it is now a picture of faded grandeur.
The old telephone exchange has survived in the reception. The cage elevator is still there, as are the Lufthansa posters which have adorned the hallways since the 1960s.
The hotel is run by the Doss family - largely by two brothers, Wasfi and Wafiq, and their sister Marileez.
"I remember these very chic cafes," said Marileez. "Downtown Cairo was the place to be seen. Everyone dressed up - I was still a young girl, but I remember that I felt so proud in my little dress and white socks."My parents would sit in the open-air cafes drinking a glass of wine or a glass of Ricard. It was all so very sophisticated."
"This area was full of clubs and cabarets," said Wafiq. "The Opera was just around the corner. This was very much the place to be seen.
"But most of these places have since disappeared, particularly those that faced out on to the street - people didn't want to see that any more."
City reinvented
The Sharezad club has survived the cull, but this belly-dancing venue is a far cry from its glorious heyday.
Inside there are heavy red velvet curtains and on the walls the photos of the some of the world's best belly-dancers, who once came here to shake their stuff.Max Rodenbeck, journalist and author of Cairo, the City Victorious, says belly-dancing has faded out in the last 10 years.
"It has really suffered from the wave of conservatism that has passed over this place," Mr Rodenbeck says.
"You no longer go out to a nightclub and sit with your friends, put a bottle of whisky on the table and smoke lots of cigarettes. That's not what people do any more.
"In a way downtown Cairo has degentrified... but then if you look back at the long, long history of Cairo, you see that it is always reinventing itself.
"It's a cyclical pattern, where the rich have always moved to new places, somewhere fancier, abandoning whatever is old. If you unpack the city you will find one district after another that used to be fashionable."
Another writer who looks back with fondness on the Cairo of old is the author of the best-selling novel The Yacoubian Building.
Dr Alaa al-Aswany blames the slow death of downtown Cairo on the encroachment of conservative Islam.
"From the beginning of the 1980s it became very hard, sometimes impossible, for the owner to pass on the liquor licence to a son or a new owner," he said.
"I think it is all part of the government's attempts to counteract the fanatics - but they are doing in the wrong way. The government's trying to make the point they are as religious as the fanatics. It is silly really."
Unstylish, free, but sad
The one-time cosmopolitan flair of downtown Cairo has largely disappeared. The adventurers moved on and the middle and upper classes moved to the suburbs.
The bars and nightclubs of the 1940s and 1950s are consigned to history, as Egypt turns its face from the pleasures - some might say the vices - of the West.
You have to work hard to find the bars that survive.
There are no shimmering lights. Most are tucked away from the street in nondescript buildings without any windows.
One such club is the Hawaii, where each night people sneak down a darkly lit alley to drink beer and listen to the local pub singer.
One of those who drops in from time to time is journalist Sameer Atrash.
"People here really like to let off steam and have fun," he said.
"It is not very stylish. But remember these people live with so many restrictions in their lives - in here there are no restrictions. Anything goes."
In truth, the Hawaii experience all felt rather seedy - and sad.
Source: BBC
Tuesday, 17 March 2009
Confronting Disability With Modern Dance
By Corey Kilgannon
Published: March 17, 2009
Not everyone is ready for this dance company that calls itself Gimp and its members with undeveloped or amputated limbs, and bodies beset with physical challenges.
Not everyone is ready for the way the muscular dancer throws around the tall, skinny guy with cerebral palsy like it’s pro wrestling, and not modern dance.
Not everyone is ready for the production’s spoken portion, which opens with that skinny guy, Lawrence Carter-Long, 42, telling the audience a joke that starts, “So, three cripples walk into a bar.” And there may be strange looks when he goes on to mimic what some audience members tell the dancers after they perform.
“I thought that you were going to be weird, but it’s really an opportunity, you know?” Mr. Carter-Long intones onstage. “Who would have expected this in a modern dance performance. I have to rethink this whole thing.”
There is a reason the Gimp dancers present the unexpected, onstage. Even the name Gimp is a meant to be an in-your-face confrontation of common notions of disability and dance. The troupe is performing Thursday through Saturday at the Abrons Arts Center, at the Henry Street Settlement in Manhattan.
“The goal is to honor each person’s really specific ways of moving, really specific, unique personalities,” said Heidi Latsky, the dancer and choreographer who founded Gimp.
Rather than work around these dancers’ particular limitations, she tries to find distinct abilities in their bodies and explore the artistic possibilities that can be had from these differences.
So the jaunty rhythm of Mr. Carter-Long’s offbeat stride is featured. So is the vertical linearity of Catherine Long — who was born without a left arm — when she stretches to the sky with her right arm, Statue of Liberty-style. And so is the intriguing asymmetry of Lezlie Frye 29, who has one arm shorter than the other and windmills both arms while bending at the waist, up and down.
Jeremy Alliger, a producer for Gimp, says that, far from being limited by these dancers, Ms. Latsky “is like an artist who has just had new colors added to the palette.”
After rehearsing the other day at a rehearsal studio in the Actors Temple on West 47th Street in Manhattan, Mr. Carter-Long sat with Ms. Latsky and her associate director, Jeffrey Freeze (the muscular dancer who tosses him around).
“This is no safe prearranged marriage of dance and disability,” Mr. Carter-Long said. “This is a collision. This is two worlds coming together that ain’t supposed to co-exist.”
Gimp members say that dance helps them with both physical control and expression, with their bodies. But also, performing in public helps them — and the audience — address issues dealing with staring or averting the eyes when encountering physically challenged people. Onstage, they are inviting the public to stare.
The first evening of Gimp is dedicated to “Wounded Warrior Project,” a nonprofit organization dedicated to raising awareness and enlisting the public’s aid for the needs of severely injured service men and women.
Ms. Latsky, who was with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane dance company, said she hopes to next work with veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Source: NYTimes
Published: March 17, 2009
Not everyone is ready for this dance company that calls itself Gimp and its members with undeveloped or amputated limbs, and bodies beset with physical challenges.
Not everyone is ready for the way the muscular dancer throws around the tall, skinny guy with cerebral palsy like it’s pro wrestling, and not modern dance.
Not everyone is ready for the production’s spoken portion, which opens with that skinny guy, Lawrence Carter-Long, 42, telling the audience a joke that starts, “So, three cripples walk into a bar.” And there may be strange looks when he goes on to mimic what some audience members tell the dancers after they perform.
“I thought that you were going to be weird, but it’s really an opportunity, you know?” Mr. Carter-Long intones onstage. “Who would have expected this in a modern dance performance. I have to rethink this whole thing.”
There is a reason the Gimp dancers present the unexpected, onstage. Even the name Gimp is a meant to be an in-your-face confrontation of common notions of disability and dance. The troupe is performing Thursday through Saturday at the Abrons Arts Center, at the Henry Street Settlement in Manhattan.
“The goal is to honor each person’s really specific ways of moving, really specific, unique personalities,” said Heidi Latsky, the dancer and choreographer who founded Gimp.
Rather than work around these dancers’ particular limitations, she tries to find distinct abilities in their bodies and explore the artistic possibilities that can be had from these differences.
So the jaunty rhythm of Mr. Carter-Long’s offbeat stride is featured. So is the vertical linearity of Catherine Long — who was born without a left arm — when she stretches to the sky with her right arm, Statue of Liberty-style. And so is the intriguing asymmetry of Lezlie Frye 29, who has one arm shorter than the other and windmills both arms while bending at the waist, up and down.
Jeremy Alliger, a producer for Gimp, says that, far from being limited by these dancers, Ms. Latsky “is like an artist who has just had new colors added to the palette.”
After rehearsing the other day at a rehearsal studio in the Actors Temple on West 47th Street in Manhattan, Mr. Carter-Long sat with Ms. Latsky and her associate director, Jeffrey Freeze (the muscular dancer who tosses him around).
“This is no safe prearranged marriage of dance and disability,” Mr. Carter-Long said. “This is a collision. This is two worlds coming together that ain’t supposed to co-exist.”
Gimp members say that dance helps them with both physical control and expression, with their bodies. But also, performing in public helps them — and the audience — address issues dealing with staring or averting the eyes when encountering physically challenged people. Onstage, they are inviting the public to stare.
The first evening of Gimp is dedicated to “Wounded Warrior Project,” a nonprofit organization dedicated to raising awareness and enlisting the public’s aid for the needs of severely injured service men and women.
Ms. Latsky, who was with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane dance company, said she hopes to next work with veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Source: NYTimes
Friday, 13 March 2009
Nice Plié, Now Drop and Give Me 10
By GIA KOURLAS
Published: March 13, 2009
ETHAN STIEFEL is revered for his electrifying presence at American Ballet Theater, where he has been a principal dancer since 1997. In less ballet-centric circles around the country he may be better known as Cooper Nielson, the choreographer-dancer character from Nicholas Hytner’s 2000 film “Center Stage.” But in Winston-Salem, where he presides over the school of dance at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, he is known simply as the dean.
As such Mr. Stiefel may be glamorous, but he is no mere figurehead.
“He expects a lot out of us, and he holds us to very high standards, which makes us all do better,” Mac Hopper, a 17-year-old student at the school, said in a telephone interview. “It’s a lot stricter than it used to be, but it’s a good strict. If we forget a combination, we have to do 20 push-ups. It’s like tough love. It’s not that bad. You get used to it. And push-ups definitely help you remember.”
In “Ethan Stiefel and His Students,” presented on Sunday and Monday as part of the Works & Process series at the Guggenheim Museum, the results of that tough love will be on display in a selection of classical variations and contemporary work. The North Carolina school, a public conservatory, grants high school diplomas and undergraduate and graduate degrees. Its dance division has produced many accomplished figures, including Gillian Murphy, who is also a principal at American Ballet Theater and Mr. Stiefel’s companion.
For Mr. Stiefel training is about more than perfecting steps or even transcending the limits of the human body. At the school he has formulated a set of eight initiatives. Inspired by the principles of many martial arts, the list concludes, “We will work toward becoming great dancers, while understanding that being a good person is the true goal.”
But Mr. Stiefel is by no means sappy. In keeping with corrective push-ups and a strictly enforced dress code, he has, in his own words, stressed “the sense of perspective and privilege to participate in this art form.”
Now 36, having had four knee operations in the last two and a half years, he sees the initiatives as a way to reinforce a sense of grit and honor in the consciousness of young dancers. “Pushing my students is not without reason,” he said in a telephone interview last month. “I’m trying to wake up their intellect and intuition as much as the body.”
Throughout his career Mr. Stiefel has worked tirelessly to promote classical ballet to a younger generation, as with his participation in “Center Stage.” (He is also in the sequel, “Center Stage: Turn It Up,” which was released on DVD in January by Sony Pictures.) “Whenever you have a chance to represent your art form in a way that may be seen by more people,” he said, “I see it as an opportunity.”
In 2006 Mr. Stiefel abandoned his efforts to develop Ballet Pacifica, a Southern California company, for financial reasons. His summer training and performance program, Stiefel and Students, held at Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, is on hiatus. But in many ways all his side projects have led to his position at the School of the Arts, where, despite his title, he fancies himself more an artistic director.
Mr. Stiefel is the third dean of dance at the school, where his predecessors, dating to 1965, were Robert Lindgren and Susan McCullough. But unlike traditional artistic directors Mr. Stiefel is not aligned to a company aesthetic or repertory.
“I’m looking to create the total and complete dancer,” he said. To do so he has instituted formal acting training, mime and music instruction and a men’s training camp, as well as hired teachers like Diego Schoch in the contemporary division and Nigel Burley in ballet.
“I’m personally invested in the male technique,” he said. “How do we offer something different, not to be different but to be progressive? Since we have a campus and outdoor space, sometimes that means running hills or doing obstacle courses and agility drills for cardio and stamina work.”
He has also introduced workshops in musical theater and karate. “A fifth-level black belt came in for two weeks and showed the students a different way of approaching movement,” he said. The experience prompted one student, Cody Hayman, 17, to initiate a Facebook group called “My Dean Can Break Wooden Boards With His Bare Fists, Can Yours?” Along with his students Mr. Stiefel took part in the workshop.
“We thought it was kind of fun that not only is he Ethan Stiefel, but he’s out there doing karate with everyone,” Mr. Hayman said. “We appreciated it. It was a great time, not necessarily a get-to-know-Ethan type of thing, but it was a good bonding experience.”
Asked about the Facebook page Mr. Stiefel reacted with surprise but confessed his prowess.
“Well, I broke a couple of boards in a demonstration,” he said. “It’s about obstacles. You have to keep challenging yourself, and I’m about leading by example. I don’t advocate anyone doing something that will unnecessarily injure them or is unhealthy, but if you just have a hangnail that’s bothering you? This is about letting people know what’s possible. And never giving up.”
Mr. Stiefel admitted that balancing his positions as dancer and dean has been a strain. After he interviewed for the job, he said, he withdrew his name from consideration because he wanted to focus on performing.
“The committee had unanimously decided that I was indeed the right person for the job despite my letter,” he said. “I kid you not, I think I said no seven or eight times.”
John Mauceri, the school’s chancellor, eventually wore him down. “I still had my doubts and reservations,” Mr. Stiefel said, “but I had to go for it.” Since he started at the school in August he has been away from the campus for three weeks, he estimates.
“You catch me at a time where I’m struggling, not just physically but mentally and emotionally,” he said. “But when I see the performances and what the students and faculty have been able to accomplish, it inspires me to keep it going. There wouldn’t be anything else, honestly, that I would be willing to sacrifice something as meaningful as my performing career for than this. So it’s not to say that there aren’t some costs, but I do it willingly.”
He works 12 to 14 hours a day, he said, teaching two classes and continuing his own training, among other things.
“I’m looking at some performances coming up, and I do have great concern,” he added. “People have spoken with me about this, and I suppose the original reason why I withdrew my name from consideration was because I knew this would be inevitable. I don’t know if it’s possible, truly. I really have to make myself do what my students are doing.”
In Mr. Stiefel’s world that adds up to more than long days. “I have to keep that individual discipline going to take class at 8:30 in the morning,” he said. “And everyone would probably agree that at this point in my career that’s a rough hour to get it on.”
Source: NYTimes
Published: March 13, 2009
ETHAN STIEFEL is revered for his electrifying presence at American Ballet Theater, where he has been a principal dancer since 1997. In less ballet-centric circles around the country he may be better known as Cooper Nielson, the choreographer-dancer character from Nicholas Hytner’s 2000 film “Center Stage.” But in Winston-Salem, where he presides over the school of dance at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, he is known simply as the dean.As such Mr. Stiefel may be glamorous, but he is no mere figurehead.
“He expects a lot out of us, and he holds us to very high standards, which makes us all do better,” Mac Hopper, a 17-year-old student at the school, said in a telephone interview. “It’s a lot stricter than it used to be, but it’s a good strict. If we forget a combination, we have to do 20 push-ups. It’s like tough love. It’s not that bad. You get used to it. And push-ups definitely help you remember.”
In “Ethan Stiefel and His Students,” presented on Sunday and Monday as part of the Works & Process series at the Guggenheim Museum, the results of that tough love will be on display in a selection of classical variations and contemporary work. The North Carolina school, a public conservatory, grants high school diplomas and undergraduate and graduate degrees. Its dance division has produced many accomplished figures, including Gillian Murphy, who is also a principal at American Ballet Theater and Mr. Stiefel’s companion.
For Mr. Stiefel training is about more than perfecting steps or even transcending the limits of the human body. At the school he has formulated a set of eight initiatives. Inspired by the principles of many martial arts, the list concludes, “We will work toward becoming great dancers, while understanding that being a good person is the true goal.”
But Mr. Stiefel is by no means sappy. In keeping with corrective push-ups and a strictly enforced dress code, he has, in his own words, stressed “the sense of perspective and privilege to participate in this art form.”
Now 36, having had four knee operations in the last two and a half years, he sees the initiatives as a way to reinforce a sense of grit and honor in the consciousness of young dancers. “Pushing my students is not without reason,” he said in a telephone interview last month. “I’m trying to wake up their intellect and intuition as much as the body.”
Throughout his career Mr. Stiefel has worked tirelessly to promote classical ballet to a younger generation, as with his participation in “Center Stage.” (He is also in the sequel, “Center Stage: Turn It Up,” which was released on DVD in January by Sony Pictures.) “Whenever you have a chance to represent your art form in a way that may be seen by more people,” he said, “I see it as an opportunity.”
In 2006 Mr. Stiefel abandoned his efforts to develop Ballet Pacifica, a Southern California company, for financial reasons. His summer training and performance program, Stiefel and Students, held at Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, is on hiatus. But in many ways all his side projects have led to his position at the School of the Arts, where, despite his title, he fancies himself more an artistic director.
Mr. Stiefel is the third dean of dance at the school, where his predecessors, dating to 1965, were Robert Lindgren and Susan McCullough. But unlike traditional artistic directors Mr. Stiefel is not aligned to a company aesthetic or repertory.
“I’m looking to create the total and complete dancer,” he said. To do so he has instituted formal acting training, mime and music instruction and a men’s training camp, as well as hired teachers like Diego Schoch in the contemporary division and Nigel Burley in ballet.
“I’m personally invested in the male technique,” he said. “How do we offer something different, not to be different but to be progressive? Since we have a campus and outdoor space, sometimes that means running hills or doing obstacle courses and agility drills for cardio and stamina work.”
He has also introduced workshops in musical theater and karate. “A fifth-level black belt came in for two weeks and showed the students a different way of approaching movement,” he said. The experience prompted one student, Cody Hayman, 17, to initiate a Facebook group called “My Dean Can Break Wooden Boards With His Bare Fists, Can Yours?” Along with his students Mr. Stiefel took part in the workshop.
“We thought it was kind of fun that not only is he Ethan Stiefel, but he’s out there doing karate with everyone,” Mr. Hayman said. “We appreciated it. It was a great time, not necessarily a get-to-know-Ethan type of thing, but it was a good bonding experience.”
Asked about the Facebook page Mr. Stiefel reacted with surprise but confessed his prowess.
“Well, I broke a couple of boards in a demonstration,” he said. “It’s about obstacles. You have to keep challenging yourself, and I’m about leading by example. I don’t advocate anyone doing something that will unnecessarily injure them or is unhealthy, but if you just have a hangnail that’s bothering you? This is about letting people know what’s possible. And never giving up.”
Mr. Stiefel admitted that balancing his positions as dancer and dean has been a strain. After he interviewed for the job, he said, he withdrew his name from consideration because he wanted to focus on performing.
“The committee had unanimously decided that I was indeed the right person for the job despite my letter,” he said. “I kid you not, I think I said no seven or eight times.”
John Mauceri, the school’s chancellor, eventually wore him down. “I still had my doubts and reservations,” Mr. Stiefel said, “but I had to go for it.” Since he started at the school in August he has been away from the campus for three weeks, he estimates.
“You catch me at a time where I’m struggling, not just physically but mentally and emotionally,” he said. “But when I see the performances and what the students and faculty have been able to accomplish, it inspires me to keep it going. There wouldn’t be anything else, honestly, that I would be willing to sacrifice something as meaningful as my performing career for than this. So it’s not to say that there aren’t some costs, but I do it willingly.”He works 12 to 14 hours a day, he said, teaching two classes and continuing his own training, among other things.
“I’m looking at some performances coming up, and I do have great concern,” he added. “People have spoken with me about this, and I suppose the original reason why I withdrew my name from consideration was because I knew this would be inevitable. I don’t know if it’s possible, truly. I really have to make myself do what my students are doing.”
In Mr. Stiefel’s world that adds up to more than long days. “I have to keep that individual discipline going to take class at 8:30 in the morning,” he said. “And everyone would probably agree that at this point in my career that’s a rough hour to get it on.”
Source: NYTimes
Tuesday, 4 November 2008
Gyrate Expectations
Moms-to-be give belly dancing a whirl for fitness and fun
By Lori Price of the Journal Sentinel
Posted: Sep. 9, 2008
In many ways, the belly-dancing class was exactly what you'd expect.
A professional belly dancer guided nine women in coin-fringed hip scarves through snaky, seductive motions: hip lifts, pelvic circles, a few shimmies.
Then Stefanie Masters, the instructor, made a suggestion that hinted at why this class was so different.
"If anyone is feeling (confident), you can lift your shirt up to see your belly," Masters said.
Silence. Only one woman tucked the hem of her shirt into its neckline to expose her pregnant belly.
The free class, held at Destination Maternity in Brookfield, is part of a national wave of women taking up belly dancing as a fun way to stay fit.
Hip-popping singer Shakira and increased access to world music have helped push belly dancing, which has roots in various ancient cultures, into mainstream circles. The home fitness market includes DVDs on belly dancing for pregnancy, and YouTube.com carries instructional videos on prenatal belly dancing.
Safe exercise
Belly-dance experts at area studios say some pregnant women are joining their non-prenatal classes. And they've noticed that women already in class are continuing after they become pregnant - something that once caused women to take a break from belly dancing.
Anywhere from five to 10 pregnant or postpartum women attend Masters' class each week. As a result, she and several other local teachers offer modified belly dance instruction for pregnant women: letting them dance in a chair, keeping activity at low-impact levels and eliminating spins and whirls.
Crystal Ruffin, an obstetrician / gynecologist with Froedtert and the Medical College of Wisconsin, said as long as a woman who is experiencing a normal pregnancy doesn't do any of the jerky movements or sudden motions in belly dance, it's a safe option.
Fitness in general is important for pregnant women, several doctors said.
"Exercise during pregnancy . . . does give a woman a better sense of self and helps them not gain so much weight or body fat," said Michelle Douglas, a doctor of osteopathic medicine with Wheaton Franciscan Medical Group.
"(It) can help with a lot of musculoskeletal pains women experience when they're pregnant, such as low back pain. And it can possibly give you an easier, shorter labor and less depression.
"If your body is more fit, your body will endure more and be able to bounce back."
Pregnant women who are looking for fun fitness options - as well as ways to make pregnancy, labor, delivery and recovery easier - are finding that belly dancing's sultry tools, well, deliver.
"It just sounded like an interesting way to exercise and move your body," said Marie Ponder, who's a little more than seven months pregnant with her first child. She attended Masters' class for the first time last week.
"There is walking and going to the gym and doing elliptical work, but that doesn't sound appealing at all when you're pregnant," said Ponder, 26. "I was curious to know what this would be like."
So, how was it?
"I loved it," she said. "It's funny, because you think of being pregnant as being swollen and big and you gain weight. But it actually makes you feel in touch with your body and makes you feel sexy."
Certainly, belly dancing's sensuous side can improve the moods of pregnant women, who often feel awkward in their growing, changing bodies. But it's the dance's key components - posture, breathing and focus - that make it a natural fit for pregnancy.
Traditional moves such as pelvic circles and figure eights strengthen abdominal muscles that are used in labor and delivery. Shimmies, another well-recognized move, have even been said to induce labor, Masters said.
"It tones all of your core muscles, and you actually use a lot of those muscles and the undulations we do in belly dance during labor and delivery," said Shaia Fahrid of Shaia Fahrid Egyptian Dance Studio and Productions.
Lidia Brown, 36, who attends Masters' class and gave birth to a daughter two months ago, said belly dancing made a difference in her nine-month term, labor and delivery.
Brown, who also has a son, said she experienced extreme back pain during both pregnancies. But after she started belly dancing in the seventh month of her last pregnancy, she noticed that the stretching and posture alignment tips she picked up in the classes helped to relieve the pain.
"My back would still hurt, but when I went to class, I wouldn't have the pain anymore, even if it was just for a couple of days after the class," she said.
And all she thought about during the birth of her daughter was breathing.
"Even the nurses were saying, 'Wow, you're breathing really well,' " recalled Brown, who used no pain medication during the birth. She believes all of it - breathing, stronger core muscles, increased energy level - led to a faster delivery. She pushed for 40 minutes to deliver her daughter, she said; it took three hours of pushing to deliver her son two years ago.
A shared experience
But belly dancing classes are not all about the physical, said Masters. The classes also help women connect with their unborn child, establish relationships with each other and reduce the self-conscious feelings some pregnant women say they experience.
"We're giving them a chance to come to the class and build a community," Masters said. "When we build a community, we're allowing them to be connected, and when they feel connected, they don't feel the negativity because they're joined by others who are experiencing what they are going through."
Source: Journal Sentinel Online
By Lori Price of the Journal Sentinel
Posted: Sep. 9, 2008
In many ways, the belly-dancing class was exactly what you'd expect.
A professional belly dancer guided nine women in coin-fringed hip scarves through snaky, seductive motions: hip lifts, pelvic circles, a few shimmies.
Then Stefanie Masters, the instructor, made a suggestion that hinted at why this class was so different.
"If anyone is feeling (confident), you can lift your shirt up to see your belly," Masters said.
Silence. Only one woman tucked the hem of her shirt into its neckline to expose her pregnant belly.
The free class, held at Destination Maternity in Brookfield, is part of a national wave of women taking up belly dancing as a fun way to stay fit.
Hip-popping singer Shakira and increased access to world music have helped push belly dancing, which has roots in various ancient cultures, into mainstream circles. The home fitness market includes DVDs on belly dancing for pregnancy, and YouTube.com carries instructional videos on prenatal belly dancing.
Safe exercise
Belly-dance experts at area studios say some pregnant women are joining their non-prenatal classes. And they've noticed that women already in class are continuing after they become pregnant - something that once caused women to take a break from belly dancing.
Anywhere from five to 10 pregnant or postpartum women attend Masters' class each week. As a result, she and several other local teachers offer modified belly dance instruction for pregnant women: letting them dance in a chair, keeping activity at low-impact levels and eliminating spins and whirls.
Crystal Ruffin, an obstetrician / gynecologist with Froedtert and the Medical College of Wisconsin, said as long as a woman who is experiencing a normal pregnancy doesn't do any of the jerky movements or sudden motions in belly dance, it's a safe option.
Fitness in general is important for pregnant women, several doctors said.
"Exercise during pregnancy . . . does give a woman a better sense of self and helps them not gain so much weight or body fat," said Michelle Douglas, a doctor of osteopathic medicine with Wheaton Franciscan Medical Group.
"(It) can help with a lot of musculoskeletal pains women experience when they're pregnant, such as low back pain. And it can possibly give you an easier, shorter labor and less depression.
"If your body is more fit, your body will endure more and be able to bounce back."
Pregnant women who are looking for fun fitness options - as well as ways to make pregnancy, labor, delivery and recovery easier - are finding that belly dancing's sultry tools, well, deliver.
"It just sounded like an interesting way to exercise and move your body," said Marie Ponder, who's a little more than seven months pregnant with her first child. She attended Masters' class for the first time last week.
"There is walking and going to the gym and doing elliptical work, but that doesn't sound appealing at all when you're pregnant," said Ponder, 26. "I was curious to know what this would be like."
So, how was it?
"I loved it," she said. "It's funny, because you think of being pregnant as being swollen and big and you gain weight. But it actually makes you feel in touch with your body and makes you feel sexy."
Certainly, belly dancing's sensuous side can improve the moods of pregnant women, who often feel awkward in their growing, changing bodies. But it's the dance's key components - posture, breathing and focus - that make it a natural fit for pregnancy.
Traditional moves such as pelvic circles and figure eights strengthen abdominal muscles that are used in labor and delivery. Shimmies, another well-recognized move, have even been said to induce labor, Masters said.
"It tones all of your core muscles, and you actually use a lot of those muscles and the undulations we do in belly dance during labor and delivery," said Shaia Fahrid of Shaia Fahrid Egyptian Dance Studio and Productions.
Lidia Brown, 36, who attends Masters' class and gave birth to a daughter two months ago, said belly dancing made a difference in her nine-month term, labor and delivery.
Brown, who also has a son, said she experienced extreme back pain during both pregnancies. But after she started belly dancing in the seventh month of her last pregnancy, she noticed that the stretching and posture alignment tips she picked up in the classes helped to relieve the pain.
"My back would still hurt, but when I went to class, I wouldn't have the pain anymore, even if it was just for a couple of days after the class," she said.
And all she thought about during the birth of her daughter was breathing.
"Even the nurses were saying, 'Wow, you're breathing really well,' " recalled Brown, who used no pain medication during the birth. She believes all of it - breathing, stronger core muscles, increased energy level - led to a faster delivery. She pushed for 40 minutes to deliver her daughter, she said; it took three hours of pushing to deliver her son two years ago.
A shared experience
But belly dancing classes are not all about the physical, said Masters. The classes also help women connect with their unborn child, establish relationships with each other and reduce the self-conscious feelings some pregnant women say they experience.
"We're giving them a chance to come to the class and build a community," Masters said. "When we build a community, we're allowing them to be connected, and when they feel connected, they don't feel the negativity because they're joined by others who are experiencing what they are going through."
Source: Journal Sentinel Online
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
