I am so excited for Wonderland! And part of my excitement is that Delsarte movement expert Joe Williams will be our guest artist, with a 2-hour live interactive workshop on using Delsarte principles to subtly enhance meaning, emotion, and engagement in our dance! As you may remember, I included Joe’s workshops last year in my professional development post; I am beyond delighted to host him as a guest artist for Wonderland!
Wonderland includes so much material for making meaningful, compelling dances! It is great for creating structures to inform improvisational dances, or to give richness and depth to set choreographies. It can even be used on the fly, with music you’ve never heard before!
This is a major component of the CDA system that I use to make all my dances. CDA incorporates musical structure, narrative and symbolic content, stage pictures, and more to create fully realized dances for improvisation or choreography. Wonderland is the heart of this system.
The course runs 5 weeks, concurrently with Secret Stories, a FUN Class Deep Dive into theatrical expression. Secret Stories (a $65 value) starts Tuesday! It is included free in Wonderland as a bonus! (but you can also just sign up for Secret stories–it’s going to be WONDER-ful ; )
I’ve even included a private lesson with me for each student, to better develop your vision!
This is going to be such a great class! There are still spaces left, along with a modest sliding scale. Wonderland will be hosted on a private forum, just for participants. I hope you will join us!
Have you ever worn racy underwear? Gartered stockings, or a little lacy nothing? Or an audacious t-shirt, crazy socks, or even a special token, safe in your pocket? And then gone about your normal day, in your normal clothes? It’s kinda cool, right? The hidden knowledge whispers into you, subtly changing everything about how you stand, feel, and interact. It’s a secret, with meaning only you know. Yet it can color every moment with its warmth and clandestine thrill…
Stanford University did a 21-year major study, reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, looking at how well leisure activities, both cognitive and physical (from reading to swimming and everything in between), protect the brain from dementia. Frequent dancing topped the list, reducing the risk of Alzheimer’s by 76%. That is a lot. It was the only physical activity correlated to a reduced likelihood of dementia—and it had the greatest risk reduction of any activity studied, cognitive or physical. Here’s a link to the study: nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa022252.
The study didn’t look at different kinds of dancing—but Richard Powers, a ballroom dance instructor at Stanford, examined the cognitive activities that were most protective and collated the findings with several other studies on brain protection. His advice is, “Involve yourself in activities which require split-second rapid-fire decision making, as opposed to rote memory (retracing the same well-worn paths), or just working on your physical style.”
Split-second, rapid-fire decision making
Yes, we are talking about improvisation—and improv to live improvised music doubles the payoff. When we improvise, we make innumerable calculations and adjustments in the microsecond. We are not even aware of them. But they add up.
Powers explains that, “One way to do that is to learn something new.” Anything. Learning new skills will make everything else work better. And taking a dance class can be highly effective, as dancing “integrates several brain functions at once — kinesthetic, rational, musical, and emotional — further increasing your neural connectivity.” This is also a good reason to study with many teachers, as the learner navigates a variety of movement patterns, music, and methodology.
Powers further predicts that, of the couple in a ballroom dance, the one who gets the most benefit by far is the follower. Carolyn Hamilton, creator of the brain health movement program Motional Intelligence, notes this as well: “Following someone who is improvising or doing a loose choreography is the most beneficial in terms of brain health. Not even the person doing the improv gets as much benefit as the follower… It’s the spontaneous reacting that causes the brain to create new pathways.”
The leader can resort to well-worn patterns in which there is no spontaneity, only repetition. The one who benefits is the one whose dance is spontaneous—the one who listens, intuits, and goes with his feeling in the moment. Hey, that sounds familiar!
Powers further asserts that a leader who embodies these same improvisational principles can find as much benefit as the follower, which has a lot to say for improvised duets and group dances. “Spontaneous leading and following both involve entering a flow state. Both leading and following benefit from a highly active attention to possibilities… That’s the most succinct definition I know for intelligent dancing: a highly active attention to possibilities.” You can read the full text of his article here: socialdance.stanford.edu/syllabi/smarter.htm.
It is in improvisation that we make these rapid-fire decisions, that we develop Powers’ “highly active attention to possibilities.” Dancing in restaurants, at parties, and in odd spaces we have to be awake—especially with live music. It’s Different Every Time. But repeating choreography? Drilling established, stylized steps? Doing the same thing every time? Not so much. Repeating what we already know does not help us.
And there’s more
Dr. Marilee Nugent has been studying neuromuscular control and the stages of learning—how one goes from beginner to advanced. She presented on this in 2014 at the Sahar conference in Vancouver, BC. As she applied her research to belly dance, she found that each individual movement has an arc from beginner to expert—and the arc for each move is different. Learning one belly dance move (for example, a hip drop), does not prepare us to learn another. The learning curve for each is unique and distinct. Even going from one version to another, for example, from bottom-up to top-down infinity, can challenge new students (and doing that with an undulation can challenge advanced students).
Add this to that constantly shifting re-contextualization of ever-changing combinations and patterns we talked about last week. You can see the immense benefits, not only in skill levels, but also in brain health. Since the current Alzheimer’s predictions are the one third of us–YES, one third of all of us–will develop Alzheimer’s disease (and trust me, it is hell), it is very much to our benefit to put ourselves in a position of constant learning.
How do we know we are learning? If it isn’t hard, it isn’t learning.
This is why we nurture improvisation
Because it makes a difference on so many levels. Yes, it is a core value of Oriental dance. This is just one example of the brilliance of the cultural dance. This is how Bobby taught. This is how I teach. This is WHY I teach this way. I love our dance and all its hidden jewels. And this is also why….
It gives me so much pleasure to do this Bobby-Style FUN Class Deep Dive!
Many of you know that Ibrahim Farrah (aka Bobby) is one of my major influences. I attended his classes in NYC religiously for years. One of the things I became aware of over the course of writing Midnight at the Crossroads: has belly dance sold its soul? was how well his teaching methods prepared me for improvisation and performance to live music–even though we had only recorded music in the classes.
Bobby Farrah had a deep understanding of the soul of this dance. He realized the dance is about expression of the dancer’s feeling from the music, that it is about embodiment and timing more than steps or combos. He encouraged personal expression and style in all of his classes. But he did so much more than this.
Bobby’s classes, especially in the early days, were models of learning science
One of the hottest concepts in learning today is interleaving. This means that rather than sticking with one thing until you get it, you keep the brain always reaching. You do different things so the brain never knows what to expect. You cycle through things and make them different every time.
Bobby never repeated.
You could go to his class three times in a week for two hours at a time (and I did). He never repeated. Every single time, he would do something completely different. There was a fairly consistent format of options—for example, a combination, traveling across the floor, following Bobby as he improvised—but it was never the same combo, the floor crossing was always different (and sometimes different for each person), and the impro—well, that, by its very nature, was different every time, even to the same music.
And wow, did we learn!
We learned musicality, how to combine moves, how to transition between them, how to improvise, how to interpret music, how to compose, how to use a stage—without him ever saying much of anything about it. And we learned how to present ourselves, even though we giggled to see Bobby swan across the floor, beaming at himself in the mirror. We learned. It was hard, and it was worth it.
Even in his later years of choreography, the dances were what I think of as “deceptively simple.” They didn’t beat the music to death. They weren’t crammed with show-off steps. They did embody his deep understanding. They made space for the dancer’s own special sauce. For the love they brought to the guests. For their feeling. For the expression and communication of that feeling.
You can tell a Bobby dancer by the way they use the stage. He marked us all, in the best possible way. It took me years to realize what gift he had given us, what a world-class education I had received. It took watching a lot of dancers, many famous, and slowly realizing, Huh. I can do that. I get it. I see it.
Bobby taught us to own our dance
He taught me that I had something to say. He taught me how to say it with dance.
Dancers show what they feel from the music. But many of us don’t really know what to feel. We worry about feeling the “right” things from the music. We don’t trust our own senses.
Weird, right?
This speaks to the heart of confidence.
How can we have confidence when we don’t quite trust our own responses?
How can we expect our guests to feel something when we don’t? How do we bring joy when we have none for ourselves?
This has been on my mind a lot lately. It came into this discussion of music mapping for the Bundle Party on Sunday,
How to find what you feel from the music so you have something to say in your dance.
It’s the dancer’s feeling that makes a dance truly dramatic. It’s what the dancer has to say, how they share their feeling from the music. It’s the connection, the communication. It’s the honesty and passion of the dancer that stands out, that lives in memory, that brings tears–and joy.
Here’s the recording from the party. My segment starts at 2:27 (that’s 2 hours and 27 minutes in). https://lddy.no/125gp If you scroll down on the page, you’ll find the fabulous teacher showcases–MANY stunning performances! (and Oreet’s Yemeni dance for the WIN). Scroll a little further and there’s a menu of all the presentations from a lot of very interesting people–so there is a lot there to enjoy. For a little while more.
It is an astounding collection, a mix of pre-recorded and live content. Many with lifetime access! New material coming out over the whole coming year. Regular updates and reminders of upcoming live events. Recordings are available for ALL live events, so even if you can’t attend live, you won’t miss out. A Facebook group for community and camaraderie.
Myriad resources to help you develop confidence and expertise.
I’m especially pleased to see specific attention paid to improvisation and confidence, as well as classes and lectures from dancers of origin who embody these principles–and you know I build these concepts in to everything I do–even music mapping ; )
I’m not the most organized person in the world. If I want something, I have to go look for it. And sometimes I can’t find it. Until it wants to be found ; ) And I’m a triple Virgo! We’re supposed to be orderly, organized, tidy. Um. No.
There is one place I am orderly as well as messy: in art.
As an artist, I embrace structure. Which is funny, since you know I also embrace improvisation. It makes more sense than it might seem to. The messiness of improvisation thrives within the framework of structure. It took me a whil to learn this, and now I see and apply it in all the arts I practice.
As a writer, I freewrite to find out what I want to say. Then I organize my writing into an arc. Sometimes I know what I want to talk about, and sometimes I discover it. These newsletters are often written this way.
For my drawings, such as you see in the newsletter, I let my hand roam, drawing what it likes. Then I find the relationships between the elements, the narratives that arise between them. I highlight these as I develop the drawing, making meaning through selection and enhancement of the order I find beneath the disorder of my improvisational approach. It’s amazing what turns up!
As a dancer, my practice sessions are largely built around letting my body respond as it wishes to the music, interspersed with embodying elements I want to bring into my dance, from specific movements to overall ethos. When I make a dance, though, I collect musical impressions, develop them into a “narrative” of sorts (which sometimes more resembles a fever dream), and plan the floor patterns, imagery I want to express, and other elements. Then I dance that impressionistic sequence.
What I get is dances that have meaning and intensity baked into them, that are easy to remember, and that give me freedom in the moment, to go or stay, or take time to visit. Because I know what I want to express in each moment–so I am free to choose how I express it. I am free to be present in the moment.
I do this with my classes too. I leave lots of room for personal discovery. I don’t teach folks what to dance; I teach them how to find their own dance.
So it is with Make a Dance in Five Days (MD5)
Each day there is a prompt, something to explore, and then to add to the developing dance. My messy side wants the freedom to explore. My structured side uses a spreadsheet. I know. It’s funny to me, too.
Messiness, exploration, and freedom are vital to making art!
Creativity is not a tame lion. It’s our wildness. It’s improvident. It wants to be expressed even if it is silly, frivolous. Who are we to draw all over that cave wall? Thank the muse they did!
How many venues to we, as adults, have to be expressive, silly, self-engaged, doing things for the joy of it? Life gets so complicated. Survival trumps everything. So it’s important to step back from the daily grind and do something for joy. For love. For fun.
Maybe we don’t care to perform–we can still make dances! Making dances gives us a window into our music and ourselves, a way to discover who we are and what we bring to the table. So what if we dance in our bedrooms and kitchens? Culturally, most folks dance at home with family and friends. But they still love to dance, and to dance well. So can we.
Structured improvisation allows us to play and look good doing it ; ). Art nourishes and heals us from the woes of the world. In art, we can have it all–structure provides a framework for our joy and passion. Joy and passion provide a framework for our best lives, our true selves.
A daily prompt with video expansion and examples. A private Teachable group for QnA, cheerleading, and camaraderie.
BONUS!I will be on Zoom for an hour each day from 3-4 PM EST. All participants are welcome to drop in, ask questions, work on their dance for an hour, or to work along with the recording for an hour.
Social dancers welcome! (why should performers have all the fun?) Make a dance for your own pleasure!
Make a Dance in Five Days runs Thursday Oct 28 to Tuesday, Nov 2 (we’ll skip Halloween, Oct 31). Optional Video recital, Wednesday, Nov 3.
Sliding scale pricing because the world is wack.
What makes this class special? It’s a time-tested, systematic approach to dance composition that you can use over and over again.
From 9:45 am to 9:45 pm est, there are classes, dancing, and general mayhem. There’s a full schedule listed on the page. I’ll be on from 12:10 – 12:30 doing some unusual movement stuff–invite your friends, come say hi, and hang out!
I made a lil video of me dancing to my own music map for the Bundle’s Instagram Challenge last week (it’s still on until10/22, with new prompts every day!).
My “UnDrill” invited dancers to make their own music maps and to dance them. For this purpose, I made a pretty straight ahead, fairly representational map.
When you watch/hear the video, you can see I put one phrase of the music on each line–until I got to the taqsim, which is more free form, but still fairly linear.
But it made me think about even more abstract maps…
So I made another one, with the rest of the song. Try dancing this map as you listen to the music. Let the drawing come in through your eyes and the music come in through your ears, and let your body decide how to follow them. Put aside linearity and control; let your body move as it wishes.
Of MENAHT origin/descent (and/or) Are of Indigenous origin (and/or) Are Black (and/or) Are a POC (and/or) Part of the LGBTQ+ community (and/or) Live in a country whose currency is weak against the dollar, pricing you out of the Bundle this year… AND would not be otherwise able to purchase and participate in this year’s Bellydance Bundle please fill out the form below to apply for one of our 15 award seats.
9 award seats will go to marginalized dancers, and the other 6 will go to dancers living in countries whose currency is weak against the dollar.
Scholarships will be awarded via random draw of all applicants on October 18th at which point everyone who applied will be contacted via the e-mail address provided on the application.
Your application and scholarship will be kept private. Your financial situation is no one’s business but yours.
There is no proof of identity or financial need required.
This 90-minute live Zoom class walks participants through the process of writing short (500+ words), well-organized articles, suitable for a blog, newsletter, even a sales page–with ease.
Discover the pleasure of writing what you want to say–without the misery!
Live class, Saturday, October 16 from 2:00-3:30 pm edt.See this in your time zone (add to calendar button in link). YES, there will be a recording.
Thursday Oct 28 to Tuesday, Nov 2 (we’ll skip Halloween, Oct 32). Virtual video sharing, Wednesday, Nov 3. Daily prompt with QnA. Private Teachable group for cheerleading and camaraderie. Regular price and sliding scale. More info and registration is here: https://alia.teachable.com/p/make-a-dance-in-five-days/
There is a big trend in our dance to make tightly choreographed dances, where we do it exactly the same every time. This is partly because we have recorded music, but it is also popular for a few other reasons.
For one, folks trained in Western dance styles usually started learning choreographies at the age of three in Miss Susy’s School of Dance. So that seems most natural and normal. For another, contests tend to value those highly stylized dances. And finally, many dancers just feel safer knowing exactly what comes next–unlike the messy surprises of life, our dance is at least one dang thing we can control.
But improvisation is the natural habitat of Oriental dance
So what can we do?
I thought about this a lot as I prepared How to Map Your Music. For a lot of us, getting into the nitty-gritty structure of a song is an invitation to tie it down, to articulate every note with a pre-selected movement, specially chosen to show off what a great dancer we are. Personally, I’d rather see a dancer enjoying their dance and inviting me to enjoy it, too. I am a big fan of improvisation.
I’m also a big fan of theatrical dance and structured improv. Structured improv means we have a plan. The plan can be based on many different things, but it’s still a plan. We have a general idea of what we’re going to do. Fall on the floor here, pose there, run across the room somewhere else in the song. Or what part of a story we are telling. Or any number of other cues.
I choose to champion improvisational composition
Structured improv preserves dancer agency and is a lot of fun. Plus we can have time to relax, to make connections in the moment. Oriental dance is alll about connections. We are right there with our guests, or with our friends and family when we dance socially.
I’ve also highlighted improv in this year’s UnDrill for the Instagram Challenge. This one is ridiculously fun, and I made an unspeakably cute video for it. There’s more where that came from, too. Wait till you see the next one!
Shameless self promotion–MYM is part of the Lecture Bundle this year, along with some topics that I am looking forward to, such as Zara’s talk discussing cultural, political, economic & social issues facing Egyptian Bellydancers, and Dawn Devine’s lecture on Danse Du Ventre at the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris. This year’s Dance Bundle is also loaded with goodies.
Many of these teachers feature free inspiration on the Podcast and the Instagram Challenge (which is 21 days of dance prompts to get everyone feeling like dancing aqgain).
Next year is shaping up to the Year of Composition of here, and all of it deliciously engaged with improv. But why wait?
Recital season approaches!
It occurred to me some of us might want to perform in recitals, or might just enjoy making their own dance.
Want a “Make Your Dance in 5 Days” (or make your dance in a day) this fall?
We could do it towards the end of October, so the dances would be ready for the holiday season.
If that interests you, comment below, or email me and let me know.
One of the things I love is structure–which is hilarious, since I am the Queen of Chaos (this mostly shows up in my everyday surroundings. Yes, I am a triple Virgo. Go figure). But I am pretty organized on the inside–and as an artist, composition, aka structure, brings freedom.
This is why I am always pointing out musical structure in my classes.
As dancers, we have more freedom when we can see what is all around around us. Like a busy restaurant, when we know the entrances, exits, and pathways of the waitstaff, it’s a lot easier to navigate.
And while we have all survived (and many of us enjoy), dancing to unknown songs, having a sense of structure will make that song much more predictable. We’ll have a better sense of timing, accents, and transitions, so we can enjoy ourselves a lot more.
Because I am making this Map Your Music course for the Bundle, I’ve been thinking a lot about dance composition. In my experience, belly dance choreographies tend to be made as step-sequences. Four of this, turn, kick, hip 2, 3, 4, etc. This pains me, as belly dance is meant to be improvised, in the same way its music is improvised–the song may be the same, but the musicians’ decorations, solos, and embellishments are always changing. “Same but different” is a point of pride for musicians and dancers alike.
So why as dancers do we try to do things the same every time?
Let’s be more whimsical!
Well, that’s how we get taught. Lots of dance in the West is tightly choreographed. Because we have recorded music, it is tempting to do recorded dances. And a beautiful choreography, beautifully danced, is a beautiful thing.
It’s just not the only thing. I’d love to see us have more fun with our compositions.
Belly dance is all about dancer agency and being in the present moment.
We are supposed to be able to respond to the music in the moment, as we feel it. So let’s make dances that celebrate this!
For example, instead of deciding on every step, what if we just plan the floor patterns? Then we know where to be and when to be there, but we can do any step we feel like to get there.
Or we can just set movement families. So this verse will be all hip drops, and this one will be all arms.
Or tell a story.
Or whatever. We can bake in variety in ways other than specific steps. We don’t even need specific steps.
In this way, we also bake in our agency and freedom. And it’s fun!
We’ll be doing some composition things this fall. I’m guessing folks are doing some recitals even if they are on Zoom. Stay tuned! I haz ideas ; ). I’ll also be talking more about this on the Bundle Podcast, which is coming soon–but there are already lots of great interviews there: Bundle Podcast
Lots and lots of love and hugs! Alia
The BellyDance Bundle Zill Giveaway is happening now. Five prizes–maybe one of them is for you? Check it out! Zill Giveaway
It’s important for us to understand the meaning of lyrics in songs we dance on. It’s important to understand the cultural relevance of things like improvisation ad micromovement. Knowing these things makes our dance better, more nuanced, more authentic.
It’s also important to understand the structure of our music–so we don’t get lost, so we know when to change, so we know what’s coming down the pick even with an unfamiliar song. Lots of music is pretty simple–there’s a verse, a chorus, maybe a taqsim.
And then some of it is more complex. A LOT more complex. And then there’s all that music that sounds the same all the way through. How on earth do you keep track of all that?
Whether we are learning choreographies to such songs, or want to make our own dance, or just have fun improvising. It’s all a lot easier when we can sense into the structure of the song.
From the rhythm up through the melody and taqasim, we dance better when we feel confident. Knowledge is power! Understanding musical structure is power.
Want some of your own?
Announcing
How to Map Your Music (a 4-step system for musical confidence)
And what are those 4 steps?
Observe, Explore, Inspect, Expand.
Observe
This is allll about listening. Listening to the music, listening for changes, listening for each instrument–listening to the images, ideas, and visions that float through my head. When I plan to make a dance, I listen without dancing, so I have the time and space to really hear the song, without the distraction of movement. I have walked around all day for days with a single song on repeat. And been rewarded with just the right images and concepts to make the dance come alive. Once I have a sense of the song, next comes…
Explore
Now I will dance, draw the music, play with characters, costumes, and so forth. I’m not making anything yet, just feeling into the song, for what it wants and what it says to my body, looking for the right mix of elements to spark my imagination and motivate me to go further. Then, I’m ready to…
Inspect
This is where it gets very nitty-gritty. I use a spreadsheet. Yep. I’m kinda geeky. I track the changes in the music, even down to the measures if I have to. It takes me a couple of passes to find all the changes. I do a rough sort and then fill in as I go along. When that’s all good, I get to…
Expand
This is where I make notes on what instruments are soloing, the melodic themes, the flavor of any particular sections that takes my fancy. I’ll even write down narrative, imagery, and movement that comes to me over the process. What do I do with all this?
Compose!
It all comes together in a new composition. I’ve filled my creative well with a deep dive intot he music,. Now I compose all of the elements that I’ve chosen to incorporate. I throw things in and out, mix and match, and hey, presto! A dance!
Here’s one The RakSultana Dancers made for the BellyDance Blossom Festival, using this system, adapted for groups.
Could I do this all right at the beginning? Heck no! I learned by trial and error.
And now I have a system that works–not just for me but for the many students who have used this same system in How to Create Dance Art, a three-month odyssey into the creative process.
Song mapping = WONDERFUL! That made a massive difference to me and it helped me visualize the song.
LR
I am so stoked! I cannot wait to use what I’ve learned for my next choreography. I’m more confident and even would go as far as saying “more genuine” in my dance. I’m not afraid to make mistakes or fully put myself out there anymore….
TB
I appreciated that Alia didn’t tell us “the way to do things,” but rather gave us exercises that helped us each develop our own way.
LW
Midway through the course, I realized movements came out of my body if I just let it happen. I started listening to the music and how it made me feel instead of listening to the music and thinking of what I should be doing. It was fun.
KG
I’ve been teaching CDA since 2013. Students asked me to break it into modules. The first of these was Embodiment. Map Your Music follows on from there.
How to Map Your Music (MYM) is now a standalone course!
I’m pulling it out and making it available on demand to dancers everywhere. It’s simple and IT WORKS. But it’s not available quite yet…
I love the Bundle, and I love Tiffany, who puts it together. This year is bigger than ever with some really great names taking part. Fifty-five contributors, including many dancers of origin and of color–Esraa Warda, Ebony Qualls, and Lebanese Simon, just to name a few.
Our big giveaway this year is a beautifully-designed Practice Tracker. The Tracker helps dancers choose a focus area in their practice, plan their practice, and then track that as they proceed through their month. (it works great for the #21daysofbellydance Instagram challenge!). There’s a zil giveaway coming up, too. Plus a party, mini lessons, and…
Well, it’s a lot.
And I can’t wait! I am especially looking forward to the #21daysofbellydance on Instagram. And the Podcast! Squee!
So there you have it!
A breakdown of the four steps to map your music–and a quick overview of this year’s Belly Dance Bundle.
