Veiled Insults

[thegrrrl2002]

I've decided I'd be a much better belly dancer if it weren't for my body. It just keeps getting in the way. Really. I looove the music, I love the rhythms--I can just feel it in my heart, feel what I want to do, I want to dance, I want to BE the music, then BAM, there's my clunky body. It won't do what I want it to.

Not to mention that damn veil. It is so not an extension of my body.

I know that with enough practice, the technique will come, but still. I want it to happen now. Right now. Then again, I suppose I'm not doing too badly considering I took a class on a lark two years ago. I promptly became addicted. And my bestest girlfriend *ever* takes class with me. I love her, even though she's way more graceful than me.

If anyone out there is looking for something new to do with their body, I highly recommend it. It's a beautiful dance form, very feminine and natural and fun. Plus, you're *supposed* to have hips and belly. You even get to show them off. (See, these are my big ole hips. And my round belly. I can do all sorts of cool things with them. See?)

Comments

[thewildmole.livejournal.com]

Hey, speaking of the belly dance, have you ever heard any of Hossein Ramzy's stuff? Sabla Tolo is the title in my head at the moment.

[thegrrrl2002.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, he's fantastic. I have "Immortal Egypt", which I absolutely love. Will look for "Sabla Tolo", though. Thanks!

[thewildmole.livejournal.com]

If you want, I'd be happy to spin a copy of it for you.

[thegrrrl2002.livejournal.com]

Oh! I would love that. You are too wonderful! I just listened to snippets on amazon.com. It's so amazing. I will e' you.

[eregyrn.livejournal.com]

This is a tangential thought, but...from my own experience, you might hit upon some good things if you were able to try doing hula.

I've got a bunch of friends who do middle-eastern dancing, and I have that same feeling -- love the music, want to move to it, but I feel as if I lack...something. I have never felt as if I was all that coordinated a person, and I don't improvise well. And god help me, but at least locally where I am, the bellydancing groups, while they do attract a wide range of female body types, always have that population of young, lithe, perfect-bodied college girls, and...*sigh*

Then due to a bunch of other things, I found myself coming across a hula class being taught locally, and joined that. (I don't know where you're located, but I'm on the east coast, which is about as far from anywhere you'd expect to find lots of hula classes being taught as you could possibly expect.) And I've found that for someone who has never thought highly of her own level of coordination, or felt that great about her body-image all the time, hula has been really wonderful.

Particularly if you can find someone who does hula kahiko (i.e. ancient style), the rhythms are great. It's very feminine, it's very folkloric and nature-oriented, and of course, being a Polynesian dance form, it's very welcoming of all body-types. But what made it compare favorably to middle eastern dancing, for me, is that it is not improvisational at all. It's the opposite -- it's memorized and frequently in unison with as large a group as you've got, where the goal is for everyone to be as close in motion as possible. And where I found this helped me was, that means it's all about muscle-memory.

So too is bellydancing, or any kind of activity like that, of course. But for me, at least, hula has been allowing me to master dance forms and techniques, without the added anxiety of being expected to add in improvisation or original choreography -- both of which are things that I know some of my bellydancing friends have expressed anxiety over. I'm simply getting my body comfortable with the idea of moving, and programming into it a vocabulary of both steps and arm/hand movements that *could* be valuable to improvisation later. To my surprise, I've found that to be true -- in recent casual dancing situations I've found that my ability to dance has benefitted from having all that stuff drilled into my brain. I don't know that I'm at a point yet where I could see myself doing my own choreography or improvising, but I know I'm a lot closer to it now than I was.

I don't know if it would be an option that would interest you or that you could even take advantage of, depending on what's offered in your area; but I thought I'd offer it as another way to think about the issues. (I've been seeing a lot of linkage between hula and middle-eastern dancing lately, because of having so many friends who do the latter, and having had one of them taking the hula class along with me for a time, and then most recently trying to teach some hula moves to a friend who was looking to expand her own vocabulary as she tried to come up with some choreography. Fusion cuisine is hot; why not fusion dancing? )

(If you're interesting in the music, I highly recommend Mark Keali'i Ho'omalu's most recent CD, "Call It What You Like". He is the fellow who wrote and sang the two Hawaiian-language songs for Disney's movie "Lilo & Stitch" of a couple of years ago. His stuff is rockin'.)

[thegrrrl2002.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the wonderful information! Fortunately, in the school where I'm learning middle-eastern dance, improvisation is saved for the advanced students. Thank goodness. I would never be able to handle that. (being of the uncoordinated type, myself). I think it's one of the reasons why I've enjoyed it so much--the teacher has made it very accessible and fun. Her point is that improv should wait until you learn the technique, and it becomes second nature, so you don't have to think about your body. Maybe one of these days I'll get to that point.

Interestingly enough, she has touched on Polynesian dance and how it compares to middle eastern. I'll definitely keep an eye out for classes, I think it would be really interesting to check it out. Thank you for the music rec, too! I'm not familiar with the artist, but it sounds very cool.

Huh. Maybe I just need to go to Hawaii. Sounds very appealing right about now.

[tripoli8.livejournal.com]

Did belly-dancing for a while. Loved it. Have a jangly hip-wrap and everything.

I was in a weird situation, though; I was a junior in high school when I started, and there was one other teenager, and then a dozen middle-aged housewives who kept shooting me dirty looks but were otherwise very nice.
They never minded when I jiggled, though. We had a substitute instructor every once in a while; she was the best I've ever seen, and she was at least three-hundred pounds. Loved that woman.

When you try to start up again in college and all your classmates are hundred-pound dance majors...well, my ego is only human.

[thegrrrl2002.livejournal.com]

When you try to start up again in college and all your classmates are hundred-pound dance majors...well, my ego is only human.

LOL! I hear you. There's only a handful of dancy types in our classes. There's really a nice cross section of womanhood.

And hey, those 100 pound dance majors don't have the proper hippage for this kind of thing. You need to have something to jingle with!