She Works Hard For Her Money

January 27th, 2012

Thinking about becoming a professional bellydancer?  It can be a very fulfilling career, but be prepared to work hard!  Like other entertainers or artists in the U.S., most bellydancers don’t achieve ‘superstar’ status, but instead they do it for the love of their art.

In bellydancing even the top ‘superstars’ don’t make that much money on a consistent basis by just performing.  To make ends meet, they also have to run dance studios, maintain web sites, teach workshops (often having to travel quite a bit), sell dance supplies, and produce shows.  There’re no traditional benefits like paid sick leave, medical insurance, paid vacations, and pensions.  For entertainers there’s also the added pressure of having performance careers cut short because of ageism or body image issues. On top of all of that, in some conservative areas bellydancing and bellydancers are still not considered respectable.  It can be very challenging!

However, it’s a wonderful blessing to make money doing something that you enjoy so much and to be able to share it with like-minded people.  It’s an honest living where you can make many life-long friends and have interesting and exciting experiences.  Additionally, all the dancing that you practice does so much to keep you happy, healthy, and youthful.

If you’re considering a belly dance career, take time to carefully research all the pros and cons.  If you decide to go for it, it may be the hardest job you’ll ever love, but you probably won’t regret it.

 

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

‘Till Death Do Us Part

December 29th, 2011

One of the most enjoyable aspects of bellydancing is the costuming.  While it’s true that you can bellydance wearing everyday clothing or exercise gear, half the fun is dressing up in the belly dance costume style of your choice (see: http://www.bellydancingvideo.com/first-costume.htm).  Most bellydancers lovingly put together their costumes, either by making the costumes themselves, or purchasing them.  Either way, usually a lot of thought goes into the choice of style, color, jewelry, and fit.

Once a bellydancer completes her costume, she dances in it for a while and then may eventually sell it or give it away.  However, most bellydancers have favorite costumes that mean a lot to them and these are the ones that they keep.  These are the costumes that make a dancer feel especially attractive, glamorous, and exotic.   Just looking at them can bring back memories of the wonderful experiences she has had dancing in them.  They are a beautiful reminder of her participation in this ancient and artistic tradition.

Therefore it shouldn’t have been a surprise to me, when on a number of occasions, I contacted retired bellydancers about selling their costumes and was turned down flat.

This has occurred when students or friends have asked me to inquire about purchasing used costumes for them, especially the fabulous metal belts and accessories from Cost Less Imports*. I have contacted bellydancers that I knew were no longer active in the dance.  There were even occasions when I talked to elderly dancers who informed me that they were sick with terminal illnesses.  None of them could bear to part with their belly dance treasures!

I’ve discussed this issue with other bellydancers and they all express the same sentiment.  Whether they are dancing or not, they don’t want to part with their favorite belly dance costumes.  Some wish to pass them on to their family or friends, but mostly they want to hang on to this special part of their life and what it represents.  I understand it perfectly – no matter how old or infirm I may become, just looking at my belly dance costumes will always bring a smile to my lips and a wiggle to my hips.

 

* (Starting in the 1960’s, Cost Less Imports made hand crafted metal belly dance belts and accessories made of authentic coins, Swarovski crystals, mirrors, and semi-precious stones.  They are no longer making these items, so if you want any, you have to pay a premium for the few they have left in stock at www.costlesscostumes.com, or find used ones.)

 

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Bellydancers – a Zest for Living

November 29th, 2011

Bellydancers come in all sizes, ages, and ethnicities.  I’ve met many bellydancers in my career and have noticed that most have something in common besides their obvious love for this dance form.  That something is a real passion for living and a desire to pursue that passion on their own terms.  Of all the various dances that exist, bellydance is certainly one of the most emotional and individually expressive.

In the 1970’s, when bellydancing was first becoming popular with large numbers of American women, the dance had a rather negative image to many people.  Much of the general public thought that bellydance was not respectable, that it was nothing more than a Middle Eastern strip tease or a way to ‘please your sultan’.  Dancers who understood bellydancing to be so much more than that faced an uphill battle for respect.  You had to have a thick skin to call yourself a bellydancer in those days!

However, bellydancers of that time and beyond persevered and by educating the public through their performances and classroom instruction, the image and understanding of bellydancing improved.  Today bellydance is mainstream and is known as a beautiful and beneficial art form that is taught in some of the most prestigious learning institutions in the country.  To come this far, bellydancers not only needed a thick skin, but also great conviction, persistence, and a passion for their art form.

Whether a bellydancer is a professional, a dedicated student, or hobbyist, this dance seems to attract people with a real enthusiasm for living and doing it their own way.  These are dancers who don’t let society or other people tell them how to enjoy their life.  If some people say that bellydancing isn’t respectable, these dancers say, “then don’t look – I dance for myself and others who love this art”.

Bellydancing not only attracts dancers who have an enthusiasm for life, the dance itself further enhances ones’ capacity to be happy, energetic, and healthy.  So the next time you see a belly dance performance or a class, look beyond the differences of body type, age, and dance style of each individual dancer and you’ll see the common thread of a passion for movement, joyful expression, and for life itself.  If you’re lucky, some of that zest for living may even rub off on you.

 

Tags: ,
Posted in Belly Dance History, Belly Dancers, Health Benefits and Fitness | Comments Off

Tribal Bellydance – A Sense of Belonging

October 29th, 2011

People are social beings and cannot exist, physically or emotionally, without the support of other people.  Unlike bears in the wild, human beings need the support system of their own kind, their tribe.

Our desire to be part of a family, group, and community is strong in all of us and is hardwired into our DNA as part of our ability to survive and thrive.  I can think of few more enjoyable or healthy ways to satisfy this need and desire to bond with others than through music and dance.

Bellydancers have been dancing in groups and troupes for ages.  Whether the style of bellydance has been cabaret, ‘Gypsy’, ethnic, or other, dancers form a strong bond with each other in their shared participation in a troupe.

In the 1980’s a new version of troupe bellydancing was popularized and it was called tribal bellydance.  It utilized a new type of choreography that used a lead and follow method of directing the dance.  Tribal bellydance has continued to evolve, but it still uses the same classic movement vocabulary as other styles of bellydancing and has many other similarities as well.  The costuming in tribal bellydance is an adaptation of earlier fusion styles of ethnic and cabaret costuming (popularized by troupes in the 1960’s and 70’s such as Bal Anat and The Perfumes of Araby).  The traditional Middle Eastern music used in tribal bellydance is also used extensively in other belly dance styles.  However, more than other styles, most tribal bellydancers put an emphasis on their identification as part of a quasi-ethnic tribe.

When you do a classic improvised belly dance solo, you get in touch with your own individuality through your personal interpretation of the moves and music.  When you dance in a troupe, through the groups’ synchronization of movement to music, you can experience a feeling of connection or sisterhood with your fellow troupe members.  Most dancers find that this is a positive and fun expression of their need to belong.

Regardless of our tastes in choreography, music, and costuming, we can find like-minded bellydancers to dance with.  The bonding that occurs through shared movement and music can give us a sense of belonging to something bigger than, and just as important as, our individual selves.

 

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Belly Dance History, Tribal Belly Dance | Comments Off

Why I Call It ‘Magical Motion’

September 30th, 2011

When I was preparing my first belly dance instruction video in 1985, I struggled a bit in deciding on the name of its’ title.  At that time, bellydancing was very new to the instructional video market and I wanted to educate the public-at-large to the artistry and health benefits of this dance form.  I wasn’t focusing so much on the existing belly dance community: they already knew how wonderful the dance is.  However, the general public still had a long way to go in understanding what bellydancing was really about.

The first title issue to be addressed was the name of the dance itself.  Because my main focus was on the general public, I knew that the most recognizable name for the dance was ‘bellydance’.  But the question for me was how to add adjectives to my belly dance title that would easily convey the essence of all that bellydance offered.  For weeks I poured over the key words and phrases that define bellydance, such as:

*Natural, total body exercise * mind/body/spirit fitness * effective, full range of motion workout * lots of fun * low impact, non-injurious movement * the added healing benefits & incentive of music * stress reduction * increased vitality * feelings of accomplishment & self-esteem * connection to feminine energy * development of creativity & spontaneity * personal empowerment * opportunity to meet new friends.

As my list of key words and phrases grew and grew, it got harder to condense all that I wanted to convey in my title in just a few words.  I realized that there was just so much bellydancing can do that it seemed supernatural, just like magic.  This dance is motion.  Most dancers will tell you it feels like magic.  So for me, bellydance was then and still is, magical motion.

 

 

Tags: ,
Posted in Belly Dance, Belly Dance History | Comments Off

Bellydancing For Yourself or For Others

August 29th, 2011

 

Most beginning bellydance students start studying bellydance for their own personal enjoyment and improvement.  The majority of them take up the dance for fitness, as a creative artistic outlet, or just for fun.  To gain the benefits of bellydance, you have to master the moves, the techniques, and how to apply it all to music.  Bellydancing for your own personal improvement is very internal – you don’t need to think about anyone outside of yourself, only how you and your body feels and reacts to the music.

However, a funny thing often happens to belly dance students.  After they master the dance for themselves, they often decide to perform, to dance for others.  With performance opportunities available such as recitals, student nights at restaurants, and community fairs, many bellydancers decide to share the fun.

Performing bellydance for audiences requires additional skill sets as opposed to just dancing for yourself.  While dancing for yourself is arguably the most important reason to dance, this is just the beginning if you wish to perform.  Mastering the dance internally is critical to being able to project the dance externally to others.  If you’re dancing for an audience you must also focus on their needs and expectations.

Bellydancers who fail to ‘tune in’ to their audiences can bore them to death!  Instead of using the dance to connect the audience to the enjoyment of the music and the moment, the dancer holds them captive to the expression of her own inner world and feelings.  She’s really dancing for herself, albeit in a public space.  Unfortunately, many audience members couldn’t care less about the dancer’s own inner world and quickly lose interest in the performance.  Learning how to tune in to an audience’s needs and expectations and to entertain them is an art form in itself!

If you decide to perform bellydance for others, learn how to bellydance for yourself first.  This is how you can forge the deepest connection between your body, the movements and the music.  Once you have that solid foundation, practice until it becomes second nature to you.   It’s then that you can turn your attention to the energy and mood of an audience and use your personal skills to forge a connection between your dance, the music, and others.

 

Tags: ,
Posted in Belly Dance, Belly Dance Classes, Belly Dance Music | Comments Off

The Global Bellydancer

July 28th, 2011

In the 1800’s, classic bellydance as we know it today, was practiced mainly by the native populations of the Near & Middle East.  Later that century, Middle Eastern bellydance was introduced to America at fairs and expositions, the most famous being the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.  The Middle Eastern dancing performed at the Chicago Fair created a sensation in the U.S. and inspired thousands of American women to bellydance (see my article, ‘The Phenomenon of the American Bellydancer‘).  Since then, bellydancing has continued to grow here and around the world in both popularity and stylistic expression.

The last 30 years have seen an interesting development in bellydance: an accelerated infusion of dancers from diverse cultures from all corners of the globe. Now you can see bellydancers from China to Brazil, Europe to Australia, and everywhere in between. To a large extent, this has to do with the growth of satellite TV, international distribution of videos and DVDs, and the Internet.  People can now view bellydancers from virtually any country at any time.  This has inspired many people to take up the dance.  It has created the phenomenon of the global bellydancer – dancers who utilize the traditional movement vocabulary and techniques of the classic Middle Eastern dance flavored with influences from their own culture.

For example, Russian dancers have fused the authentic movement vocabulary of belly dance with the precise technical perfection of Russian ballet.  American dancers have analyzed and organized the bellydance movement vocabulary into specific teaching methods as opposed to the informal Middle Eastern method of learning by watching friends and relatives dance.  Americans have also felt free to expand the creative expression of the dance, such as enhanced veil work, most likely because of their exposure to the multitude of cultures in the melting-pot society of the U.S.

Today bellydance has many styles, and even the most traditional Middle Eastern styles are evolving as all improvisational creative arts do.  Our world seems to be growing smaller as our planet develops a truly global community and that community is beautifully reflected through the myriad artistic expressions of the global bellydancer.

 

Tags: ,
Posted in Belly Dance | Comments Off

Bellydancing With Veils, Authentically

June 30th, 2011

Bellydancing with veils (usually 3 yards or more of silky fabric) has been a popular facet of bellydance for quite some time.  However, some people believe that it’s not an ‘authentic’ or traditional part of bellydance, but instead is an American invention added to the dance in the 1900’s.

Since there are many styles of bellydance and many of them are considered authentic (including American style), the question of whether veil dancing is authentic bellydance depends on the style of bellydance that you’re referring to.  All authentic styles of bellydance evolved out of the traditional, or classic bellydance movement vocabulary.  So how long have bellydancers been performing that classic movement vocabulary and using veils along with it?

Over the millennia there have been various depictions and descriptions of women dancing with veils.  One of the most beautiful, artistic, and ancient rendering of a bellydancer comes to us in the form of an exquisite bronze sculpture from Alexandria, Egypt circa 300-200 B.C.  It can be viewed at the following link: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1972.118.95.  The dancer appears to be executing a type of hip lift/drop movement, one of the most basic and traditional of all classic bellydance moves.  She is skillfully framing her hip and her body with a piece of fabric that any bellydancer would recognize as a veil.  The framing of bellydance moves with a veil is a basic component of modern bellydancing.  This dancer from over 2,000 years ago was doing what bellydancers do today.

Still, it is true that veil work (veil dancing) is not used in some classic styles of bellydance, for example, Egyptian Raks Sharki.  In this classic style of Egyptian bellydance (as practiced in the 20th and 21st centuries), veils are not used, or are used minimally (usually worn at the beginning of the dance and quickly discarded).

Of all styles of bellydance, the American Cabaret (or ‘Nightclub’) style uses the veil the most extensively.  Modern bellydancers of this style often devote an entire section of the dance to veil work and use elaborate techniques of flowing the veil to the music or using it to frame the body’s movements.  Have these modern bellydancers rediscovered veil dancing similar to that as performed by the Alexandrian dancer of 300 B.C.?  We’ll never know for sure, but it seems irrefutable that creative and expressive bellydancers have been dancing with veils for many centuries.

So, if you want to use veil work in your bellydancing, rest assured that it’s an authentic (and historic) expression of the dance.  When you bellydance with veils you become part of that beautiful and timeless tradition.

 

Tags: ,
Posted in Belly Dance Clothes, Belly Dance Costumes, Veils | No Comments »

Layered Shimmies: The Multi-Tasking Bellydancer

May 26th, 2011

Each individual belly dance move is beautiful when performed all by itself, but it’s the hallmark of a skillful bellydancer to be able to perform two or more movements at the same time.  Some of the most impressive of these simultaneous, or layered, movements are the layered shimmies.  A shimmy is a vibrating movement that is exciting and impressive in its own right.  Beginning bellydancers feel a sense of accomplishment in perfecting shimmy movements that make the fringe and coins in their costumes vibrate in time to the music.  But once the basic shimmies are mastered, the next challenge can be layering shimmies with rolling hip moves, ribcage isolations, staccato hip patterns, snake arms, etc.

To be able to layer movements and perform them simultaneously (sometime synchronizing the shimmy to the rhythm and another move to the melody) is challenging and takes a lot of practice and dedication.  However, the eye-popping results are worth it, guaranteed to impress friends, audiences, and other bellydancers alike.

Mastering layered shimmies has benefits that can be more important than impressing people, or even giving yourself a well-deserved feeling of accomplishment. The exercise value is phenomenal, and the sum is worth more than the individual parts.  For example, performing a diagonal ribcage circle (‘clock circle’) will give you an excellent abdominal workout.  A basic hip shimmy or knee vibration shimmy will exercise your lower body and give you the benefits of vibrating exercise.  However, layer these movements together and you’ll get all that and more, in part because you have to control your core muscles very deeply to keep this movement combination under control.  So, in the same amount of time that it takes to do one movement, you’re doing two but multiplying the exercise benefits.

Learning to layer your moves allows you to multi-task, saving time while intensifying your workout.  If you enjoy pushing your boundaries, you’ll also find that the challenge is a lot of fun.  Bellydancing is great for your mind, body, and spirit whether you make it complex or keep it simple.  But if you want to get the most bang for your buck, accept the challenge and try being a multi-tasking bellydancer.

 

Tags:
Posted in Belly Dance Steps and Moves, Shimmies | Comments Off

One-Size Does Not Fit All

April 29th, 2011

Learning to bellydance requires finding good belly dance teachers with good teaching methods.  For beginners, it can be hard to know which instructors and teaching methods are the best for them.  In addition, it can be confusing to even know which style of bellydance to study.

Finding the right teacher and bellydance style takes a bit of research.  Currently there are no universally accepted licensing boards or credentials for teaching bellydance. Therefore, the belly dance teachers that you find advertised can range from excellent to inept.  To find a suitable teacher, it’s usually  helpful to get recommendations from friends.  However, that’s not always possible, so a little personal research is usually necessary and is a good thing even if you have recommendations from others.  (See ‘Find a Qualified Belly Dance Teacher’)

Regarding choosing which belly dance style to study, there’s a lot of information online, in DVDs, and in books.  The advantage of the Internet and DVDs is that you can see videos of different styles, making it easier to decide what you like best.

Once you decide on a belly dance style, classroom instruction with a knowledgeable teacher can provide you with the guidance and feedback that will give you the most complete learning experience.  Each belly dance teacher will have her own unique approach to teaching.  Each student will have her own unique way of learning.  What is an excellent belly dance teacher for one student may not be a good teacher for another.

Clearly, one-size does not fit all when it comes to finding the right belly dance instructor for you.  So after soliciting recommendations from people and doing your research, you’ll simply have to jump in and chose a teacher.  If you’re fortunate, your first teacher will be a good one for you, but if not, be persistent and keep trying different classes.  Eventually you’ll find the teacher who is just the right fit for all your needs and you’ll be on your way to experiencing all the fun and benefits that bellydancing has to offer.

 

Tags: ,
Posted in Belly Dance | No Comments »

« Older Entries