Ballet for oriental dance

I took part in Autumn Ward's "Ballet Technique for Oriental Dance" workshop yesterday at Salsa International. I have pain in the weirdest muscles today (my pecs hurt, if you can believe it!) and places in my hip, and my credit card also hurts because of the Sharifwear sale they were having.... but all in all, it was great.

You obviously can't learn much ballet in two hours, but that wasn't the point of the exercise. I thought this class might be something like an introductory ballet class, but it was nothing of the kind. Instead, it was much more interesting: Autumn discussed some aspects of ballet that have been incorporated into oriental dance, and how they might vary from the ballet forms. This also included some descriptions of ballet technique -- she made us do some very interesting exercises for getting a proper pointed foot, for example.

Autumn talked about arm positions in ballet and how we vary them for oriental dance, and made us do a partner exercise where we had to use our arms, in position, to resist against our partner. (Hence the painful pecs and back muscles today, which I take as a good sign!) We worked on that hipdrop-kick movement that gets used so much in bellydance, and on getting a graceful leg extension.

And, we spent a lot of time on turns. I'm probably the most turn-challenged person on the face of the planet, but I loved her instruction. First of all, she talked about how ballet drives spins and turns from the legs, while oriental dance drives them with the arms or the hips. She went over arm technique, and right away I realised how much I had been missing by not using my arms. And although she mentioned spotting, she didn't start with it. My trouble is that spotting, if anything, makes me more dizzy and confused, and makes me forget about what my body is supposed to do. I found I did alright when I just focused on my body -- my footwork, and powering the turns with my arms -- but the moment I tried to introduce spotting I lost it all.

We also covered arabesques, spinning inward and outward, and when each might be used. All in all, it was a wonderfully useful, tight class. I'm not a brilliant spinner now, but one can't be after two hours. Stil, I now have a much better idea of what to do, and strangely enough, I have this desire to run around a room spinning -- I can see how it could get addictive!

Workshops!

Since the Ariellah workshop helped me see that I really can keep up with workshops, I'm now totally excited about all the different offerings in the CT/NY area. And... I've signed up for the Diana Tarkhan workshop next Saturday, since I really want some Egyptian in my life. Five hours worth!

I'm curious to see how it goes...

Naming

Partly because of recent online discussions, and partly because of how I'm beginning to feel about dancing, I decided that I want a name. A dance name, that is. It feels a little bit silly to have one when I'm not only not professional, but still far from performing. But then again, I am putting more time into dancing this year, and I like the idea of naming that part of my life, perhaps only as a way of thinking about how to integrate it into my normal life.

I knew it had to be from Persian (the Middle Eastern language which most fascinates me, although I know exactly three words in it), so I looked on an online list of Persian women's names, and found "Atisheh." It means fire (or at least "atish" does), and since the Turkish word from fire is the same, I have a two for one. I like the sound of it, first of all, and I like what it represents -- the kind of passion I would like to bring into every aspect of my life.

So, I'm giving it a try. Let's see how this goes.

The Princess in Milford

Yesterday, a treat: Princess Farhana was giving workshops in Milford, CT. I really enjoyed this, both because of the Princess's way of running a workshop and because of the warm, welcoming attitudes of the women attending. It helped me realize that the competitiveness I had felt at the NYC class was not just something I had imagined, but also, quite happily, that there are other ways of experiencing a dance class with other women. Farhana had us all say at the beginning how much experience we had so that she knew how to deliver the instructions, and we ranged from 3 months to six or seven years. This could have been weird, or a moment for showing off, but instead everyone applauded the "bellydance babies," and I had the feeling that having less experience was just not something to be embarrassed about in this environment.

As for Farhana, my god is that woman fun. She has a style that I can only describe as "studied vulgarity," and I mean that in a very good way. She playacted at being domineering and angry when we did the moves too quickly, she described some of the hand-to-head poses as the "one hand headache" and the "two hand headache," she swore a bit too, but it was always with a sharp sense of humour. That was one side of her performance. The other was composed of dancing that was just lovely and graceful, a real acknowledgment of us as individuals, and a sense of warmth.

The class itself was quite relaxed, and quite varied in content: a big section on abdominal muscle control, some quite lovely combos which then had abdominal work layered on them, and finally, a short amount of time with veils. I didn't buy anything: to be quite honest, I'm still a little weirded out by the intense shopping aspect of workshops. This was only my second, and while I really love shopping and getting bellydance videos, props, etc., it still seems kind of weird to me to gather around a table of wares instead of dancing.

Finally!

This entry is the bookend to my last, in a way.

If it doesn't take much to be discouraged in dance, it also doesn't take much to be encouraged and inspired. On Wednesday, in the drills section of my flamenco class, I finally managed to get my arms moving with my feet for a while before completely losing it all. Yes, I didn't keep it going all through the drill, but it was such a thrill to find my body parts finally - finally! -- each doing their own thing. There's almost a weird distancing effect: as long as I'm only moving my feet, I feel that *I* am moving my feet. When both feet and arms move, it becomes something outside of myself, because I certainly can't concentrate on both.

Come to think of it, I recognize this pattern from learning other steps or dance moves: you have to focus, focus, focus, and then, at the right moment, just let go. It's just another way in which learning dance is similar to language learning.

First blog entry -- thinking differently

I'm teaching for a course on performance studies this semester, a big change from my usual medieval material. It occurred to me yesterday that teaching for the course has also changed -- quite dramatically, in fact -- how I think about my hobbies, about dance, about the relationship of my spare time to my "work" time. (I still find it difficult to think of literature as work, even if I do work at it.)

Performance studies is not just about analyzing performances. It's about bringing the body, and ways of knowing through the body, into the university. In this sense it's revolutionary, and powerful. I first understood what it might be like to know something through my body in my first flamenco class. The teacher taught us how to make a powerful noise by bringing a foot against the floor, but although I understood the technique of it, my foot would come down softly. I knew in a moment that my body was holding back because it didn't want to make the noise. Somehow, I felt that being that loud would be inappropriate, unfeminine. This is something I would never have known intellectually, because intellectually, I was completely prepared to follow the teacher to the best of my abilities. In the doing, however, I realized how my body could reveal something to me that my mind could not.