Winter Ascendance: show and workshops in Auckland

My city is ill-equipped to deal with snow. I was lucky enough to get home from Auckland yesterday before it shut down the airport, and I’ve cancelled my class tonight because I don’t fancy having the busses cancelled on me and dragging myself up the hill in the dark only to slip on the ice and break both my legs.

So, no excuse not to write a blog post.

I was in Auckland for the Winter Ascendance event, hosted by the amazing Windblown Tribal and Tribal-Idiom. Now, anyone who knows me will know that I’m not a Goth, in fact I’m a big old hippie, and I’m not a tribal fusionist, I’m an ATS junkie. So maybe you’re wondering what I was doing travelling to Auckland, which confuses me, for Gothic tribal fusion workshops.

Well firstly, there’s this girl.

I met Rachel in Katoomba in 2009, when we were both doing our ATS teacher training. Not only is she an amazing, hilarious, kind and generous soul, we somehow have great dance chemistry, and have taken to meeting up at various events and getting our ATS improv on with minimal rehearsing time together. So now that she lives in Auckland and Louise was calling for submission for performers for the Friday night show, I saw this as an opportunity for us to have some fun.

Secondly, I don’t like to stay in my box.

Yes, I am obsessed with ATS and it’s the form of bellydance I most enjoy doing. But it’s important to me, as a teacher and as a dancer, to be educated in other forms. It helps me to explain to students and other enquiring minds what makes ATS special, and I enjoy being able to perform acceptable oriental, for example, when the mood for sequins takes me. Plus, I believe that one can learn something from every teacher in every style, even if it’s just what one personally doesn’t like. And the word on the street is that Sashi is a damned fine teacher and a lovely person, so I wanted me some of that.

I rocked up on Friday afternoon with a suitcase that would fit enough clothes for a normal person to stay a month. The show was impressive. Maybe it’s just the circles I move in, but I feel like the standard of bellydance in New Zealand is going from strength to strength, likewise the standard of bellydance productions. The Windblown Tribal crew put on a smooth event, with great technical support. I was pleased that Rachel and I were third up in the first half: fresh from a bit of a practice, with limited time to get nervous and the opportunity to watch most of the show after our performance. I was disappointed to miss seeing the ever-fabulous Candice and Phoenix Bellydance, but enjoyed the standard and variety in the rest of the show, especially Louise and Tribal-Idiom, and Cydonia‘s standout solo.

In further show-related awesomeness, there were vendors, which meant I was finally able to acquire some “inside” zils – smaller, silver, and Saroyan, and there were drummers, so soon there was also a social circle of ATS improv. Madame Raine joined us, making me super happy, because not only is she awesome, but because I am firmly convinced that tribal fusion dancers and teachers need to know ATS, and here was one who certainly does.

Saturday’s workshops began with Madame Raine’s drills. I love drills. I also have serious admiration for instructors who can mirror the class so effortlessly. I felt pleasantly worked out but not broken, and I have a nice wee list of crazy layers to convince my body to execute, and a new appreciation for drilling to Placebo and Massive Attack, plus some great new warmup ideas to target the inner thighs and gluteus medius.

Next up was Sashi’s workshop, which was advertised as combinations but turned out to be a choreography. Now normally I don’t like an unannounced choreography, but this one was (a) made up of combinations (well duh!), and (b) to a Bassnectar song <3. Again, a great warmup, with ideas I'll be using for levelling and lower ab work. I liked Sashi's approach of starting with a round of the room: name plus what each person wanted out of the workshop. Did I mention that these two are hilarious? A teacher who uses Monty Python references has my heart.

After a rather exciting Sunday breakfast and shopping mission at the Takapuna markets, we were back at it with Raine's "Anatomy of a Solo" workshop. This might just have been my favourite, it was certainly the one in which I took the most notes. I like a workshop which makes me feel slightly smug that I've been doing things "right" already, and which gives me quotable tidbits of wisdom to refine my current practice. It also made me happy that Raine repeatedly said words to the effect of "this is not a choreography workshop".

Finally I got to put a good 50% of my ridiculous amount of luggage to use in Sashi's makeup and hair workshop. Stupidly I'd left my mirror in my suitcase, but there was a fantastic spirit of sharing amongst the participants. Sashi presented a great mix of advice, both general and personalised, with an emphasis on learning by experimentation (and never buying just one of the perfect bindi/pair of false eyelashes!). I did get a bit overwhelmed at one point by having conflicting and confusing advice from all sides, which conspired with my innate antipathy to makeup to necessitate a little break, which in turn really annoyed me because I knew I'd be missing valuable tips! Again I was affirmed in some techniques I've been using which worked well, and gained useful advice about possible improvements. The session ended with much camera-based silliness.

These are just the workshops I attended. Also on offer was a workshop on burlesque and one on African dance, which I forwent in favour of lunch but which sounded like fun ways to generate sweat!

In case it's not obvious, I had a really enjoyable weekend, and would recommend that any dancer attend this event, which is an annual one (this is its third year). It promises a well-organised, informative, and fun weekend with lovely people. Thank you all!

Know your music

Thanks to Zumarrad for this post on the importance of researching what you’re dancing to.

MEDANZ Festival 2011, Tauranga

I’m going to try and download the useful stuff about my recent epic weekend without whinging about traffic jams and bad signage. Here goes.

My schedule for this year’s MEDANZ Festival involved teaching two workshops, taking five workshops with other tutors, and performing in the show and at the hafla.

I really enjoy preparing workshops. I’m not such a fan of the time between printing out the final handouts and actually teaching, because that’s when I worry. Sure, I worry a bit during and after, but I don’t think it’s as bad. Ideally while I’m teaching, I’m having too much fun or being too focused to worry, and that happened in my second workshop of the festival (on intermediate ATS). I hope that as I teach more workshops, I’ll have that experience more often. I think the pre- and post- workshop anxiety are healthy to a certain extent, and mean that I’m engaging with the material and care about delivering the best workshop I can.

I was in some ways fortunate to be teaching in the last workshop slot on Saturday and Sunday. The Saturday slot finished a little close for comfort to the scheduled start of dress rehearsal for the show, but none of the participants were performing that night so it wasn’t a problem for them. Because it was a non-dancing workshop (therapeutic exercises for lower limbs), I suspect it was a good way to end the day for people who had been dancing 2-4 hours. The ATS workshop at the end of Sunday’s programme had a few people leave due to exhaustion/headaches/desperate need for overdue lunch.

I had signed up for 8:30am starts all three days of the festival, and was a bit apprehensive about how I was going to cope, because I’m not a morning person and I knew I wasn’t going to get early nights with all the socializing (I was staying with five friends). I was impressed with my resilience and pleased that I could cope with four hours of workshops a day no problem. I think it was the running around in between and afterwards that exhausted me more than the actual dancing.

I tried to take workshops across a variety of teachers and dance styles:

Fun Tribal skirt choreography with Stefanie (Khamzin Tribe, Dunedin): I had been learning this choreography via DVD for the show, and took the workshop as a chance to practise and fine tune it. I was able to help Stefanie and Anna by leading a group, and by semi-teaching the choreography I confirmed to myself that I knew it fairly well. It was also a great opportunity to get clarification on aspects of the dance. Key thing learnt: it’s invaluable having multiple teachers in a big room with no mirrors and poor acoustics.

Tribal double veil with Lara and Cath (Las Hermanas, Australia): I was pleased to see that Lara and Cath set up their double veils the same way I do, and they showed a pretty draping variation. I hadn’t read the workshop description for a while and hadn’t internalized that it was going to be a choreography, but that was ok: it was fun and a comfortable level, and I enjoyed that they paired tribal-experienced dancers with more cabaret focused dancers. Key thing learnt: Egyptian Sevillana variation with veil.

Turkish Rom with A’mal (Christchurch): A’mal has an enviable way with words and ability to communicate with accessible humour. This was the first workshop of the weekend in which the tutor provided a handout, and it’s a perfect handout, two sides covering background information on the Roma and their dance (with photos), and choreography notation. I’m not confident in my ability to remember and reproduce other people’s choreographies, so my mission was to have fun, get a feel for the 9/8 rhythm, and learn some appropriate stylizations and combos with the long-term goal of being able to improvise appropriately to this style of music. Mission accomplished.

Rhythms and creative combinations with Shakeelah (Medance, Auckland): This was one of the two workshops I took on the final day, and I found them more challenging than the previous ones. Maybe I was tired and my brain was getting full, or maybe they actually were more challenging regardless. When Shakeelah explained that we were going to move in a circle, then in a triangle inside the circle, then in a circle inside the triangle, then in a triangle inside that circle, my brain started to hurt. Making shapes on the floor isn’t something I’m used to thinking about, and then you need to decide which way to face and what movements to do on top of that. Oh yes, and add zills. And respect the rhythm. I really enjoyed Shakeelah’s polished teaching style. Key learnings: making shapes is fun, it doesn’t matter if your hand shape looks like a hedgehog to someone else, if you’re not doing ATS don’t forget that you can illustrate the rhythm rather than the beat, and there’s a lovely stretch for the third muscle of the rotator cuff.

9 beat fusion: slow combos with Fern and Cindy (Tribal Echo, Dunedin): We learnt four long (for me – thank goodness for the wonderful handout) combos combining ATS, Turkish Rom, Indian, and Flamenco influences. This was a small workshop so we got personal attention from the two tutors and two drummers, which was great. I love collecting things that work with “unusual” rhythms. This was the only workshop in which I felt inspired to take video, and on watching it I was satisfied that I didn’t look as gammy as I felt. I’m not sure when I’d use this material unless I’m at a hafla and a slow tempo 9 beat comes on, and/or I’m playing with the Tribal Echo girls, which is super fun, but maybe I’ll find a suitable piece of music I want to use. Either way, the combos were challenging and beautiful enough for me to want to achieve them.

In the Saturday night show, Raqs Aotearoa, I performed with Stefanie and Anna from Khamzin Tribe of Dunedin and Rachel from Hokitika/Auckland. Rachel and I had learnt the choreography via DVD and we’d practised as a quartet for the first time the previous night. It felt good. In fact, it was super fun. I’ll be interested to see the video footage. What I saw of the rest of the show was enjoyable, a pleasing mix of styles and of solo and group numbers. I know there were a few glitches with sound, lighting, and videography, but fortunately our piece wasn’t affected.

After the show the six of us who were staying together had our window of time to practise our largely improvised ATS piece for the hafla, which we performed under the name Turban Sprawl. Again it was super fun, and I felt that we did really well. I hope there’s some video footage out there. The hafla was a fantastic mix of performance and open dance floor with wonderful drummers in a relaxed atmosphere. The venue was a bowling club, which came with cheap drinks, a good dance floor and a luxurious “Ladies’” room which could have made a nice changing/green room.

What did I enjoy most? Dancing my heart out in other people’s workshops and with my mates. Strangely, I enjoyed teaching least. I love teaching, but it obviously comes with stress and responsibility. Usually I enjoy teaching more than performing, but not so much this time.

The Depths of Simplicity (via In the Ears…. Out the Hips!)

I love this. If you think it’s easy, you’re not working hard enough.

Recently, one of my students who is in both my weekly class and my student troupe mentioned that she felt she was "getting off easy" with the class choreography. I should first tell you that I have a remarkably hard-working student troupe that constantly reaches for a new challenge – and does it with gusto and smile. For this I am eternally grateful as a troupe leader. Her comment did get me thinking about how we as dancers in general handle situ … Read More

via In the Ears…. Out the Hips!

DVD review: Princess Farhana’s Tantalizing Taqsim Technique

I’ve been on a bit of a TradeMe binge lately, and my acquisition of this DVD is one of the results. I bought it because (1) it was cheap, and (2) Princess Farhana is known for her belly work, and I could use some help to improve mine. I’m not a particular fan of her performances or overall aesthetic (from the little I’ve seen on the internet), but I have read an article of hers on The Gilded Serpent and found it thoughtful and informative.

The DVD packs a lot of material into its 66 minute running time. It includes a warmup but no cooldown, ample performance footage, and several technique sections.

A scrolling text introduction provides a good explanation of the concept of taqsim. Unfortunately it shares the screen with performance footage, and I found it difficult to watch both at the same time. If only the text had been recorded as a voiceover, I would have been spared the disappointment of consistent crimes against apostrophes (“it’s” for “its”). On the upside, I’m pretty sure I’m one of the more pedantic bellydancers on the planet, so the latter might not have spoilt it for many viewers.

The text introduction is followed by a spoken introduction, in which Princess Farhana is filmed giving a lot of very sound advice about practising and performing. Unfortunately this segment doesn’t show her at her best: she begins with a negative (to the tune of “these movements are hard and will take a long time to perfect”), no smile, no eye contact with the camera.

Fortunately, she redeems herself quickly as we move into the instruction. She has a cheerful demeanour and a pleasant conversational style, with concise, apposite anecdotes. It feels like you’re in one of her classes.

The warmup is comprehensive yet gentle – I prefer a bit more sweat and heartrate-raising in a warmup but it was certainly adequate. I appreciated her counting everything in eight-count sets, and I suspect this technique may help students learn to count music. There was no music throughout the instructional portion of the DVD, which was a little odd to me but far from a deal-breaker. An amusing side-effect was being able to hear the LA traffic in the background!

The technique section includes undulations, rolls and flutters, figure eights, circles, and camels. There are a lot of variations demonstrated, some more exhaustively drilled than others. Princess Farhana drops in postural reminders at appropriate intervals. I would have liked to see a little more variation in arm positions to accompany the torso movements. Travelling and turning with many of the movements is demonstrated.

I was surprised that Princess Farhana’s emphasis in the introduction on executing slow taqsim movements extremely slowly wasn’t really carried through in the technique section. Movements such as figure eights were performed over a count of eight at the most. I’d have gone for 16.

The main part of the DVD finishes with two performance pieces, one with a veil introduction, the second with two drummers. Both demonstrate the use of the taqsim technique covered in the instructional section, while also using percussive movement to respect the drummers’ accents. The bonus features offer more performance footage (including fans and veilwork in a Mata Hari-inspired costume).

This DVD didn’t exactly make me sweat, but it did challenge my brain and body with variations and ways of explaining movement which were unfamiliar to me. It’s certainly worth a look, especially, I expect, to oriental or cabaret style dancers looking for dance vocabulary inspiration.

Princess Farhana’s website is here.

The Zumba cult

Confession: I’ve been taking weekly Zumba classes for just over a month.

My impression after my first class was one of puzzlement as to what all the fuss was about. During my second class, I was a bit disappointed that it was pretty much the same as the first class.

By the third class, however, I felt like I was “getting it”.

I suppose that’s what happens whenever you stick at something for long enough: the repetition worms its way into your body/brain (delete as applicable) and all of a sudden you realise you can do it. Zumba is easy enough that I got that feeling quickly, but complex enough for the feeling to be one of achievement.

So is it, as I thought for the first few weeks, just aerobics with really good marketing? To a certain extent, yes. The marketing is probably what gets most people in the door. But I don’t think it’s what keeps them coming back.

The constant follow-the-leader movement, the repeated choreography, and the mild-to-moderate sweat appeal to the part of me that used to quite enjoy going to aerobics classes before I broke up with my gym, as is the luxury of having someone tell me what to do for an hour. To revert to my ancient anti-gym persona, I can cite the appeal of classes that aren’t in a gym (often they’re held in church or community halls, which have no mirrors), and that are marketed as dance rather than aerobics.

As a dancer and dance teacher, I’m conflicted about the “party” environment: very little technique is taught, and given the sloppiness of a lot of the stuff which is allegedly inspired by bellydance, I doubt I’m learning particularly authentic salsa or samba either. On the other hand, there’s a lot to be said for dancing for the fun of it, and this is probably a key reason why there are way more people who go to Zumba than who go to bellydance classes. If I wanted to learn proper merengue or whatever, I could go to a specialist class. Going to Zumba puts me in the position of the student who doesn’t much care where a step comes from or whether they should be using their obliques rather than their glutes, the student who just wants to do something fun for an hour a week. I appreciate being reminded that I could temper my technique-mania with a bit more relaxation.

Finally, there are the earworms. Along with the repetitive choreography comes repeated catchy music, which I struggle to evict from my head for days after a class. A lot of it has English lyrics, which for my brain are a prime hook. One reason I avoid lyric-heavy music for bellydance is that the lyrics distract me from the other musical components. The flipside of this is that I don’t end up using music that gets stuck in my head, and I keep forgetting that not everyone is as lyric-orientated as I am, so I assume the music I use is unmemorable. I hope this assumption, like so many, is erroneous.

Haflas I have known

My first bellydance teacher was from Iraq. I found her through a classified ad in a community newspaper. It said something like “bellydance classes with native Arabic dancer”. She infected me with communicable joy. I don’t remember her ever mentioning posture.

I’ve met a lot of dancers in my town who started with this teacher. I surmise, however, that we’re a minority in the “Western” world – bellydancers whose primary teacher was from the Middle East.

I don’t want to talk about the “follow the bouncing butt” teaching method associated with dance teachers from the Middle East as opposed to the westernised penchant for verbalising technique. I want to talk about haflas.

If memory serves, once or twice a year Huda (for such is my first teacher’s name) would book us several tables at a Middle Eastern restaurant, and we’d maybe bring our partners or parents, maybe we’d dress up a bit more than for class (although wearing our bling to class was encouraged), and we’d eat and drink and chat, and there’d be familiar music, and we’d get up and execute the movements we’d learnt in class in a non-curated fashion. It was like going to a nightclub, but friendlier and with an atmosphere that didn’t seem to frown on individual self-expression. That’s what I knew as a hafla.

Then, once a year or so, Huda would put on a concert. It would be in the university theatre: tiered seating, proper lighting and sound, a curtained stage, dressing rooms with lights around their mirrors. Huda would perform a solo, the two most experienced dancers from her advanced class would perform solos, there’d maybe be a drummer to accompany some of them, perhaps a guest performance by another bellydance teacher. Some keen dancers would do a group number (our first experience of choreography), and Huda would produce some blokes to do a Debke. That was not a hafla. It was a concert or a show.

I like a hafla to be a party with social dancing. But I feel that the term “hafla” has been pasted on to things that are increasingly performance-focussed. Not that I don’t like performing and watching others perform. Both are important to a dancer’s education. But there are plenty of dance students who don’t ever want to perform, and I want to support that. I think dancing should be about having fun and feeling good first and foremost, and if the pressure of performance takes that away from you, why would you do it?

After trying and to some extent failing to re-create a social dance atmosphere in a community hall (I’ve had dancers’ family coming up to me and asking “when will it start?”), I find myself reverting to the Huda model: book a restaurant at the end of term, get them to play the class CD, try to turn off the teacher mindset that says “posture!” and “formation!”, and just have fun. Then the community hall and the chairs that seem to automatically arrange themselves in rows facing an empty floorspace can happen on another occasion, and it’ll be called a “student showcase” or something.

Mission statement?

I’m Ziva and I’m addicted to bellydance.

I’m an American Tribal Style (ATS) bellydance teacher, performer, and costumer. I’ve been studying bellydance in its various forms since 2000.

Because bellydance is my major obsession, it’s bound up with a lot of emotional stuff for me. I have strong opinions about it. And because it’s so close to my heart, I’m afraid of holding those opinions up for criticism. I strongly suspect, however, that I’m less likely to learn and grow as a dancer and as a person if I don’t (a) practise articulating my thoughts, and (b) practise coping with the fallout. Also, if I write this stuff down it might not buzz around in my head at night. So that’s why I’m going to try this blog.

This is kind of a continuation of my old blog over at Tribe.net.