Olde Town Fall Festival

Every year the city holds a Fall Festival in the historic old town district. There are vendors, food, and two performance stages as well as a children's area with games and such. It's a small festival, but usually lots of fun.

For the past several years my student troop, Halleyah Raks, has performed with the dance school where I teach my class - Dominy School of Performing Arts. We've always enjoyed performing at the festival.

This year I branched out a bit and a new group that I'm dancing with, Daughters of Djinn, also performed at the festival. So I was doing double duty - performer and mama hen. The process of getting there was a bit rough, with DOD having to re-choreograph our performance pieces after we got moved from one stage (large and flat) to the other stage (small and high) about six weeks out. Frustrating, but we made it work.

The day was beautiful. Sunny and breezing. Not hot, but not too cold. You could smell Festival foods as the wind blew - popcorn, cotton candy, hot dogs, etc. Since DOD performed at 12:45, none of us had eaten and the stage was downwind of the food vendors so we were hungry! The wind had us worried - our first number had lit candles, sword and fan veil! All difficult props to work with in the wind. Bella, the member dancing with the fire, is a professional fire performer, so all precautions were taken and she was confident she could manage the flame. And low and behold she made it through her section without a candle going out until the very end! About the best one could ask for under the circumstances. Next up was Stacia with a large and sharp scimitar. She managed very well and made it through with no bobbles! Then it was my turn. I picked up the fan veil with a sigh. I had planned some really neat moves, but the wind was whipping by and I just figured that at some point the darn thing would eat me! But I made it through without being wrapped up in my veil and when I watched the video latter was quiet surprised at how wonderful it looked!

Our next song was a new choreography - the one we'd had to do in six weeks. Well 5 weeks really since I was out of town for my sister's wedding for one of those weeks. Lots of turns and my shoes were sticking to the stage horribly! I made it through with only one bobble, that I can see on the video, but probably few others noticed. Poor Stacia flipped too soon at one point, but other than some minor polishing stuff - it went off really well. When I watched the playback, it was so funny to hear an audience member say, "We have this in Conyers, GA!?" Yep - you sure do!

Then it was pack up everything, help Bella and Stacia change for the Halleyah Raks performance, and run over to the other stage! A whirlwind and there were lots of folks I wanted to visit with that I just didn't have the time to do so and when I caught my breath they had left! Sorry about that! We made it to the second stage, got everyone together. I turned into mama hen and pinned belts, checked hair and make-up and got everyone together to mentally walk through choreography before they had to go onstage. We were second to last in the line up and the girls did beautifully! Watching my students perform and excel is one of the wonderful things about being a teacher. One of the newer girls, Heather, had her first solo and she was terrified - but she looked cute and cool as a cucumber! The audience loved it and after a few minutes of adjustment started clapping and enjoying the peppy energy. Whew - they were done and it was great!

We spent some time in the small gardens taking some nice photos for everyone to remember the day and then walked around the festival handing out class flyers, etc. A really successful day, but I've got to remember that just because it's not hot - doesn't mean I don't need sunscreen! Oh my aching cleavage!

Halleyah :)

History of the Dance - 2

So last time we stopped with the advent of Islam ...

This truly affected the world of the Middle East. Islam spread and with it came new ideas and feelings about women and dance. I'm not interested in discussing whether there was some ultimate "right" or "wrong" about these ideas. The ideas simply "are". The effect was to contain and marginalize women's roles in a changing society and that directly affected their dance.

Since women became more contained, the examples of public dancing became more scarce. Islam completed the removal of dance as a sacred and religious experience and moved it firmly into the secular realm. Certainly there were fringe examples of dance being associated with the sacred ( think Zar and the dancing that took place at weddings and the Saints tombs), but by and far dance became firmly secular. Women continued to dance in the privacy of their homes, "proper" women did not dance in public. There are always exceptions, but in general this still holds true today with female public performers being looked down upon and even in certain cases being sued by others for "inciting men".

So, during the middle ages, secular dance moved into the streets and into the "hands" of the street prostitute. Much of our information from this period is from sources who only had access to street performers and prostitutes and their movements and life. The images begin to move from those of graceful performers with sweeping arm gestures to the intensive hip orientation that is found today in belly dance. Certainly there were hip movements prior to this time period - Roman writers describe them and their are depictions from the ancient world that show hip work or a hip emphasis in costuming. But the writings and the images become more hip oriented once the dance hits the streets.

As the Renaissance starts more and more European travelers begin to comment on the "dancing girls of the east" and the beginnings of the fascination with them can be found. Still most of these women are street performers, courtesans, and prostitutes. I haven't found any accounts of the average woman performing in front of the visitors. Not to say it never occurred, just that I haven't found such an account. Please share if you know of one!

But the height of the "dancing girl" accounts comes during the Orientalist period of the 1800's. And with it comes much insinuation of the sexual aspects of the street prostitute and courtesan. Those images and stories greatly affected how the Western World viewed belly dance. The dance became intricately tied to the sexual aspect and the long lost folk and sacred aspects were left to history.

My point with this very abbreviated generalist history is that there were many things that affected what we know today as belly dance. By the time the West discovered the dance, it had already been through many incarnations. So while the bones of the dance, the soul of the dance might stretch back through time to a place where it held religious and sacred aspects, by the time it reached the West those days were long gone.

Just as the purpose of the dance had changed, so had the movements. While some were similar being hip driven and body driven verses footwork and sweeping arm movements as many Western dances were, much was added. Life is change. Artists are influenced and adopt the new trends and street performers more than court performers use what is popular and trendy. They must keep the interest of the populace and don't generally concern themselves with maintaining a cultural purity unless that is what is popular. So as the cultures blended with each Empire change so did the art of belly dance. New musical phrases and dress were introduced and this influenced the movements. Conquered entertainers were imported and were all the rage for their exotic differences and so the locals adopted those differences in order to keep their customers.

Now here is the hard part. It is simple enough to see that both purpose and movements changed - but HOW had they changed? This is the difficult if not impossible question for a dance historian to ask themselves. As the dance comes to the notice of the West, how "pure" is it? What forces have already influenced it?

Next time, we'll look at the changes that happened once the dance was introduced to the West...

Computer Crash

Well, I've done it again and killed yet another innocent machine! Electronics and I do not get along. I have a computer geek friend who swears I should work on them from behind a lead shield.

So I did it again and killed my desktop. I'm now the proud owner of my first laptop! However,at the moment, I've lost ALL my data. :( I'm in negotiations with the manufacturer of my hard drive to attempt a data recovery, but it looks grim. Of course, I don't have a recent backup - don't yell at me! I hated burning tons of Cd's and didn't own a zip or a portable hard drive to do backups on. I do now and this will not happen again!

However, that still leaves me to rebuild everything. I've lost at least 3 years of photos, some I've got stashed but many may be gone forever. I think I've got most of my text files, but there is a whole folder of JSTOR articles that is gone and those puppies are hard to come by!

So no belly dance news right now - I'll get back to the history post soon. Wish me luck and send me some good vibes! I need them!