Spiritual dance fashion trends

By Sara Shea
Info Guru, Catalogs.com
Sunday, September 26, 2010


The most ancient form of dance known as spiritual dance, can be found in thousands of cultures around the world.

Today, some of these ancient spiritual dances are re-emerging in the world of contemporary dance, coupled with new interpretations, emerging dancers and modern spiritual dance fashion.

The earliest spiritual dance ceremonies and rituals can be traced to Africa. Rhythmic dances from Uganda and Senegal were used during times of celebration. Warrior dances, wedding dances and harvest dances utilizing the concepts of poly rhythm and total body articulation were native to Senegal, Ghana and the Congo. Each dance was made unique from other celebrations with spiritual dance fashion and styles of jewelry and body ornamentation.

Native American Navajo Indians also practiced spiritual dances such as the Fire Dance and the Grass Dance to achieve altered states of reality and enhanced consciousness.

The whirling dances of surfi or “dervishes” in ancient Persia and Turkey were also believed to be a path toward enlightenment.

Even the practice of yoga, which dates back to over 3,000 years ago, began in India as form of spiritual dance that incorporated particular movements, postures and breathing techniques to achieve physical health, meditation, and spiritual enlightenment.

In the United States, one form of spiritual dance in particular has gained great popularity and attention. These spiritual dances, known as plantation, slave or sorrow dance originated with the black slaves who were brought into the southern states from the west coast of Africa during the time of slavery.

During the tumultuous period of slavery in America, many slaves were forbidden by their owners to speak in their native languages. The slaves responded to their hardship and grief through music, song and dance. Despite their bondage, slaves took comfort in reconnecting with their roots by practicing, cherishing and passing down the ancient spiritual dances they had learned from their ancestors in Africa.

Many historians even claim that these early spiritual songs and dances of the slaves lay the foundation for jazz, blues and gospel in America.

In the decades after the civil war ended, as blacks migrated from the South to the North, black pride began to grow. Spiritual dance fashion evolved, with an eye on the past, but a celebration of freedom of expression and acknowledgment of a rich heritage. Black dance and black music evolved to become one of the most highly valued forms of entertainment in America.

Early choreographers such as Katherine Dunham and Alvin Ailey strived to preserve the art, history, technique and spiritual power so unique to spiritual slavery dances rooted in ancient African culture. These pivotal dancers and choreographers helped to found the earliest black spiritual dance troupes and dance theaters dedicated to celebrating African-American heritage. Today many of these dance troupes travel the world, performing in traditional clothing or colorful dance wear.

Without a doubt, these ancient spiritual dances of African cultures have re-emerged in America as powerful forms of artistic expression, and have continued to gain popularity as entertaining and educational forms of cross-cultural communication. These spiritual dances, which have the power to transcend language serve to connect us to our roots, revealing insights into past cultural histories.

Source: Catalogs.com Info Library

The Last Egyptian Belly Dancer

Rich Saudis are transforming Cairo's entertainment scene.
by Rod Nordland
May 31, 2008

Abir Sabri, celebrated for her alabaster skin, ebony hair, pouting lips and full figure, used to star in racy Egyptian TV shows and movies. Then, at the peak of her career a few years ago, she disappeared—at least her face did. She began performing on Saudi-owned religious TV channels, with her face covered, chanting verses from the Qur'an. Conservative Saudi Arabian financiers promised her plenty of work, she says, as long as she cleaned up her act. "It's the Wahhabi investors," she says, referring to the strict form of Sunni Islam prevalent in Saudi Arabia. "Before, they invested in terrorism—and now they put their money in culture and the arts."

Egyptians deplore what they call the Saudization of their culture. Egypt has long dominated the performing arts from Morocco to Iraq, but now petrodollar-flush Saudi investors are buying up the contracts of singers and actors, reshaping the TV and film industries and setting a media agenda rooted more in strict Saudi values than in those of freewheeling Egypt. "As far as I'm concerned, this is the biggest problem in the Middle East right now," says mobile-phone billionaire Naquib Sawiris. "Egypt was always very liberal, very secular and very modern. Now ..." He gestures from the window of his 26th-floor Cairo office: "I'm looking at my country, and it's not my country any longer. I feel like an alien here."

At the Grand Hyatt Cairo, a mile upstream along the Nile, the five-star hotel's Saudi owner banned alcohol as of May 1 and ostentatiously ordered its $1.4 million inventory of booze flushed down the drains. "A hotel in Egypt without alcohol is like a beach without a sea," says Aly Mourad, chairman of Studio Masr, the country's oldest film outfit. He says Saudis—who don't even have movie theaters in their own country—now finance 95 percent of the films made in Egypt. "They say, here, you can have our money, but there are just a few little conditions." More than a few, actually; the 35 Rules, as moviemakers call them, go far beyond predictable bans against on-screen hugging, kissing or drinking. Even to show an empty bed is forbidden, lest it hint that someone might do something on it. Saudi-owned satellite channels are buying up Egyptian film libraries, heavily censoring some old movies while keeping others off the air entirely.

Some Egyptians say the new prudishness isn't entirely the Saudis' fault. "Films are becoming more conservative because the whole society is becoming more conservative," says filmmaker Marianne Khoury, who says Saudi cash has been a lifeline to the 80-year-old industry. From a peak of more than 100 films yearly in the 1960s and '70s, Egyptian studios' output plunged to only a half dozen a year in the '90s. Thanks to Saudi investors, it's now about 40. "If they stopped, there would be no Egyptian films," says Khoury.

At least a few Egyptians say Saudi Arabia is the country that's ultimately going to change. "Egypt will be back to what it used to be," predicts the single-named Dina, one of Egypt's few remaining native-born belly dancers. And it was a Saudi production company that financed a 2006 drama that frankly discusses homosexuality, "The Yacoubian Building." Sawiris has launched a popular satellite-TV channel of his own, showing uncensored American movies. He's determined to win—but he's only one billionaire, and Saudi Arabia is swarming with them.

Source: Newsweek

Bikini belly dancer shocks -- shocks! -- Egyptian sensibilities

By MARIAM SAMI, The Associated Press

CAIRO, Egypt (May 2, 1997 3:38 p.m. EDT) -- Twenty-two agents of the government's Artistic Inspection Department prowl nightclubs and discos to ensure that the ancient art of belly dancing isn't tainted by racy gyrations. So conservative Egypt was shocked when a leading performer, Dina, traded the traditional glittering gauzy garb for biking shorts and bikinis.

The Al-Maydan weekly dedicated almost a page to Dina's garb, noting that the dancer -- who like many in her trade uses only one name -- even appeared with gold chains wrapped around her waist.

These costumes may seem fairly tame in a world of go-go girls and online sex. But for all kinds of reasons they were guaranteed to cause a stir in Egypt.

For one, the belly dancer's costume is not only traditional but partly prescribed. Some insist the belly must be obscured by a lacy net. A 1920 law forbids showing the navel -- a possible genesis for the navel jewel.

Egypt also is a conservative Muslim country where religious women cover themselves in robes and veils -- showing at most their face and hands. Women tourists who show too much flesh are frowned on.

Disapproval does not dampen curiosity, however. Egyptians look for every tidbit in gossip columns about Cairo's celebrity belly dancers -- their travels, tiffs, amours and astronomical wealth.

So reports that Dina was hauled in for questioning over her costumes had a ready audience.

Ahmed Abou el-Fattouh, the chief inspector, would not confirm the reports of Dina's detention, but conceded he admonished one performer -- whom he wouldn't name -- for both her dress and demeanor.

"The dancer was wearing a bikini. She bowed, showing her back to the audience, and moved it in such a disgusting way," he said.

Dina said she was far too busy redecorating her apartment to take the time for an interview.

Two other top dancers, Fifi Abdou and Lucy, have reacted to the scandal by declaring that the original costume is the best way to show off the intricate belly and hip movements of their art.

Lucy, in an interview with The Associated Press, denigrated more revealing dress as an amateur's trick meant to shift attention to her body -- and away from bad dancing.

"As long as I can do the moves, why should I show three-quarters of my breasts?" she said.

Almost all of Lucy's 600 costumes are traditional models, given variations for color, number of sequins and a slit here or cut there.

Six hundred costumes? That's nothing. Newspapers have reported that Fifi Abdou -- Egypt's most famous belly dancer -- owns about 5,000.

It's all part of the media attention to the dancers' earnings and spending habits.

Last year, papers buzzed with reports that Abdou bought an apartment overlooking the Nile River for $14.5 million. She denied it.

The Arabic daily Al-Hayat reported recently that Egypt's 12,000 registered belly dancers paid $250 million in income taxes last year, making some among the richest people in a country where teachers make $90 a month.

Newspapers say Lucy earns up to $4,400 for a 45-minute performance at a party or wedding. She says her costumes cost $900-$1,500 apiece.

Speaking of costumes, Farouq Salem, head of the Artistic Inspection Department, stresses that a dancer's dress is not the only criterion his inspectors use in determining whether she is sullying the dignity of belly dancing.

"We also watch the whole performance: her movements, the music, the lyrics, the whole package," he said. "A belly dancer could dress like a veiled woman, but perform movements that make her really sexy."

Source: DesertMoonDance

The pointe of good posture

By Barbara Lantin
Published: 11:52AM GMT 12 Dec 2005

You don't have to be a ballet dancer to align your body correctly, says Barbara Lantin

When Simone Clarke, principal dancer with the English National Ballet, says that she has "terrible posture", I want to laugh out loud. Like all ballerinas, Clarke, who is dancing Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty and the Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker at the London Coliseum this Christmas, has a back like a ramrod and deportment to die for.

Good carriage is a sine qua non in ballet. It's not just that nobody wants to see a slouching swan or a slumping sylphide: an upright bearing is a sign that the body is in balance. And a body out of alignment is vulnerable to injury - especially when it is being put through the rigours of classical ballet on a daily basis.

"If dancers maintain a neutral posture, they are not putting the body under so much strain, and are less likely to sustain an injury," says the English National Ballet's chartered physiotherapist, Jackie Pelly. "Everything should be in alignment, from the feet to the head. You do not want to lean back or forward, or favour one side or the other."

Pelly believes the rest of us could benefit from a similar discipline, and has devised a regime, called Posture Pointes, that anyone from ballerina to bank clerk can use to keep the body balanced and the spine straight.

"If people did postural exercises, I think we would see far less back pain and injury," she says. "When you are in a slouch position - for example, at an office desk - your muscles contract, and you can develop muscle spasm. So at the end of the day, you cannot move your neck as far round as you could at the beginning. There is a lot of research showing that working on the big abdominal muscles can prevent back pain."

The first step is to put the body into alignment. This means distributing the body's weight evenly over the ball of the foot and the heel, and, when the knees are bent, having the knee-cap in line with the second toe. The pelvis is kept in neutral by drawing in the lower abdominal muscles, the shoulder blades are pulled down and in - rather than back, which can make them feel tight - and the head is held up straight with the chin in. "After a while, it all becomes second nature," claims Pelly.

All newcomers to the English National Ballet are taught this basic, postural alignment, though - unlike ordinary mortals - they are expected to perform their exercises on an inflatable ball, to ensure that they can maintain their posture under challenge from pirouettes, arabesques and jetées. They are also coached according to their body type, and for the role they are performing.

"Research shows that when dancers undertake a fitness programme for a specific ballet, injury rates drop markedly," says Pelly. "When we tried this on a four-week tour of Romeo and Juliet, they fell from the normal 30 or 40 to just a handful."

Clarke has never been injured, a blessing she attributes to a strong body and good luck. "I am not overprotective with myself, but I'm careful how I lift things - including my two-year-old daughter - and I wouldn't go on a horse, a motorbike, or an ice rink," she says. "I get aches and pains, especially when I am rehearsing a new part. I am now doing The Nutcracker and woke up this morning in absolute agony, as I am not used to the movements, but I know that will pass."

Clarke is careful to keep warm while working, because a body that is struggling against cold is much more susceptible to injury.

"We were on tour in Manchester the other week, and if I was dancing in the evening, I did not leave the theatre all day, because it took me much longer to warm up again after being out in the cold and damp."

Daria Klimentova, also with the ENB, knows how costly mistakes can be. After getting off a long-haul flight from Australia with swollen feet, she went straight to rehearsals in soft pointe shoes. "I felt something pinching, but I ignored it until I couldn't dance any more."

Klimentova had injured the bursa, a cushion between the tendon and the bone, in her heel, and needed an operation. She was off work for a year. "If only I had stopped dancing sooner, I might not have had to take so much time off. I listen to my body more now."

Jackie Pelly's 'posture pointes'

Do these exercises at least three times a day, but, ideally, every hour - especially if you spend most of the day at a desk.

Sitting at your desk, roll your pelvis backwards and then forwards, to find the neutral position, where you can feel your "sit bones". Breathe out, and contract the lower abdominal pelvic floor muscles by about 30 per cent - as if you were doing up a zip. Hold the position for 10 seconds. Repeat five times.

While sitting, shrug your shoulders to your ears, and then relax them, pulling the shoulder blades down and in. With your palms facing back, push back with your hands, until you feel your shoulders come into balance.

Breathe in, and as you blow out, push your tongue against the roof of your mouth. At the same time, elongate the spine by imagining somebody pulling on a hook attached to the top of your head.

Standing up, tighten your big abdominal muscles as you curl right down through your spine, touching the floor with your fingers if you can. Come back up gently by stacking the vertebrae on top of each other. (Do not attempt if recovering from a back injury.)

Sitting on your office chair, make sure your knees are bent at a right angle, and do not cross your legs, because this restricts blood flow. Place your feet flat on the floor; if you are wearing heels, use an angled footrest.

Keep ankles slightly forward of your knees. This will aid return circulation from the feet, and prevent you from leaning forward in your chair.

Ensure your lower back is supported. If your chair does not have a built-in arch, use a cushion, or a rolled-up towel.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk

Belly dancing: a dying art?

First published: Jul 23rd, 2009

Traditionalists in Egypt have targeted cabarets that feature belly dancers, and many Egyptians fear that the art is dying.


Acarabee Alley, just off 26 of July Street in bustling downtown Cairo, opens onto a small courtyard surrounded by bars. Up the stairs at the end of the courtyard a belly dancer shakes her hips and smiles at the mostly empty tables in Club Miami. She turns and sways in her bright yellow costume in front of a five-piece band belting out Arabic songs.

At 11 pm on Thursday night the place is quiet, with the exception of a few middle-aged men sipping beer at a table near the bar. While belly dancing has become popular abroad, and for foreign visitors to Egypt, many here have feared its demise as a result of the increasing observance of conservative Islam.

Over the last several decades, traditionalist ideals have been gaining ground in the country once known for its cosmopolitan ways. In the 1990s, when violent Islamist groups were most active in Egypt, the haram (forbidden) combination of alcohol and shaking, skimpily dressed women made belly-dancing cabarets a target.

Nabil Abdel Fattah, head of the sociological research unit at Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies and editor-in-chief of the center’s “State of Religion Report,” says businesses like bars and belly-dancing clubs have suffered because of the Islamization of both the public and private spheres in Egypt. “Belly dancing is outside of Islamic values,” says Fattah, adding that increasing conservatism in Egypt has led to reforms in the role and dress of women and fewer customers for establishments that serve alcohol.

However, in the last few years the country has undergone a soft revolution, where a surge in conservatism for many has coincided with an increasing movement toward Western lifestyles and liberal practices for others.

“There is a new soft revolution in Egyptian society. You can see this trend of new magazines and shops and people returning to belly dancing. There is also a Westernization of the way of life, of the new upper-middle class and businessmen,” says Fattah, who maintains this has happened in tandem with increasing observance of conservative Islam.

Looking back

Belly dancing is the English name given to the art of raqssharqi (oriental dance) or raqsbaladi (country dance). The practice spread throughout the Middle East but took a greater hold in Egypt than the rest of the Arab world, finding its place in wedding celebrations, private and public performances and, most recently, in tourist establishments.

Around midnight, customers begin to take seats near the stage at Club Miami. The clientele remains the same, mostly middle-aged Egyptian men. The band continues to play as the second dancer, Suhayla, takes the stage under a small disco ball. Tamer, Club Miami’s manager, who asked that his real name not be used, says in the winter the club attracts foreigners and in the summer it fills with Gulf Arabs. But most of their clientele is Egyptian.

“We get the rich and the less fortunate,” says Tamer. “Thursday is the busiest day of the week. We start the night at 11pm, but it doesn’t get full before 12 or 1am.” He’s been working in the industry for 10 years and says he’s seen a decline in the number of visitors in the last decade. Despite the influx from Gulf tourists, places like Club Miami are not seeing an increase in customers.

“There are new bars for the middle class everywhere, in Mohandeseen, in the city center and also in hotels,” says Fattah. “This is a new variable and I think it’s related to the economic policy of the state. There is a tolerance now … because [these are] private companies and this is very important economically.”

The next evening, a few kilometers south on 26 of July Street, Ahmed Dessouki leans against a polished wood bar sipping whisky over ice at the Cairo Jazz Club. The 28-year-old architect says he goes out four nights per week, but doesn’t venture to belly-dancing joints or baladi-style bars. “I mostly go to Zamalek bars,” says Dessouki referring to Cairo’s expensive, more Western neighborhood. “I’m not interested in this kind of art.”

The Cairo Jazz Club could easily be in any major American city, with a DJ spinning records in the corner, high-back booth seating and multi-colored track lighting. By midnight there is little room to move as young Egyptian men hold the waists of their girlfriends and mix with foreigners on the tiny dance floor.

“It’s the mentality of the people. We don’t have a big gap between the mentality of Europe and the [United] States,” says Dessouki.

“Almost everybody has a girlfriend. We like to come to this kind of club to spend a nice night with our girlfriends - nothing more.” Dessouki says some nights he and his friends rack up bills of several thousand Egyptian pounds (or several hundred US dollars).

In the 1990s, Western-style bars became popular among some Egyptians and today, in Cairo, Alexandria and in tourist towns like Sharm El-Sheikh, there is no shortage of European - or American-style establishments. The influx of Western-style nightclubs is drawing customers away from the baladi nightspots.

A soft revolution here won’t necessarily restore belly-dancing cabarets to their former glory if young, affluent Egyptians prefer to drop a 200 Egyptian pound minimum charge ($35) to dance to house beats, R ‘n’ B and top-40 music, rather than watch jeweled women shake their hips in an age-old tradition.

“We’ve been affected by last year’s economic slump. Some of our best customers come once a week now instead of every day,” Tamer says. While he notes most of his customers are Egyptian, Suhayla, who has been performing as a belly dancer for years, argues this isn’t the case in other establishments. “It depends. You get Egyptians, foreigners and Arabs,” Suhayla says. “You can find more foreigners in El-Haram.”

Tourists have long filled the seats of higher-end belly-dancing establishments. In tourist cities like Sharm El-Sheikh, dancers perform to almost entirely foreign crowds.

The Egyptian Ministry of Tourism said in June that hotel occupancy rates had dropped to between 66 and 70 percent and some analysts have predicted that the global financial crisis, combined with the recent bombing in Cairo’s Khan El-Khalili market, could result in occupancy rates falling further, even to 50 percent.

The opening of Egyptian society may not be enough to salvage an art form that has had a place in Egyptian society for centuries.

“Most of the people I know who are interested in belly dancing are foreigners and they just go once,” says Dessouki over thumping electronic beats. “Most of my friends are interested in this kind of music - house and trance.”

First seen in Trends magazine.

Source: KippReport

The belly-dancer at the wedding

In Egypt the unusual love--hate relationship with belly-dancing persists amid a conservative culture of veiled women and virgin weddings.

by Yahia Samir Lababidi

At a time when more and more Egyptian women are taking the veil, Cairo remains the world epicentre for those who wish to master a dance that is only a slight variation on the theme of Salome's shedding of her veils. And when, seaside, the bulk of Egyptian women are opting to wade in gallabiyyas (full length traditional dresses), it is not unusual for a belly-dancer to perform at a public venue in little more than a glorified bikini, like a beached mermaid in her glittering, gauzy garb.

The ubiquity and sheer joy of the dance, however, does not detract from the perception of immorality associated with the belly-dancing profession. Egyptians are deeply conflicted about the respectability of the art form. Islamic preachers have gone so far as to proclaim that belly-dancers cannot take part in religious rites, such as feeding the poor during Ramadan or performing the Hajj/Pilgrimage.

An incident illustrating the paradoxically privileged position belly-dancers occupy in society occurred last year. A video depicting one of Egypt's top belly-dancers in flagrante delicto leaked onto the street and internet, following a police raid on the villa of a well-known (and married) Egyptian businessman. A lesser mortal would have perished beneath the heat of such a scandal, especially a woman in a conservative society. Yet, following a teary public apology and a short leave of absence, the Uberdancer bounced back on stage. Moreover, to add legislation to lore--further demonstrating society's strangely protective stance regarding the dancer's status--a new law forbids foreign dancers from practising this local art altogether (a lucrative trade in the city's many nightspots).

A love/hate relationship for the belly-dancer places her in a perceived moral netherworld somewhere between actors and whores. Both actors and dancers, whose testimony was once inadmissible in court, are accorded the same morbid fascination--every twist and turn of their private lives deemed newsworthy--as well as the same contempt. Hishik bishik, slang for all things associated with belly-dancing (and short-hand for tsk-tsk), is actually onomatopoeia: the sound of the shaking belly-dancer, beads and all. It is also used figuratively, as a derogatory term for the shaking of values or the loosening of the moral fabric associated with a dancer's questionable position in the public imagination. What does this say about the people who heartily embrace the dance as a form of self-expression?

The origins of Raqs Sharqi or Oriental Dancing (Egyptians do not call it belly-dancing) are ambiguous. Whether or not it was born in Ancient Egypt, it is widely held that the dance has its roots in fertility ceremonies, meant to strengthen abdominal muscles and ease childbirth. It is as though tapped into the bottomless fund of Earth's energy, its pulsations course through the dancer. The dance itself is a kind of break-dance only more fluid, exhibiting a variety of muscle isolation techniques: rolling the belly, swivelling the hips or making the upper and lower body appear as though they lead independent lives. In many ways, belly-dancing is the anti-ballet. Whereas the ballerina wears her pretty steel-tipped slippers, the belly-dancer is sensuously barefoot. While the ballerina strives for the ethereal and seeks to resist gravity, the belly-dancer is earthy with her feet firmly planted on the ground.

That is the technique, but then there is the inspiration, the wordless ecstasy communicated, the body eloquence. President Anwar Sadat once described a celebrated Egyptian dancer of the '70s, Souhair Zaki, as 'the Oum Kalthoum of dance'. 'As she sings with her voice, you sing with your body,' he said to her. Speaking of the same dancer, Geraldine Brooks put it slightly differently in her book, Nine Parts of Desire: What she did with her body was what a woman's body did--the natural movements of sex and childbirth. The dance drew the eye to the very centre of the female body's womanliness.

The fact that weddings are hardly complete without a belly-dancer is revealing, given the function of marriage as sanctifying the union between a man and a woman who is expected to be a virgin. Costing the family of the bride or groom up to $3000 for a 45-minute performance and widely considered the highlight of the matrimonial event, the belly-dancer's entrance is anticipated with baited breath. And what an entrance it is. Some time past the witching hour, often draped in a sort of a sparkling cape, she shimmies into the room with a manic enthusiasm, heralded and accompanied by the wild beating of drums. Having established her presence and revelling in the power of an intensity inhabited, the dancer sheds her mock modesty veil to reveal herself--a half-naked, shimmering apparition. All anima and daemonic, she then proceeds to stomp on the hallowed ground of the wedding ceremony.

This primeval emotional maelstrom is presented to the enthralled audience and the blushing bride in particular. Women study her intently but with a more guarded enthusiasm than their drooling male counterparts. Having transfixed the audience in a sort of reverse mesmerism--where the snake charms those who have summoned it--the dancer turns her attention to the bride. Weaving and dipping in her vicinity, she initiates the bride into the rites of uninhibited womanhood. 'See the effect I have on the room (and your groom),' she insinuates, brandishing her sexuality. 'That power is yours, too. Your birthright. Celebrate it.' And she's off, back with the crowd; challenging them to take guilt-free pleasure in their bodies, snaking between them, dancing with a deliciously self-absorbed exhibitionism.

Wearing a wedding cake of a gown, the bride must fret: how can I possibly compete with this woman invulnerable to taboo? Having spent a lifetime shrewdly protecting her virtue and a small fortune on the appearance of her dress, she is being upstaged at her own wedding by a woman who seems to care for neither. How can she possibly stand up to this dancer--radiating sex and naked confidence--with her flamboyantly flagrant disregard for the fundamental commandments of Family and Society?

In such a charged atmosphere, belly-dancing serves as a kind of 'licensed murder'. This is Bertrand Russell's definition of war, only the war declared here is on conventional morality and its mind-forged manacles. The force of the belly-dance is a force of nature, perceived as unharnessed and disruptive, hence the fear. The fear is an ancient one: of desire; of female flesh. The belly-dancer's twisting sisters are many and ruinous in mythology and the human imagination: Eve and the Serpent; Medusa (Woman and Serpent fused); Salome (powerful desire); Kali (fierce transcendence); the Sirens (femme fatale); the striptease (look don't touch); and the lap dancer (crude sensuality). All hint at a vision of woman engaged in a frenzied dance of Life and Death, of passion careering out of control, threatening to overwhelm and consume.

It is not without significance that a 1920s law forbade the belly-dancer from showing her navel. Later, in the 1950s, belly-dancing was prohibited in Egypt altogether. The ban was repealed following a public outcry, on the condition that the belly button be covered. Why the belly button? Given it is not a sexual organ, one suspects the significance is symbolic. The belly button is, after all, where the umbilical cord was severed. Is it the scene of the original crime from which people wish to avert their gaze?

'Every vagina has secret teeth, for the male exits as less than when he entered,' says Camille Paglia. Teeth that are razor sharp in a patriarchal society. Vagina dentata, in turn, denotes a fear of devouring origins, as does the offensive belly button. This, it appears, is what lurks at the heart of the ancient anxiety over female sensuality. Hence, trafficking as the belly-dancer does in the heady cocktail of dance and womanhood, creation and destruction, the object of desire becomes a repository of fear and loathing. To accept their spontaneous joy in dance without the attendant sense of sin, perhaps Egyptians might learn a thing or two from Nietzsche's declaration: 'I could only believe in a god who dances'.

Yahia Samir Lababidi, aphorist and poet, currently works as editor for UNESCO Cairo Office.

Source: The Free Library

DANCE CLASS: The moves, the story, when it's OK to boo

Sid Smith Special to the Tribune
October 16, 2009

Am I watching a story or not? What if I like the flashy parts best? And what's an arabesque and why? Dance newcomer Christopher Borrelli has questions, critic Sid Smith has answers. For a quick lesson on an intimidating art form, read on.


Dance can often strike the newcomer -- especially the male newcomer -- as among the most mysterious and intimidating of art forms.

Tribune reporter Christopher Borrelli, a devotee of cinema and other pop arts, is dating a woman who's a passionate dance fan. This means he has the luck/misfortune of being escorted/dragged to all manner of serious dance concerts. Recently, he questioned out loud what exactly it was he was seeing, what he should look for and what he was missing. With Lar Lubovitch's ballet "Othello" in production through Oct. 25 by the Joffrey Ballet at the Auditorium Theatre, now is a fine time to answer.

1. The question that nags at me whenever I sit through dance is one of narrative. Should I be able to understand the narrative from the dance itself? And if I can't follow the story, am I watching lousy dance? Or is the narrative in a dance closer to, say, the existentialism in a film -- inferred instead of literal?
All of the above. Older dance, like older films, conforms to our conventional Western idea of narrative -- 19th century ballets such as "Swan Lake," "Giselle" and "The Nutcracker" tell clear-cut stories through mime and dance, often in ways that are precursors of silent movies.

But in the 20th century, dance, like other art forms, became increasingly abstract, so that by the time of choreographers George Balanchine, Merce Cunningham and many others in midcentury, dance became a kind of abstract painting in motion. But if there is a story, like "Swan Lake" or " Cinderella," the dance should tell it clearly, and some do this better than others. "Giselle" is a great yarn. "The Nutcracker" is a fairly lousy, muddied one. Dance can provide a great love story like "Casablanca" or an open-ended, mystifying one like the 1960 Italian film "L'avventura." In general, storytelling in dance is more sophisticated now, sharper in "Othello," Joffrey Ballet artistic director Ashley Wheater argues, than in those old 19th century war horses.

2. What is an arabesque? I think I know. But more importantly, why should I care what it is?
Ballet is an assortment of sophisticated techniques and poses developed over centuries, as sublime as yoga and at times as cruel as foot-binding. Every single dancer masters them differently, on a sliding scale, like judo practitioners or kick-boxers.

In an arabesque (there's actually a variety of them), the dancer stands on one leg, while the other leg extends away from the body, with hands, arms, neck and head held in an artful design.

"What you care about in an arabesque is the beauty of the line," Wheater says. "Look from the end of a ballerina's fingertips all the way to the end of her toes in her point shoes, and from the top of her head to the base line of her standing leg. There should be a stunningly beautiful line, like one you might see in a building by a master architect. And it's the simplicity of the line that's beautiful, a simplicity developed through years of training.

"For a woman in particular, you must have an arabesque. You can't be a dancer without it."

3. The handful of times I have attended dance, I inevitably relate better to the unusual -- a piece that feels modern and pop culture-like or simply weird -- than to the elegance and poise of classic dance. Is something wrong with me?
"No," answers Wheater, "the weird and unusual are a reflection of our time right now. In theater and opera, too, people are breaking the boundaries of traditional ideas because it's intriguing. But don't forget it's the line and simplicity of classical ballet that's actually the hardest to achieve."

4. If I can hear the dancer's feet hit the stage, even with a soft thud, which is inevitable, are they doing something wrong? Should I boo loudly?
"Ballet is a silent art form, sublimely married to the music," Wheater says. "When you hear a lot of hard-hitting point shoes, the ladies in the company have not been taught how to soften the noise properly." Ditto a man landing loudly after a leap. Meanwhile, booing is a cherished European response, less so in America. But it was famously employed recently at the opening of the opera "Tosca" in New York City.

"If you have negative reaction to an overall work or interpretation, by all means boo," Wheater says. "Booing loud toe shoes might be a bit extreme, however."

5. Is a graceful move more important than an athletically difficult move? Or is it vice versa?
Both are paramount. Technical fireworks give ballet its circus excitement; beauty, elegance and poignancy give it its soul. In cinema, the montage in "The Battleship Potemkin," the marathon tracking shots in Hitchcock's "Rope" and the filmic cornucopia in "Citizen Kane" dazzle us.

The artfully sketched fallibility in "The Graduate," the bittersweet finales to "Casablanca" or "Rain Man." Who'd dismiss any of them?

6. The last time I attended dance -- Bill T. Jones' Lincoln piece at the Ravinia Festival -- I liked it more than most people around me, who seemed mystified by it. I was responding, I think, to the dialogue, the theatricality, the sheer spectacle of the thing. But does this mean, when it comes to dance, I am like a child who responds better to shiny objects?
It means you're bringing your instincts and paying attention. Jones is a fascinating hybrid figure of postmodern dance, grafting unusual amounts of dialogue, drama, historical fact and biography into much of his work. Dance-theater is a good way to describe his approach, and he makes a great introduction for the dance novice. His Lincoln piece (last month's premiere of "Fondly Do We Hope ... Fervently Do We Pray") wasn't among his finest, possibly explaining nearby audience indifference. But his genius for multi-disciplines is attracting new fans and new understanding of dance. Welcome to the club.

Tribune reporter Christopher Borrelli contributed to this report.

Source: Chicago Tribune

An urban dance degree was the right move for UEL

by Rachel Williams
published in The Guardian, Tuesday 27 October 2009

East London's urban dance degree is booming in popularity, despite the criticisms of purists

Justin Gordon started dancing at the age of seven, entertaining family members with his reggae and soul moves at an endless succession of birthdays, weddings and christenings in Tottenham, north London.

"My family used to have a lot of parties," he remembers. "You either sang, or you danced."

Jessica O'Shea feels like she's been dancing all her life ("Your body just moves and you like the way it moves so you always do it"), but growing up in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, there was nowhere to learn the sort of street styles that intrigued her, until she and her friends secured funding for their own practice space.

At around the same time, a nine-year-old Annabelle Satchwell was donning embarrassing outfits to enter disco dancing competitions in Luton; in Presteigne, among the lonely hills of the Welsh Marches, Betty Adesanya was being taught ballet, modern and jazz; and in her bedroom in Hackney, east London, Christine Seraphin and her cousins were making up routines to show to their parents.

More than a decade later, put off traditional dance degrees, with their heavy focus on ballet and contemporary, by what they saw as their stuffiness and limited scope, the five were among 12 students who signed up for the first year of the UK's only urban dance undergraduate course, then newly launched at the University of East London.

Here, they are taught not just hip-hop styles like krumping, popping and locking, but also the fundamentals of African dance, capoeira and kathak, a classical Indian discipline.

Purists have turned their noses up at the course, but, now in its third year, its popularity is booming.

UEL claims it is the fastest-growing dance degree in the country: its intake has risen six-fold since it began, and this year more than 300 applicants battled it out for 75 places. During clearing, staff were inundated with calls asking if there were any spaces. A note on the whiteboard above them, as if they needed it, reminded them that there definitely were not.

Senior lecturer Kate Sicchio, a Philadelphian who has been in the UK for five years, explains: "Students are really interested in getting more than one dance style and that it's different from normal contemporary training: hip-hop one day, kathak another. They really appreciate that."

Some within the sector are supportive, but there is inevitable scepticism.

"It's a bit surprising to other HE institutions," Sicchio says. "There are quite a few who find it shocking. They say 'you teach street dance in university, how does that work?' And you say, 'well there's a history and contextual study just as much as in traditional techniques'. And you can actually talk to these artists, because they're still alive and producing work."

The course was born as UEL looked to expand its performing arts institute with a dance degree, and decided that rather than compete in a market saturated with big names, it should offer something a bit different. It took inspiration from its local area. "Rather than setting up a contemporary dance degree, they actually looked to the community and built a degree bottom-up," says Sicchio.

The decision was also based on the philosophy that popular art forms should be more swiftly adopted.

"Academia is always quite slow to wake up to innovation," says Mark O'Thomas, the director of UEL's institute for performing arts development. "It didn't even recognise jazz until relatively late. We felt urban and global dance, the dance that young people are interested in, had no validity at all [in the mainstream]."

Sicchio believes other institutions are less in tune with their students and their target audience. "A lot of them are upset when a lot of their students' knowledge comes from TV programmes that are really popular, but we find that as a way in. If you're really interested in this one style of dance, let's trace it, let's find the history, and how can we blend it with other things to make it even more new and fresh."

In their new studios at Trinity Buoy Wharf, where the perpetually mud-brown waters of the River Lea meet the Essex-bound Thames, Sicchio's students are equally enthusiastic.

Many have BTec national diplomas in dance or performing arts, others have A-levels and some are self-taught. All must audition for a place and take a written test to ensure they will be able to cope with the academic side of the course.

The group of eight third-years show off their skills with a display of freestyling, whooping and clapping each other as they take it in turns to dance solo in front of the group to a soundtrack that runs from Beggin' by Madcon to New Kids On The Block's You Got It (The Right Stuff).

Resting on the studio's sprung floor afterwards, they agree unanimously that their different backgrounds, socially, geographically and in terms of favourite dance styles, make the experience of learning all the richer.

"Because everyone's so different dance-wise, everyone's more open to everyone's ideas and opinions, whereas in traditional ballet everyone's a bit snobbish, I think," says Monique Alleyne, 21.

Seraphin adds: "Contemporary and ballet were something you'd do in a dance school, street was something you'd do in classes. To be able to be on a degree where you're actually studying it, it's quite amazing, actually."

Preet Kaur raves about the variety of styles on offer. "African is about using your whole body: your chest, your back, your legs, your head, everything."

Adesanya, who transferred to UEL after one year of a more traditional dance degree, says the way the students learn from each other is crucial. "I felt like other courses or classes I went to were quite restricting. I wanted to fuse contemporary with other styles.

"Here, it's completely different, it lets you express yourself as an artist more. You're learning so many different styles, you can really develop your own style and flavour and way of dancing. And they respect that as well, which is nice. I think in five years' time everyone will want to come here."

Sicchio says the course is still finding its feet, but believes it could set a precedent for the future as employers demand more diversity from dancers.
"Some people think you must train in one technique and have your core built up. But I think it's about the individual student and not making this cookie-cutter dancer that so many institutions are interested in," she says. "It's really about finding individuals and making them shine."

Source: guardian.co.uk

For a Brazilian Choreographer, Dance as an Obstacle Course

By LARRY ROHTER
Published: October 21, 2009

In a country where nearly everyone is a dancer, or at least aspires to be one, Deborah Colker still manages to stand out, both for her versatility and her unwillingness to be pigeonholed. Over a career spanning nearly 30 years, this Brazilian choreographer has worked in settings as aesthetically distinct as the Theatro Municipal in Rio de Janeiro, a temple of high art, and the samba schools that parade on the streets a few blocks away during the city’s annual Carnival competition.

“I don’t acknowledge barriers,” Ms. Colker, lithe and blond and brimming with enthusiasm, said in an interview this week as her company was preparing for four performances beginning on Thursday at City Center, its first New York City appearance in nearly a decade. “My attitude is kind of punk, in that I don’t respect rules or dogmas. I like mixtures, the challenges they present, and finding new solutions to old questions.”

Perhaps the most salient characteristic of Ms. Colker’s work since she founded the company that bears her name 15 years ago has been her desire to toy with perceptions of dimension, direction and distance. An early piece, “Rota,” featured dancers performing in a large spinning wheel, like hamsters at play, and another, “Velox,” required them to scale walls as if they were rock climbers competing at the X Games.

“Why must the stage always be horizontal and the dancer vertical?” she asked, and not rhetorically. “Why not use movement to subvert space and question gravity? And so I set about investigating ways to do that, in both the horizontal and vertical planes.”

Her most recent work, the disorienting “Cruel,” features three revolving mirrors with portholes, which enable the dancers to travel through those reflective spaces. And one part of “4x4,” the four-part, hourlong program her 17-member troupe will perform in Manhattan, employs 90 porcelain vases, spaced a little more than a yard apart in a chessboard pattern, as a sort of obstacle course around which her dancers must maneuver.

“Deborah is always working from concepts, and is very interested in things like physics and geometry,” said Donald Hutera, a London-based critic who is co-author of “The Dance Handbook” and has written extensively about Ms. Colker. “Her approach is big and colorful and quite playful, and there’s a physical riskiness to what she does, but that doesn’t mean it’s empty or shallow. She’s trying to place all this scientific stuff in a very kinetic context that is also very entertaining.”

When Ms. Colker’s company was starting, the Brazilian dance establishment reacted to that approach with dismay and even a certain disdain. Tatiana Leskova, a lead dancer in the Original Ballet Russe who trained generations of ballerinas after arriving in Brazil in 1944, initially dismissed Ms. Colker’s pieces as “at best gymnastics,” though she later changed her mind and became a supporter.

But it was precisely the insouciance and playfulness of Ms. Colker’s work that led Cirque du Soleil to invite her to write, direct and choreograph a new show, “OVO,” commemorating that Canadian group’s 25th anniversary. “OVO,” which means egg in Portuguese, is a humorous but environmentally conscious evocation of life and love in the insect world that had its premiere in Montreal in May and will move to the United States next month; it is scheduled to arrive in New York in May 2010.

“This show is about energy, spirit, color and sound,” said Chantal Tremblay, Cirque du Soleil’s creative director. “Deborah’s signature is energy and movement, and that is what she brought to ‘OVO.’ The way she uses her dancers is very direct and physical, and of course we were also interested in her use of the apparatus of wheels, walls and vases.”

Ms. Colker is the first woman to choreograph a Cirque du Soleil show, but she has had plenty of experience directing large dance ensembles in settings outside her comfort zone. For three years in the mid-1990s, Rio’s oldest Afro-Brazilian samba school, Mangueira, hired her to choreograph part of its Carnival presentation, an experience she repeated a decade later with another leading samba group, Viradouro.

“I love and respect the samba and adore Carnival, but it’s not my world,” she said. “Carnival has rules, and I had to respect them, and so it was difficult at times. But it was a very exciting and worthwhile experience. It’s been said that Carnival is a gigantic street opera, and that’s the way I approached it.”

Born in 1961, Ms. Colker was raised in Rio in a family of Jewish immigrants from Russia. Her father, a violinist and music teacher, gave her a grounding in classical European culture. As a child, she studied piano for a decade and played volleyball with sufficient skill and intensity that she was twice named to an all-state team alongside players who would eventually win medals in the Olympics. A serious commitment to dance, however, came only when she was 16, an age when many girls are giving up ballet.

“Dance is very much a collegial activity, and I liked that after the extreme solitude of playing the piano,” she explained. “I had a lot of adrenaline too, a physical energy that I brought from sports, an activity which, like dance, requires discipline, competitiveness and persistence. But I also felt a necessity for creative expression” that volleyball could not satisfy.

“Art is not a question of winning and losing,” she added. “It’s about exploration and experimentation and transformation and discovery, and I take great pleasure in that.”

After studying psychology, Ms. Colker danced with a Brazilian company. Gradually, she also began choreographing videos aimed for MTV and worked for nearly a decade as a “movement director” for some of Brazil’s best-known actors and theater and film directors, helping them with staging and learning to use body language to deepen the impact of texts.

Ms. Colker resumed her piano studies in 1999, and makes extensive use of her musical training in her dance pieces. The “Vasos” section of “4x4” opens with her playing a Mozart sonata, while other segments draw on Eno-influenced ambient sounds, the jazz standard “Some Day My Prince Will Come” and fragments composed by the electronic-music pioneer Raymond Scott.

“Deborah has a sharp and decisive sensibility, and is very attentive to music, about which she is passionate, almost possessive,” the Brazilian singer-songwriter Caetano Veloso, long an admirer of her work, said in a telephone interview from Rio. “Her work is poetic, but never in a diaphanous or ethereal way. She’s a dancer who thinks like a musician, in that the sense of time and rhythm in her choreography is quite accentuated.”

Though its United States appearances have been rare, Ms. Colker’s company often performs in Europe, where audiences have responded enthusiastically to that breezy Brazilian style. She won an Olivier Award, London’s equivalent of the Tony, for “Velox” and another piece in 2001, and was also commissioned by the Berlin Ballet to create a piece for that company.

“Deborah is a Vesuvius of a personality whose work is strong and engaging and connects with people, not just an elite,” Mr. Hutera said. “She can be popular and profound, sophisticated and subtle, carefree but serious. She is always embracing contradictions and embodies a lot of those contradictions herself.”

Source: New York Times

Portrait of the artist: Mark Morris, choreographer

Interview by Laura Barnett
guardian.co.uk, Monday 19 October 2009 23.00 BST

'Who would I most like to work with? Handel – he taught me everything, and he's not around to take the credit'


What got you started?
Every child dances, and then you learn not to. So I always danced around, and then, when I was eight, I saw a flamenco dance concert – and I was sold.

What was your big breakthrough?
When I made my first dance, which I called Barstow, at age 15. And when my company played at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1984, and [the New Yorker's] dance critic Arlene Croce said I was worth watching.

Is there any truth in the old saying: art is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration?
No, that's nonsense. I don't seek inspiration, and my work is also not a horrible drudgery. So maybe it's exactly 50%.

What's the greatest threat to dance today?
Dance itself. The one reason people don't take dance seriously is because a lot of choreographers don't take dance seriously. Audiences don't want to see the kind of self-indulgent, boring dance that is so prevalent today.

What one song would work as the soundtrack to your life?
Bach's B Minor mass, because there's nothing wrong with it.

Is dance an elitist art form?
If that means that it's not for everybody, then yes. "Elitist" doesn't need to mean wealthy and conservative; it can also mean specialised and rarefied, and that's no bad thing.

Who would you most like to work with?
This is worrisome. If I say somebody who's around today, then I'll get a phone call from their agent. So I'll have George Frideric Handel, because he taught me everything I know, but isn't around to take the credit.

Which work do you wish you had written yourself?
Michel Fokine's Les Sylphides [first staged in 1909]. It's the most gorgeous dance in the world.

What's the best advice anyone ever gave you?
Choreographer Lar Lubovitch once said to me: "You're not going to start a dance company, are you?" It was a warning about how strange and difficult it would be. And that's true – but I like it.

What's the worst thing anyone has ever said about your work?
A dance critic once called my piece The Death of Socrates "inert". Which I found puzzling, because doesn't that mean it doesn't move? I've been thinking about that for the last 20 years.

In short
Born: Seattle, 1956.
Career: Formed the Mark Morris Dance Company in 1980; has also worked as an opera director. His company perform at Sadler's Wells, London (0844 412 4300), 27–31 October.
High point: "Working with [conductor] James Levine on Orfeo ed Eurydice at the New York Met."
Low point: "When a show I directed, Paul Simon's The Capeman, failed miserably."

Source: guardian.co.uk