Over the next year and a half, I and eight other dancers will meet monthly to continue to search for and develop different concepts and dimensions that carry dance beyond movement and into the scrumptious land of texture, nuance, meaning, and provocation. We will present our favorite ideas in a stage show that will be produced as a DVD available to the public.
In Sunday's circle session, we began (after considerable costume ogling and dance topic preamble) by watching Tamalyn Dallal's Fan Dance video. She began production of this video in China, working with dancers who each choreographed 2 8 counts of a fan dance. In addition to the group choreography, there were two soloists. This was filmed and edited to include footage of the musicians in Zanzibar who created the music. This first video was used as an enormous backdrop for a show in Miami in which, again, dancers together created a fan dance choreography for two soloists and a group of belly dancers. This production was videotaped and edited to create a very touching, collaborative dance of women from around the world dancing together. We decided that we will do the same, and use this montage video as backdrop behind during a fan number in our show.
Manon opened the dancing portion of our circle by focusing our repertoire of hip movements on the contraction and expansion of the womb space. Movement was created through the process of squeezing all the air out of the womb space, then allowing it to fill and open, expanding in the direction of our intention. We then added to this the expansion and contraction of the upper sternum. This point of expansion and contraction is located just below the meeting of the collar bones. Tamalyn has referred to it as the flower spot as it opens and closes like a blossom. I've thought of it as the sunshine spot which lifts and falls away from the sun. Together, these subtle intentions seemed to make movements both smoother, juicier, and more evocative.
Khalida worked with arm movements: giving the arms and hands the intention of giving, taking and placing. We tried this with strong as well as fine movements, and I particularly enjoyed it as a means of creating a series of poses. She also discussed the grounding of beledi movements, contracting up through the core and engaging the upper abdominals to create more heaviness in the movements.
Leslie gave us a great workout challenge: we lay on our backs, feet on the floor, knees up and proceeded to practice all of the basic shapes and isolations from this position. I was grateful for this new means of sweating! We then stood and played with the same series of movements, but Leslie had us add the element of skateboarding. I found this visualization of adding the motion of skate or snowboarding to bellydance isolations actually works amazingly well. It naturally creates smooth whooshes and dips in movement our dance as we follow the music on our imaginary boards.
Imei had us go through the excercise of saying a sentence, then illustrating it with our motions. She draws on her splendid Bollywood background to illustrate, but it works well in belly dance also. This has been an especially fruitful excercise for me this month, put to use both in practice and performance.
Suzanna delighted us with a few moves and a great concept. The moves involved tapping the toe and then either throwing the whole torso forward dramatically, or following with a dramatic sway or roll up. The concept was of dancing with "no knees". She had us imagine we have no knees: only straight poles for legs. We practiced the basic movements. She allowed us to suddenly switch into a our regular legs with knees, then quickly called us back to no knees. A wonderful way of exploring level changes in the dance!
Noor worked with us on our arms, rolling in waves from right to left, leading with the wrist up and out. She directed us to push from the ball of the foot through the chest and up through the opposite arm and hand. We pushed space around with our body as well as with our arms. Arm movements gained depth by connecting not only to the torso, but also through to the feet.
Jewels asked about drum solo, and how to move when there are repeated, powerful sounds from the drum. The answers we found included dancing to the feeling of the emotion driven by the drums and allowing our bodies to only hit the first of the beats while continuing the intention and feeling throughout the riff.
I concluded the session by demonstrating how a taqasim modulates through a variety of maqams, and introduced ideas for noting these modulations which musicians so treasure with subtle changes in our dance: a new facial expression, a sudden glance in a new direction, a hiding or emerging of the eyes, an offering of a slightly new view such as the back of the shoulder for example, a change in feeling from loftiness and lightness to heaviness, or a change from expansion into contraction.
I look forward to continuing to work with and explore these ideas in my practice and performance, and can hardly wait for the next Artist Circle on June 22nd!
yours in music and dance,
Alimah
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