The last blog post I wrote - about my youthful bellygram career - resulted in a fascinating discussion on my Facebook page, in the course of which I mentioned that I increasingly feel uncomfortable about restaurant dancing. I'll explain more...
I think ours is a very schizophrenic dance form. Bellydancing exists, I would argue, in two very different worlds. On the one hand we have the world of dance classes and haflas. A primarily female world, it’s one where we learn about the fascinating dance and culture of the middle east. It's a world where it doesn’t matter what age or what dress size you are. Where women are encouraged and supported and recognised as beautiful and special.
In this world, haflas and showcases give us the opportunity to perform a wide variety of styles grouped under the general banner of bellydancing. We dance baladi, saidi, khaleeji, sharqi. We whip out a stick or a set of wings, set the audience alight with a drum solo, or move them to tears with an Om Khalsoum number. We experiment with fusion: tribal, gothic, hip hop or samba. Or keep it pure, with none so pure as Egyptian.
It’s wonderful participating in these events. Our audiences are wildly appreciative. They whoop and zhagareet and clap along at the drop of a hip. Forgiving us when we go wrong, not caring about our age or our stretch marks. Every clever belly trick, every quivering shimmy, is recognised and applauded. We are given space and time and attention.
Then there’s the other world. The world of the restaurant dancer. A world that (with a few notable exceptions) only the young, beautiful and slender may enter. A world where we have to dance whilst squeezing between tables, trying to avoid waiters and taking care not to step on broken glass or spilled humous. This is a world where the (mixed) audience cares not a jot for the authenticity of our performance, they just want to look at the pretty girl in the sparkly costume. Sadly, a few of them really wish we weren’t there and some just can’t bear to watch, especially when we get up close.
And, however appreciative the audience at a restaurant, in most cases we are never able to properly dance. There will only be space for a bit of undulating, a few isolations and pops and of course, some of our very best shimmying. Our job is to create a party atmosphere. A taste of the exotic. And, in most cases, to get up close and personal with the punters.
Maybe it’s my age, maybe it’s because I’ve just been around too long; but I find myself increasingly uncomfortable when I’m in a small space and a dancer’s naked flesh is very close. I don’t think I’m a prude and I love the sight of a beautiful body, male or female. But the tight layout of many restaurants means that at times I find my eyes just a bit too close to a bouncing pair of partially covered breasts for comfort. I know that many men really don’t know where to look when a bellydancer comes up to their table. And actually I understand how they feel. I can imagine that for some men it might sometimes feel a little too near to lap dancing.
I’m sure that one of the reasons bellydance isn’t taken seriously as an art form is that most people only see a bellydancer in a restaurant setting. Where she can’t dance properly and where the flesh on show is not only close, but is highlighted by the costuming and by those few movements we have at our disposal. A bellydance bra really pushes the breasts up high. And then we do a chest bump! What’s a man to think? That it’s art?
But! Restaurant bellydancing is great! People love it. Most diners in a Middle Eastern restaurant really enjoy seeing a bellydancer - she’s exotic, she’s lively and she lifts the atmosphere wonderfully. People often ring me to book my gorgeous colleague Chantel Phillips to dance at an event. “She’s amazing”, they say, “we saw her dance at a restaurant and she was incredible!”
Because, of course, restaurants not only offer bellydancers regular income, but they're also a public showcase. They are the only venues a professional bellydancer can perform for the general public and be paid too!
But we’re caught in a vicious circle. Our only public platform doesn’t enable us to dance properly. So we’re not taken seriously. Here in the West, no-one outside the world of haflas and monthly showcases sees our ‘real’ dancing, so no mainstream promoter is ever going to put on a bellydance show. And so the circle winds round and binds us in to the chest bumps and the belly pops and the association with pole dancing or worse.
I just wish that there were other opportunities for professional dancers to perform. In spaces where we can really stretch our legs and showcase our dance skills. And that's why all my energies are currently channelled into trying to create a new bellydance style for the big stage. A style to thrill the general public and keep them coming back for more. A style to capture the attention of journalists and mainstream promoters. A style with drama and excitement and big ideas. Bellydance for the future.
I’ve started work on my dream properly now. In January I started to develop my new way of dancing in my Project Lift Off classes in London. We used far more drama, more dynamic range, greater extension in our movements - leg kicks, jumps, dramatic floorwork. My Extreme Bellydance classes are part of it too, of experimenting with different ways of moving. Incorporating exciting footwork, jumps, leaps and spins. And the exploratory process will continue throughout the coming year - in all my classes in London and Croydon.
And, most excitingly, I’ve gathered together a small company of six superb full-time professional dancers who will be exploring the future with me. We start this Friday, working experimentally to create something that we hope will be really amazing. We have until September to create the style (when we will showcase it for the first time at Shimmy in the City). And we’re giving ourselves a year to create a show to thrill.
We première the show next January in London and we are beyond excited about it. We believe it’s the future. That we can move bellydance forward and create new opportunities for dancers and new experiences for audiences.
Whatever happens, it's the start of an exhilarating journey! Maybe to a different bellydance world...
Tuesday, 19 February 2013
Monday, 21 January 2013
Backbends and Bellygrams
There was only one place to hide - a narrow cupboard in the corner. The problem was that it had a slatted wooden door, so if I moved I’d be seen. It was cramped too, but I had no choice. I climbed in quickly and shut the door behind me before I could be discovered.
Then I heard voices. There were four of them. The boss (a man I had only seen once, but who, I could tell, was strong and powerful) and his three employees. The big man entered first, the others followed, quiet and subdued.
When the big man spoke he was clearly angry. His rage was controlled, held in check, but anyone could tell there was trouble ahead for his three shaken colleagues. He started to berate them. Told them how they’d messed up, how they’d lost him money and credibility. One was in hotter water than the others and, with a cold voice, the boss outlined how, while the target of his wrath had been away, the job had gone dreadfully, terribly wrong.
The man being accused was clearly shaken. It was sounding bad.
The big man’s invective was coming to a head. “To see what I mean, JUST LISTEN TO THIS!!!” He pressed a button. The room filled with bellydance music. I leapt out of the cupboard, headed for the man on the far left and started to gyrate and shimmy, before dropping down to the floor and writhing in front of the shocked employee.
It was the man's birthday. And I was the surprise. Thank goodness he was young or I think we could have been calling an ambulance!
The place was an advertising agency in Covent Garden, the year was 1982 and I’d been booked as a bellygram. Singing telegrams and strippergrams were all the rage at the time: out of work actors dressed as police officers, nuns or gorillas would appear out of the blue and proceed to sing or strip to embarrass a birthday boy or girl. As far as I knew, I was the only bellygram in London. I would climb on to my motorbike (dressed head to toe in black leather if you’re asking…) and ride off to a venue somewhere in London where I would find a place to change secretly. At the appointed time I’d burst into the restaurant or bar, place my Sony Walkman on the floor or table and proceed to dance and undulate around the victim. I did a mean backbend and some pretty sultry floor work in those days too.
I remember changing in a freezing outside toilet in a slightly dangerous looking pub in the Old Kent Road, directing the heat of the hand-dryer onto my icy body before parting the crowds in the public bar. I jumped up on tables in restaurants, shimmying my way through the plates and glasses. And I got up on the antique polished desk of the manager of The Who, went down into a backbend and laid myself out in front of him, while his laughing staff looked on.
Yesterday, on Facebook, someone asked me what I thought about bellydancers who advertise themselves as exotic dancers and perform in nightclubs alongside pole dancers or strippers. The questioner pointed out that, by doing so, they are perpetuating the perception of bellydance as a sleazy activity, rather than a serious dance form. I think it’s a fascinating question and one that goes right to the heart of how bellydance is viewed.
These days most professional bellydancers want to be seen as serious dancers - as artists. They want people to understand that bellydance is an ancient dance form with its roots in the folk culture of the Middle East. That it's a richly textured and challenging dance which deserves to have a place alongside Western mainstream styles such as jazz or hip hop. And I’m one of them. I want bellydance to be appreciated by a far wider public as the beautiful, rich and fascinating dance form that it is. I want to hold my head up high amongst the ballet and West End dancers and choreographers and I want aspiring bellydance professionals to undergo the type of tough physical training that those dancers have always expected, so that we can be the very best performers possible.
So, in the light of the question I was asked yesterday, I look back at that 24 year old girl, undulating on the floor in front of a shocked advertising executive and I wonder what I think of her.
Well, firstly I have to say that I was just doing what I had seen Syrian and Palestinian dancers doing in the Arab nightclubs in London (see blog post here). In those performances there was a lot of jumping up in the air and dropping to the floor to shiver and undulate. And in front of a large crowd of Arab men too. Men who would most certainly have assumed those dancers were prostitutes.
Those of us who bellydance in the West have to accept that in the Arab world, bellydancers are considered to be prostitutes. And truthfully, many of them are. At the very least, they are behaving in a way that is far outside social norms. Bellydance has never been something that nice Arabic girls do in public. It’s true that Arab girls absolutely love to dance and will almost certainly dance at home with their female friends. But in public? No. If a Muslim woman dances in public in front of of a mixed audience she is believed to be the very worst kind of woman. And in countries like Egypt, professional bellydancers have to live with the shame of knowing that what they do is considered wicked by the majority of society.
So in trying to promote bellydance as a high art, we in the West are being revisionist. We are trying to create a bellydance culture that feels acceptable to us, that we can be proud of. There is nothing wrong with trying to change the way that bellydance is viewed, but we can’t hide from the fact that ‘exotic dancer’ is exactly what bellydancers traditionally were.
I also have to look back at my younger self and admit that I was fascinated by the sexual sub-culture of London. I was thrilled to be part of it, to walk around Soho at night and feel that, as a bellydancer I belonged to that dark, slightly dangerous underworld. I’ve always loved the ‘other’ in society - the exotic, the experimental, the people who push at the boundaries.
Of course in a perfect world I’d also love bellydance to be accepted by mainstream society, for people not to look down on the dance I make my living from. But I also rather like the fact that when I say I’m a bellydancer I know I’m immediately interesting to most people. I’m different and, yes, exotic. And I know that many of my students feel the same. It’s a giggle to tell people at drinks parties that you are a bellydancer.
Indeed, I’m prepared to guess that for many of us in the West, the exoticism and slightly risqué reputation is one of the things that drew us to bellydance in the first place. There’s something excitingly naughty for many women in learning to bellydance and I think we should accept that. Even embrace it.
That doesn’t mean of course, that we can’t disapprove of certain things. It’s everyone’s prerogative to dislike and, yes, disapprove. Personally I don’t like heavily sexualised bellydancing. I don't like seeing loads of chest bumps in a dance and I can’t abide a pouty face or a floor hump. And don't get me started on the dancers who shake their breasts or backsides in men's faces! But even if I don't like it, I don’t want to shut that dancing down, just as I don’t want to stop ‘commercial’ R & B dancing on music videos, even though I personally dislike it. Instead I want to create something that in my mind is ‘better’ and put it out there in the hope that people will love it and choose it over the other.
And I have to admit that I did my fair share of ‘floor humping’ in the past. Not least on that beautiful polished antique desk, behind which sat The Who’s manager. I’d jumped up there because I’d never seen anyone look quite so bored with my performance as Bill Curbishley did that day. I suppose when you’re the manager of The Who it’s hard to be impressed and I would imagine you get to see an awful lot of semi-naked young women in the course of your job. But his staff had paid for me as a birthday treat for him, and were now crowded in the doorway, excitedly watching me dance.
I leapt up on the desk, did a full backbend and then descended slowly down onto my knees and then my back in front of him. I undulated, I belly rolled, I fluttered. I was 24 years old, I was in great shape, I was dressed in very little and I knew I looked amazing. Surely I’d get a reaction from him now!
He looked down, held my eye, took his cigar out of his mouth. And said: “Mind the desk love.”
Oh well, you can’t win them all.
Then I heard voices. There were four of them. The boss (a man I had only seen once, but who, I could tell, was strong and powerful) and his three employees. The big man entered first, the others followed, quiet and subdued.
When the big man spoke he was clearly angry. His rage was controlled, held in check, but anyone could tell there was trouble ahead for his three shaken colleagues. He started to berate them. Told them how they’d messed up, how they’d lost him money and credibility. One was in hotter water than the others and, with a cold voice, the boss outlined how, while the target of his wrath had been away, the job had gone dreadfully, terribly wrong.
The man being accused was clearly shaken. It was sounding bad.
The big man’s invective was coming to a head. “To see what I mean, JUST LISTEN TO THIS!!!” He pressed a button. The room filled with bellydance music. I leapt out of the cupboard, headed for the man on the far left and started to gyrate and shimmy, before dropping down to the floor and writhing in front of the shocked employee.
It was the man's birthday. And I was the surprise. Thank goodness he was young or I think we could have been calling an ambulance!
The place was an advertising agency in Covent Garden, the year was 1982 and I’d been booked as a bellygram. Singing telegrams and strippergrams were all the rage at the time: out of work actors dressed as police officers, nuns or gorillas would appear out of the blue and proceed to sing or strip to embarrass a birthday boy or girl. As far as I knew, I was the only bellygram in London. I would climb on to my motorbike (dressed head to toe in black leather if you’re asking…) and ride off to a venue somewhere in London where I would find a place to change secretly. At the appointed time I’d burst into the restaurant or bar, place my Sony Walkman on the floor or table and proceed to dance and undulate around the victim. I did a mean backbend and some pretty sultry floor work in those days too.
I remember changing in a freezing outside toilet in a slightly dangerous looking pub in the Old Kent Road, directing the heat of the hand-dryer onto my icy body before parting the crowds in the public bar. I jumped up on tables in restaurants, shimmying my way through the plates and glasses. And I got up on the antique polished desk of the manager of The Who, went down into a backbend and laid myself out in front of him, while his laughing staff looked on.
Yesterday, on Facebook, someone asked me what I thought about bellydancers who advertise themselves as exotic dancers and perform in nightclubs alongside pole dancers or strippers. The questioner pointed out that, by doing so, they are perpetuating the perception of bellydance as a sleazy activity, rather than a serious dance form. I think it’s a fascinating question and one that goes right to the heart of how bellydance is viewed.
These days most professional bellydancers want to be seen as serious dancers - as artists. They want people to understand that bellydance is an ancient dance form with its roots in the folk culture of the Middle East. That it's a richly textured and challenging dance which deserves to have a place alongside Western mainstream styles such as jazz or hip hop. And I’m one of them. I want bellydance to be appreciated by a far wider public as the beautiful, rich and fascinating dance form that it is. I want to hold my head up high amongst the ballet and West End dancers and choreographers and I want aspiring bellydance professionals to undergo the type of tough physical training that those dancers have always expected, so that we can be the very best performers possible.
So, in the light of the question I was asked yesterday, I look back at that 24 year old girl, undulating on the floor in front of a shocked advertising executive and I wonder what I think of her.
Well, firstly I have to say that I was just doing what I had seen Syrian and Palestinian dancers doing in the Arab nightclubs in London (see blog post here). In those performances there was a lot of jumping up in the air and dropping to the floor to shiver and undulate. And in front of a large crowd of Arab men too. Men who would most certainly have assumed those dancers were prostitutes.
Those of us who bellydance in the West have to accept that in the Arab world, bellydancers are considered to be prostitutes. And truthfully, many of them are. At the very least, they are behaving in a way that is far outside social norms. Bellydance has never been something that nice Arabic girls do in public. It’s true that Arab girls absolutely love to dance and will almost certainly dance at home with their female friends. But in public? No. If a Muslim woman dances in public in front of of a mixed audience she is believed to be the very worst kind of woman. And in countries like Egypt, professional bellydancers have to live with the shame of knowing that what they do is considered wicked by the majority of society.
So in trying to promote bellydance as a high art, we in the West are being revisionist. We are trying to create a bellydance culture that feels acceptable to us, that we can be proud of. There is nothing wrong with trying to change the way that bellydance is viewed, but we can’t hide from the fact that ‘exotic dancer’ is exactly what bellydancers traditionally were.
I also have to look back at my younger self and admit that I was fascinated by the sexual sub-culture of London. I was thrilled to be part of it, to walk around Soho at night and feel that, as a bellydancer I belonged to that dark, slightly dangerous underworld. I’ve always loved the ‘other’ in society - the exotic, the experimental, the people who push at the boundaries.
Of course in a perfect world I’d also love bellydance to be accepted by mainstream society, for people not to look down on the dance I make my living from. But I also rather like the fact that when I say I’m a bellydancer I know I’m immediately interesting to most people. I’m different and, yes, exotic. And I know that many of my students feel the same. It’s a giggle to tell people at drinks parties that you are a bellydancer.
Indeed, I’m prepared to guess that for many of us in the West, the exoticism and slightly risqué reputation is one of the things that drew us to bellydance in the first place. There’s something excitingly naughty for many women in learning to bellydance and I think we should accept that. Even embrace it.
That doesn’t mean of course, that we can’t disapprove of certain things. It’s everyone’s prerogative to dislike and, yes, disapprove. Personally I don’t like heavily sexualised bellydancing. I don't like seeing loads of chest bumps in a dance and I can’t abide a pouty face or a floor hump. And don't get me started on the dancers who shake their breasts or backsides in men's faces! But even if I don't like it, I don’t want to shut that dancing down, just as I don’t want to stop ‘commercial’ R & B dancing on music videos, even though I personally dislike it. Instead I want to create something that in my mind is ‘better’ and put it out there in the hope that people will love it and choose it over the other.
And I have to admit that I did my fair share of ‘floor humping’ in the past. Not least on that beautiful polished antique desk, behind which sat The Who’s manager. I’d jumped up there because I’d never seen anyone look quite so bored with my performance as Bill Curbishley did that day. I suppose when you’re the manager of The Who it’s hard to be impressed and I would imagine you get to see an awful lot of semi-naked young women in the course of your job. But his staff had paid for me as a birthday treat for him, and were now crowded in the doorway, excitedly watching me dance.
I leapt up on the desk, did a full backbend and then descended slowly down onto my knees and then my back in front of him. I undulated, I belly rolled, I fluttered. I was 24 years old, I was in great shape, I was dressed in very little and I knew I looked amazing. Surely I’d get a reaction from him now!
He looked down, held my eye, took his cigar out of his mouth. And said: “Mind the desk love.”
Oh well, you can’t win them all.
Thursday, 3 January 2013
Teaching my first bellydance class
It was frosty the day after the village cabaret (read about it here) and the hedgerows were white as Paul and I walked down the lane. The pub and church looked like they belonged on a Christmas card, standing bright and clear in the cold morning air. Like the houses in the village the church and pub are Victorian pretty. The hall on the other hand is as dull and utilitarian as a 20th century building could be. It squats across the road from its characterful cousins, low, brick-built and deeply, boringly rectangular.
Peer in through the windows and you’ll see scuffed wooden floors and the shabby little stage. But those floors are scuffed from decades of chairs pushed back after warm-hearted village lunches and lively Harvest Suppers, the participants full of good, home cooked food and copious quantities of wine.
Alcohol is rather a feature of the social life here in Markbeech. At the annual Royal British Legion dinner, where the older men of the village reputedly get plastered and tell stories of past glory, legend has it that Sir Robin Leigh Pemberton, then Governor of the Bank of England and that year’s keynote speaker, found one of the revellers in a ditch after dinner and had to pull him out before he could get into his chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce and head off home!
The lock to the front door of the village hall is tricky. There’s a knack to it that I’ve never quite mastered, but there’s always a lovely rush of warm air as the handle finally turns and you walk into the entrance hall. Warm because of the village nursery school held there every weekday. And because the view is held that it’s cheaper to leave the heating on constant rather than try and reheat such a big space from scratch every day. But there’s also the warmth of memories. Memories of happy evenings with friends.
There’s such a sense of community history when you enter a place like this. Markbeech villagers have been putting on shows and celebrating the signposts of the year in this hall for several generations. Stories are still told of the shows staged here by long-dead villagers before and during the second world war. When we arrived (aged 40 and 50 respectively) Paul and I were considered youngsters and the generation just above us were responsible for the parties and events. As a result the dress code was often dinner jackets and evening dress, yet there was an air of post-war austerity about meal choices and ticket pricing.
Ten years ago our age group started to take over proceedings and things changed a little. Meals got a bit fancier, more music was introduced, dress became more casual. And recently a lively younger team have started to introduce canapés and sparkling wine before dinner - a sign of the greater affluence of the generation who grew up in the 80s.
That morning Paul and I walked into a busy scene as friends cleared up the hall after the cabaret. Andro was up a ladder taking down the silver stars, Pam from next door was sweeping the floor. Serving dishes were being gathered to redistribute to their rightful owners, rubbish bags were piled high before being taken outside.
All the talk was of the success of the night before. Those of us who had performed were still high on adrenaline and audience members were full of excitement and praise. Of course people wanted to know where I learned to bellydance and so I told them a little of my story - how I had trained to be a dancer then had fallen in love with bellydance in a London nightclub in 1982 (see here).
When a group of women discover I’m a bellydancer there is always at least one person who will try out a bit of a wriggle, one who will say they’ve certainly got the belly for it, and invariably someone who will ask how you do it. On this morning there was a group of five or six women, ranging in age from around 40 to mid seventies. All were upper class, all beautifully spoken. And yes, like so many woman, they wanted to know how I did the wriggling.
Now, although I was originally self-taught, many years before I had been to classes with Jacqueline Chapman - one of the first bellydance teachers in London. A seemingly rather prim lady but with a penchant for dressing up in full performance costume to teach, Jacqueline has a killer way of teaching one of the key moves in bellydance. It’s called a figure of eight and it’s a smooth twisting movement in the hips.
Jacqueline tells her students to imagine they have a pencil where you’d never think a lady would tell you to have a pencil… She then instructs you to squeeze it and lift it up. In doing so, she’s getting you to lift the pelvic floor and thereby engage the core stability muscles. It also helps the posture; but most importantly Jacqueline then tells you to imagine drawing shapes, in particular circles and figures of 8, with that imaginary pencil.
It is a brilliant way of enabling women to visualise the movement. I’ve known bellydance teachers try to break down a figure of eight by showing a twist in the waist, then a transfer of weight followed by a half circle backwards with one hip, a twist in the opposite direction another transfer of weight and a half circle with the other hip. And I always think “Oh for goodness sake! Just teach them the bloody pencil technique!”
On this particular morning, Paul remembers a line of women of varying ages standing in front of me, one or two still holding brooms. He saw me lean towards them and whisper confidentially. Then he saw smiles start to spread across their faces, which grew into giggles and then outright laughter. My husband knew exactly what I was telling them.
He also says he had a sense of the men in the hall being excluded from a wonderful feminine secret. That there was something the women were about to do and enjoy that he could never be part of.
Andro remembers being high up on the ladder, looking down on the scene as we started to move. Me showing the women how to make the figure of eight. The line of women copying. And them laughing and exclaiming and laughing some more. I showed them how to shimmy their hips by moving their knees, how to roll their shoulders. And finally how to shimmy their shoulders by shaking them gently.
Now there are some bellydance teachers who don’t like to admit that this dance is in any way sexy. No they say, it’s a folk dance, a cultural dance from a Muslim part of the world (as indeed it is) and there should be nothing sexual about it. They say, for example, that women should never touch their own bodies when they dance (not even a hand on the hip) and they insist that when executing a shoulder shimmy the breasts should not move.
Excuse me people, if you're a woman how do you shake your shoulders without your breasts moving? It’s impossible to do it without the girls going too! They’re in the same region for goodness sake. OK maybe a bit lower now than they were when you were twenty, but even so! I've heard famous Egyptian teachers call it a breast shimmy and what's good enough for them is good enough for me.
So there they were, that beautiful winter morning, my lovely Markbeech ladies. Elegant, cultured, well bred. Standing in a line in front of me in our little village hall. Wriggling their hips and shaking their breasts.
And laughing and loving it.
Peer in through the windows and you’ll see scuffed wooden floors and the shabby little stage. But those floors are scuffed from decades of chairs pushed back after warm-hearted village lunches and lively Harvest Suppers, the participants full of good, home cooked food and copious quantities of wine.
Alcohol is rather a feature of the social life here in Markbeech. At the annual Royal British Legion dinner, where the older men of the village reputedly get plastered and tell stories of past glory, legend has it that Sir Robin Leigh Pemberton, then Governor of the Bank of England and that year’s keynote speaker, found one of the revellers in a ditch after dinner and had to pull him out before he could get into his chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce and head off home!
The lock to the front door of the village hall is tricky. There’s a knack to it that I’ve never quite mastered, but there’s always a lovely rush of warm air as the handle finally turns and you walk into the entrance hall. Warm because of the village nursery school held there every weekday. And because the view is held that it’s cheaper to leave the heating on constant rather than try and reheat such a big space from scratch every day. But there’s also the warmth of memories. Memories of happy evenings with friends.
There’s such a sense of community history when you enter a place like this. Markbeech villagers have been putting on shows and celebrating the signposts of the year in this hall for several generations. Stories are still told of the shows staged here by long-dead villagers before and during the second world war. When we arrived (aged 40 and 50 respectively) Paul and I were considered youngsters and the generation just above us were responsible for the parties and events. As a result the dress code was often dinner jackets and evening dress, yet there was an air of post-war austerity about meal choices and ticket pricing.
Ten years ago our age group started to take over proceedings and things changed a little. Meals got a bit fancier, more music was introduced, dress became more casual. And recently a lively younger team have started to introduce canapés and sparkling wine before dinner - a sign of the greater affluence of the generation who grew up in the 80s.
That morning Paul and I walked into a busy scene as friends cleared up the hall after the cabaret. Andro was up a ladder taking down the silver stars, Pam from next door was sweeping the floor. Serving dishes were being gathered to redistribute to their rightful owners, rubbish bags were piled high before being taken outside.
All the talk was of the success of the night before. Those of us who had performed were still high on adrenaline and audience members were full of excitement and praise. Of course people wanted to know where I learned to bellydance and so I told them a little of my story - how I had trained to be a dancer then had fallen in love with bellydance in a London nightclub in 1982 (see here).
When a group of women discover I’m a bellydancer there is always at least one person who will try out a bit of a wriggle, one who will say they’ve certainly got the belly for it, and invariably someone who will ask how you do it. On this morning there was a group of five or six women, ranging in age from around 40 to mid seventies. All were upper class, all beautifully spoken. And yes, like so many woman, they wanted to know how I did the wriggling.
Now, although I was originally self-taught, many years before I had been to classes with Jacqueline Chapman - one of the first bellydance teachers in London. A seemingly rather prim lady but with a penchant for dressing up in full performance costume to teach, Jacqueline has a killer way of teaching one of the key moves in bellydance. It’s called a figure of eight and it’s a smooth twisting movement in the hips.
Jacqueline tells her students to imagine they have a pencil where you’d never think a lady would tell you to have a pencil… She then instructs you to squeeze it and lift it up. In doing so, she’s getting you to lift the pelvic floor and thereby engage the core stability muscles. It also helps the posture; but most importantly Jacqueline then tells you to imagine drawing shapes, in particular circles and figures of 8, with that imaginary pencil.
It is a brilliant way of enabling women to visualise the movement. I’ve known bellydance teachers try to break down a figure of eight by showing a twist in the waist, then a transfer of weight followed by a half circle backwards with one hip, a twist in the opposite direction another transfer of weight and a half circle with the other hip. And I always think “Oh for goodness sake! Just teach them the bloody pencil technique!”
On this particular morning, Paul remembers a line of women of varying ages standing in front of me, one or two still holding brooms. He saw me lean towards them and whisper confidentially. Then he saw smiles start to spread across their faces, which grew into giggles and then outright laughter. My husband knew exactly what I was telling them.
He also says he had a sense of the men in the hall being excluded from a wonderful feminine secret. That there was something the women were about to do and enjoy that he could never be part of.
Andro remembers being high up on the ladder, looking down on the scene as we started to move. Me showing the women how to make the figure of eight. The line of women copying. And them laughing and exclaiming and laughing some more. I showed them how to shimmy their hips by moving their knees, how to roll their shoulders. And finally how to shimmy their shoulders by shaking them gently.
Now there are some bellydance teachers who don’t like to admit that this dance is in any way sexy. No they say, it’s a folk dance, a cultural dance from a Muslim part of the world (as indeed it is) and there should be nothing sexual about it. They say, for example, that women should never touch their own bodies when they dance (not even a hand on the hip) and they insist that when executing a shoulder shimmy the breasts should not move.
Excuse me people, if you're a woman how do you shake your shoulders without your breasts moving? It’s impossible to do it without the girls going too! They’re in the same region for goodness sake. OK maybe a bit lower now than they were when you were twenty, but even so! I've heard famous Egyptian teachers call it a breast shimmy and what's good enough for them is good enough for me.
So there they were, that beautiful winter morning, my lovely Markbeech ladies. Elegant, cultured, well bred. Standing in a line in front of me in our little village hall. Wriggling their hips and shaking their breasts.
And laughing and loving it.
Sunday, 16 December 2012
Creating a new style of bellydance
I’ve always struggled with the concept of authenticity. As I said in a past blog post: I’m not Egyptian, I’m from that most English of towns, Cheltenham Spa, and now live near its uptight and green-inked cousin, Tunbridge Wells. You can’t get much more English than that!
After many years of trying to recreate Egyptian styling and Egyptian sensibilities I finally came to the conclusion that in aiming to be ‘authentic’ I was in effect being its exact opposite. I was pretending to be something I am not. When I was trying to dance with the soul of an Egyptian woman I was certainly not being true to myself. And I believe that if I’m to communicate through my dancing I must say something that is real and true to me.
But what should I do, as an English, middle-class, ballet-mad girl who grew up into a jazz dancing young woman, studied contemporary dance for her degree but then fell in love with bellydance in her twenties? As for so many women, bellydance felt like it was made for me. The movements seem created for my body. They celebrate my curves rather than encouraging me to starve them away. And the first time I saw a bellydancer, and then tried the moves out for myself, I knew it was what I wanted to do.
But one of the major difficulties for me is that the dance I love comes from another culture. It’s middle eastern. So I don’t feel I own it, despite having danced and taught it for decades. And my inner conflict has been deepened recently by news stories highlighting the sometimes shocking treatment of women in the middle east. I read reports of organised gang rapes of women in Cairo, or the recent beheading of young men and women for dancing in mixed company at a wedding in Afghanistan, and I wonder what I, as a western feminist, am doing teaching a dance from a part of the world that thinks it is shameful and wicked for a woman even to dance socially with a man, let alone bellydance in public.
To be truthful I have sometimes even thought about giving up bellydance in recent months. It’s started to feel wrong to me. I’m a feminist, I believe in freedom and equality for women. So I’ve been deeply affected reading about the lives of women in that part of the world who seem to me not to have the freedoms and the respect that I take for granted.
I’ll also be honest and say too, that for a long time I’ve found the bellydance movement vocabulary narrow compared to the dance forms I grew up with. Much of that comes from the costuming - there is little opportunity for expansive leg gestures in a bellydance costume. A full chiffon skirt hides anything going on below the hip line and a modern lycra skirt is way too tight. And the weight! It’s hard enough work hauling all those crystals and sequins and stiffening around the stage, let alone trying to leap and twirl and soar.
And here we find ourselves back to the subject of culture. Leaping and twirling and soaring is not what a nice Egyptian girl does. Let’s face it, she’s not even meant to dance in public! I find it noticeable that the grand, exciting stuff in Egyptian dance: the jumps and leaps and dynamic movements are given to the men. The female vocabulary is far more internalised, smaller, more ‘feminine’.
I’m also painfully aware of the fact that bellydance as a performance art just doesn’t cut it with a western audience. Small, internalised isolations don’t work well on the big stage or even on TV. And the narrow dynamic range and lack of dramatic, exciting movements leave modern westerners frankly a bit bored. I believe it’s one of several reasons bellydance isn’t taken seriously here.
Yet bellydance is a truly beautiful dance form. And it has a remarkable ability to help women feel good about themselves and their bodies. Moreover, for me, as a musician (I’m a trained opera singer) it has a unique and very deep association with music. I adore the way a bellydancer tries to show the music through her body. To me it’s very profound and has the ability to deepen the whole experience, both for dancer and audience.
I'll always love traditional, culturally authentic bellydance, whether it's performed by Arabs, Turks or Westerners. And I really don’t want to give up the dance I love so much. Even if I am sometimes frustrated, often troubled by inner conflict.
But maybe, as with so much art, inner conflict, limitation and frustration is the mother of creativity. Because I’m finding that the limitations and the conflicts and the feeling of disassociation are driving me towards creating a new style of bellydance. My style of bellydance. Without constraints, without cultural baggage, without apologies. Just dancing the way it feels right to me to dance.
If I allow myself to break free from the cultural straightjacket what will happen? If I no longer have to worry about whether what I’m doing is ‘correct’ or ‘authentic’, what will my dancing and my teaching look like? Where might it go?
My thinking is also driven by my desire to create a large spectacular bellydance show sometime in the future. Whatever happens with the Hollywood film - whether it is made or not, and if it is, where it leads - all my creative energies at the moment are working towards trying to create a style of bellydance which will work on the big stage and appeal to a western audience.
I started with Project Lift Off - my initiative to try and raise British bellydance nearer to the professional standard of other styles of performance dance and to work with larger, more dynamic movements. But I’ve found myself terribly constrained by the desire to teach ‘authentically’. I’ve found it impossible to break free from the cultural and historical background of our dance. Of course I could ignore the cultural relevance. I could just teach bellydance moves without caring about their provenance, but that would go against my grain. I know bellydance has a cultural core and I can't ignore that.
So I’ve made a decision to stop trying to copy or recreate, and instead to create.
I’ve found it helpful to think in terms of creating a new style of dance. With a new name, so that I don’t feel I’m doing something inappropriate. Right now in my mind I’m calling it Western Oriental style bellydance. Because that to me is what I’m trying to create.
I’ve started by working with two superb young dancers who come to my Project Lift Off classes and who have agreed to be my muses - the clay for me to work with. And I’m going to start teaching jazz-bellydance classes at Dance Works in central London from January onwards, as a way of experimenting with marrying bellydance to the western dance forms that have influenced me and breaking away from my natural desire to do things ‘right’.
I’m sure there are people reading this who will think what I’m doing is wrong, or at the very least arrogant. But every style of dance has had its innovators, including bellydance - tribal and tribal fusion are wonderful, exciting styles which rightly take their place alongside Egyptian or Turkish bellydance. I’m just trying to do my bit. For myself, if no-one else!
And for those people who might think I’m rejecting Egyptian bellydance, please know this. I will never reject Egyptian bellydance, it’s part of my dance heritage. I may have deep inner conflict about cultural attitudes towards women and dance in the middle east, but I truly love the Egyptian people, women and men both. And I don’t believe that will ever change.
And I'm sure I will always teach classic Egyptian style bellydance. I love it and my students love it. I’m just trying to do something alongside it. To develop something that feels more like me, rather than trying to pretend I’m something I’m not.
It’s really exciting for me to be travelling down this road. Exciting and pretty scary too. I’ll write more about the journey as I travel it. And I hope some of you will come with me to see where it takes us. Hold tight, it could be an exciting ride!
After many years of trying to recreate Egyptian styling and Egyptian sensibilities I finally came to the conclusion that in aiming to be ‘authentic’ I was in effect being its exact opposite. I was pretending to be something I am not. When I was trying to dance with the soul of an Egyptian woman I was certainly not being true to myself. And I believe that if I’m to communicate through my dancing I must say something that is real and true to me.
But what should I do, as an English, middle-class, ballet-mad girl who grew up into a jazz dancing young woman, studied contemporary dance for her degree but then fell in love with bellydance in her twenties? As for so many women, bellydance felt like it was made for me. The movements seem created for my body. They celebrate my curves rather than encouraging me to starve them away. And the first time I saw a bellydancer, and then tried the moves out for myself, I knew it was what I wanted to do.
But one of the major difficulties for me is that the dance I love comes from another culture. It’s middle eastern. So I don’t feel I own it, despite having danced and taught it for decades. And my inner conflict has been deepened recently by news stories highlighting the sometimes shocking treatment of women in the middle east. I read reports of organised gang rapes of women in Cairo, or the recent beheading of young men and women for dancing in mixed company at a wedding in Afghanistan, and I wonder what I, as a western feminist, am doing teaching a dance from a part of the world that thinks it is shameful and wicked for a woman even to dance socially with a man, let alone bellydance in public.
To be truthful I have sometimes even thought about giving up bellydance in recent months. It’s started to feel wrong to me. I’m a feminist, I believe in freedom and equality for women. So I’ve been deeply affected reading about the lives of women in that part of the world who seem to me not to have the freedoms and the respect that I take for granted.
I’ll also be honest and say too, that for a long time I’ve found the bellydance movement vocabulary narrow compared to the dance forms I grew up with. Much of that comes from the costuming - there is little opportunity for expansive leg gestures in a bellydance costume. A full chiffon skirt hides anything going on below the hip line and a modern lycra skirt is way too tight. And the weight! It’s hard enough work hauling all those crystals and sequins and stiffening around the stage, let alone trying to leap and twirl and soar.
And here we find ourselves back to the subject of culture. Leaping and twirling and soaring is not what a nice Egyptian girl does. Let’s face it, she’s not even meant to dance in public! I find it noticeable that the grand, exciting stuff in Egyptian dance: the jumps and leaps and dynamic movements are given to the men. The female vocabulary is far more internalised, smaller, more ‘feminine’.
I’m also painfully aware of the fact that bellydance as a performance art just doesn’t cut it with a western audience. Small, internalised isolations don’t work well on the big stage or even on TV. And the narrow dynamic range and lack of dramatic, exciting movements leave modern westerners frankly a bit bored. I believe it’s one of several reasons bellydance isn’t taken seriously here.
Yet bellydance is a truly beautiful dance form. And it has a remarkable ability to help women feel good about themselves and their bodies. Moreover, for me, as a musician (I’m a trained opera singer) it has a unique and very deep association with music. I adore the way a bellydancer tries to show the music through her body. To me it’s very profound and has the ability to deepen the whole experience, both for dancer and audience.
I'll always love traditional, culturally authentic bellydance, whether it's performed by Arabs, Turks or Westerners. And I really don’t want to give up the dance I love so much. Even if I am sometimes frustrated, often troubled by inner conflict.
But maybe, as with so much art, inner conflict, limitation and frustration is the mother of creativity. Because I’m finding that the limitations and the conflicts and the feeling of disassociation are driving me towards creating a new style of bellydance. My style of bellydance. Without constraints, without cultural baggage, without apologies. Just dancing the way it feels right to me to dance.
If I allow myself to break free from the cultural straightjacket what will happen? If I no longer have to worry about whether what I’m doing is ‘correct’ or ‘authentic’, what will my dancing and my teaching look like? Where might it go?
My thinking is also driven by my desire to create a large spectacular bellydance show sometime in the future. Whatever happens with the Hollywood film - whether it is made or not, and if it is, where it leads - all my creative energies at the moment are working towards trying to create a style of bellydance which will work on the big stage and appeal to a western audience.
I started with Project Lift Off - my initiative to try and raise British bellydance nearer to the professional standard of other styles of performance dance and to work with larger, more dynamic movements. But I’ve found myself terribly constrained by the desire to teach ‘authentically’. I’ve found it impossible to break free from the cultural and historical background of our dance. Of course I could ignore the cultural relevance. I could just teach bellydance moves without caring about their provenance, but that would go against my grain. I know bellydance has a cultural core and I can't ignore that.
So I’ve made a decision to stop trying to copy or recreate, and instead to create.
I’ve found it helpful to think in terms of creating a new style of dance. With a new name, so that I don’t feel I’m doing something inappropriate. Right now in my mind I’m calling it Western Oriental style bellydance. Because that to me is what I’m trying to create.
I’ve started by working with two superb young dancers who come to my Project Lift Off classes and who have agreed to be my muses - the clay for me to work with. And I’m going to start teaching jazz-bellydance classes at Dance Works in central London from January onwards, as a way of experimenting with marrying bellydance to the western dance forms that have influenced me and breaking away from my natural desire to do things ‘right’.
I’m sure there are people reading this who will think what I’m doing is wrong, or at the very least arrogant. But every style of dance has had its innovators, including bellydance - tribal and tribal fusion are wonderful, exciting styles which rightly take their place alongside Egyptian or Turkish bellydance. I’m just trying to do my bit. For myself, if no-one else!
And for those people who might think I’m rejecting Egyptian bellydance, please know this. I will never reject Egyptian bellydance, it’s part of my dance heritage. I may have deep inner conflict about cultural attitudes towards women and dance in the middle east, but I truly love the Egyptian people, women and men both. And I don’t believe that will ever change.
And I'm sure I will always teach classic Egyptian style bellydance. I love it and my students love it. I’m just trying to do something alongside it. To develop something that feels more like me, rather than trying to pretend I’m something I’m not.
It’s really exciting for me to be travelling down this road. Exciting and pretty scary too. I’ll write more about the journey as I travel it. And I hope some of you will come with me to see where it takes us. Hold tight, it could be an exciting ride!
Thursday, 29 November 2012
How it all started!
Imagine the scene: it’s an evening in late December and Markbeech village hall is decorated for Christmas. A tree sparkles in one corner, silver stars tumble from the ceiling. Flowers and candles adorn large round tables squeezed tightly together in the tiny hall. At the end of the hall is a small stage, the red velvet curtains hanging a little crookedly. Laughter fills the room.
Around the tables sit men and women of all ages, chatting animatedly. Everyone in the village is here and all are looking splendid. The men wear dinner jackets and bow ties; the women are in evening gowns and good jewellery. This is not fancy dress. This is just what we did ten years ago in Markbeech. Give us an excuse for a party and out would come the glad rags.
In the tiny kitchen across the corridor there's a slightly frantic air as Nicky and her team, in full length evening gowns and pearls topped by slightly crumpled aprons, manhandle giant casserole dishes or tip steaming potatoes out of enormous saucepans.
Nicky, wife of Charles, heir to the aristocratic family who founded Markbeech almost two hundred years ago, had spent the previous month organising the women in the village in preparing the feast about to be served. And only half an hour earlier the food had arrived, still hot from home kitchens, borne in enormous bowls and pans by beautifully-spoken women desperately trying not to trip over in long dresses and high heels.
In an ante-room off the main hall five or six people are waiting nervously. All wear large, outlandish hats topping off their evening dress. One woman has a model of Blackpool Tower on her head, another has a crescent moon, suspended from a wire coat-hanger. Paul and Andro are there, smart in dinner jackets, scripts in their hands. I’m there too.
I peer through the door to the main hall, look back at Paul and Andro: “They’re ready, let’s go!”
On the stage a piano strikes up a triumphal tune as the curtains open rather crankily. Charles, in slightly rumpled white tuxedo and unruly hair, is at the piano, thumping out the tune with gusto. The audience erupts in cheers as Paul and Andro stride out onto the stage.
The first-ever Markbeech Christmas Cabaret is underway!
Blackpool Tower appears. It's Ann, the Parish Clerk, reciting a witty Blackpool monologue. And the crescent moon is another Ann, our 80 year old ex-SOE operative, with a poem about an oyster singing to the moon. And as the evening continues, more crazily be-hatted villagers take the stage. Some of the poems and monologues are well known, but in amongst the party pieces are wonderful songs and stories telling of the rich cast of characters living in Markbeech. The audience are in raptures, shouting and cheering their friends on.
Then a hush descends. The stage is empty. Sinuous middle eastern music starts up. A character appears on stage entirely covered in a red veil. It glides around and quiet voices are heard asking who it could be. Suddenly the music changes to an up tempo bellydance piece, the character throws the veil off and shimmies and undulates around the stage, ending with a drop to the floor. There's a slight gasp, followed by cheers and whistles from the audience.
Now, I need to explain a couple of things. Firstly you need to know that even though it's only a tiny hamlet of thirty houses, Markbeech is full of creative people. Some might even say there’s an air of eccentricity here. Despite being slap bang in the middle of the UK’s stockbroker belt, where million pound houses are ten a penny, we are a village of writers, artists, musicians, photographers, designers and, yes, a secret bellydancer.
Secret, because in those days no-one knew I was a bellydancer. You see, Markbeech is posh. Proper posh. Much posher than I am. I might sound a bit upmarket, but I’m not really - I’m the daughter of a vacuum-cleaner salesman and a primary school teacher. I just managed to pick up a nice accent somewhere along the line. Whereas Markbeech is a village of gently aristocratic and well-connected families who can trace their lineage back hundreds of years. And when Paul and I moved there we were worried enough about the fact that we weren’t married - we didn’t dare let on that I used to be a bellydancer!
No, in those days I was known as a singer. I had actually given up dancing fifteen years previously and had concentrated all my artistic efforts on singing. I was a pretty good classically trained mezzo-soprano soloist, performing in oratorios and recitals, booked for weddings, funerals and all celebrations in between.
But as time went on Paul and I realised just how creative and unusual this tiny village is. Charles and Nicky would put on an opera every other year in the grounds of their ancestral home and Charles’ sister Joanna and her family were deeply involved in the opera and theatre worlds as well as running a gallery and library of historic photographs.
I’ve already mentioned our writer and photographer friends Andro and Marie-Lou, but Markbeech also boasts a wonderfully creative embroidery artist, two superb garden designers, a once-famous jeweller and a fine artist who paints gorgeous Pre-Raphaelite-style oil paintings and whose wife is portrayed, clad only in her long hair and a mermaid’s tail, on the sign for local pub, The Rock.
Ten years ago Paul, Andro, Marie-Lou and myself felt it was about time we harnessed some of the village creativity and decided to put on a cabaret between Christmas and New Year. We sent out an invitation to anyone who wanted to do a party piece and then Paul and Andro started writing amusing songs and monologues about the village and its characters. And I’m not being partisan when I say their comic writing is brilliant.
Embroidery artist Jacqi came up with the idea of the crazy hats as a way of ‘dressing’ the performers and the Christmas holiday was put aside for ten days of full-on rehearsals and preparations. In the meantime Nicky put together a menu and sent the ladies of Markbeech recipes and cooking instructions while Marie-Lou sourced curtains for the stage and decorations for the hall.
But what was I going to do? Everyone was used to hearing me sing. I was kind of a Markbeech staple act, wheeled out for Harvest Suppers or parties, singing anything from opera to Ivor Novello and usually accompanied by Charles on piano. But those who know me know I don’t like to rest on my laurels or take the easy route. I like to keep things moving, push my boundaries.
I knew it was time to dust off the sequins and come out to my neighbours and friends. But I have to tell you, the last time I bellydanced I was 26, slim and as fit as I was ever going to be. Now I was a 43 year old pre-menopausal matron with far too much weight and no dancing experience for 15 years.
I kept the secret until the very last minute. I even sang some silky cabaret numbers with Charles to put people off the scent. And as I changed in the loos I seriously wondered what on earth I thought I was doing, baring a very large amount of middle-aged flesh to the whole village!
In the event it was the older audience members who were the most open and enthusiastic in response to my unveiling; apparently some of the thirty year olds were horribly shocked. And honestly, it wasn’t the best bellydance I’ve ever done. I was very out of practice and my costume was pretty cheap and cheesy by the standards of what I wear these days. But I did it.
And it’s how it all began.
This is part of my life story, sections of which I'm publishing on my blog. You can read the next part here.
Around the tables sit men and women of all ages, chatting animatedly. Everyone in the village is here and all are looking splendid. The men wear dinner jackets and bow ties; the women are in evening gowns and good jewellery. This is not fancy dress. This is just what we did ten years ago in Markbeech. Give us an excuse for a party and out would come the glad rags.
In the tiny kitchen across the corridor there's a slightly frantic air as Nicky and her team, in full length evening gowns and pearls topped by slightly crumpled aprons, manhandle giant casserole dishes or tip steaming potatoes out of enormous saucepans.
Nicky, wife of Charles, heir to the aristocratic family who founded Markbeech almost two hundred years ago, had spent the previous month organising the women in the village in preparing the feast about to be served. And only half an hour earlier the food had arrived, still hot from home kitchens, borne in enormous bowls and pans by beautifully-spoken women desperately trying not to trip over in long dresses and high heels.
In an ante-room off the main hall five or six people are waiting nervously. All wear large, outlandish hats topping off their evening dress. One woman has a model of Blackpool Tower on her head, another has a crescent moon, suspended from a wire coat-hanger. Paul and Andro are there, smart in dinner jackets, scripts in their hands. I’m there too.
I peer through the door to the main hall, look back at Paul and Andro: “They’re ready, let’s go!”
On the stage a piano strikes up a triumphal tune as the curtains open rather crankily. Charles, in slightly rumpled white tuxedo and unruly hair, is at the piano, thumping out the tune with gusto. The audience erupts in cheers as Paul and Andro stride out onto the stage.
The first-ever Markbeech Christmas Cabaret is underway!
Blackpool Tower appears. It's Ann, the Parish Clerk, reciting a witty Blackpool monologue. And the crescent moon is another Ann, our 80 year old ex-SOE operative, with a poem about an oyster singing to the moon. And as the evening continues, more crazily be-hatted villagers take the stage. Some of the poems and monologues are well known, but in amongst the party pieces are wonderful songs and stories telling of the rich cast of characters living in Markbeech. The audience are in raptures, shouting and cheering their friends on.
Then a hush descends. The stage is empty. Sinuous middle eastern music starts up. A character appears on stage entirely covered in a red veil. It glides around and quiet voices are heard asking who it could be. Suddenly the music changes to an up tempo bellydance piece, the character throws the veil off and shimmies and undulates around the stage, ending with a drop to the floor. There's a slight gasp, followed by cheers and whistles from the audience.
Now, I need to explain a couple of things. Firstly you need to know that even though it's only a tiny hamlet of thirty houses, Markbeech is full of creative people. Some might even say there’s an air of eccentricity here. Despite being slap bang in the middle of the UK’s stockbroker belt, where million pound houses are ten a penny, we are a village of writers, artists, musicians, photographers, designers and, yes, a secret bellydancer.
Secret, because in those days no-one knew I was a bellydancer. You see, Markbeech is posh. Proper posh. Much posher than I am. I might sound a bit upmarket, but I’m not really - I’m the daughter of a vacuum-cleaner salesman and a primary school teacher. I just managed to pick up a nice accent somewhere along the line. Whereas Markbeech is a village of gently aristocratic and well-connected families who can trace their lineage back hundreds of years. And when Paul and I moved there we were worried enough about the fact that we weren’t married - we didn’t dare let on that I used to be a bellydancer!
No, in those days I was known as a singer. I had actually given up dancing fifteen years previously and had concentrated all my artistic efforts on singing. I was a pretty good classically trained mezzo-soprano soloist, performing in oratorios and recitals, booked for weddings, funerals and all celebrations in between.
But as time went on Paul and I realised just how creative and unusual this tiny village is. Charles and Nicky would put on an opera every other year in the grounds of their ancestral home and Charles’ sister Joanna and her family were deeply involved in the opera and theatre worlds as well as running a gallery and library of historic photographs.
I’ve already mentioned our writer and photographer friends Andro and Marie-Lou, but Markbeech also boasts a wonderfully creative embroidery artist, two superb garden designers, a once-famous jeweller and a fine artist who paints gorgeous Pre-Raphaelite-style oil paintings and whose wife is portrayed, clad only in her long hair and a mermaid’s tail, on the sign for local pub, The Rock.
Ten years ago Paul, Andro, Marie-Lou and myself felt it was about time we harnessed some of the village creativity and decided to put on a cabaret between Christmas and New Year. We sent out an invitation to anyone who wanted to do a party piece and then Paul and Andro started writing amusing songs and monologues about the village and its characters. And I’m not being partisan when I say their comic writing is brilliant.
Embroidery artist Jacqi came up with the idea of the crazy hats as a way of ‘dressing’ the performers and the Christmas holiday was put aside for ten days of full-on rehearsals and preparations. In the meantime Nicky put together a menu and sent the ladies of Markbeech recipes and cooking instructions while Marie-Lou sourced curtains for the stage and decorations for the hall.
But what was I going to do? Everyone was used to hearing me sing. I was kind of a Markbeech staple act, wheeled out for Harvest Suppers or parties, singing anything from opera to Ivor Novello and usually accompanied by Charles on piano. But those who know me know I don’t like to rest on my laurels or take the easy route. I like to keep things moving, push my boundaries.
I knew it was time to dust off the sequins and come out to my neighbours and friends. But I have to tell you, the last time I bellydanced I was 26, slim and as fit as I was ever going to be. Now I was a 43 year old pre-menopausal matron with far too much weight and no dancing experience for 15 years.
I kept the secret until the very last minute. I even sang some silky cabaret numbers with Charles to put people off the scent. And as I changed in the loos I seriously wondered what on earth I thought I was doing, baring a very large amount of middle-aged flesh to the whole village!
In the event it was the older audience members who were the most open and enthusiastic in response to my unveiling; apparently some of the thirty year olds were horribly shocked. And honestly, it wasn’t the best bellydance I’ve ever done. I was very out of practice and my costume was pretty cheap and cheesy by the standards of what I wear these days. But I did it.
And it’s how it all began.
This is part of my life story, sections of which I'm publishing on my blog. You can read the next part here.
Monday, 19 November 2012
Welcome to my world
Come with me. Let me take your hand and we’ll walk together. Past the pond where the moorhens nest and the trees are so tall; past the doctor’s house and the big new house we’re really not sure about. Just a few yards along the blackberried lane and here we are at the heart of the village.
See how low the cottages sit, how tall and foolishly fancy the chimneys are. Look how proudly the year 1879 is carved on the front. Mind you, that’s not so old to boast about - at least not for round here. Hever, not so far away, has a castle with a proper drawbridge and moat. Where poor Anne Boleyn was first courted by Henry VIII all the way back in 1526.
But still these houses feel old. And quaint. The whole village feels quaint. See the old school house in golden stone with its dedication to Queen Victoria’s jubilee on the front? They say it’s haunted by the ghost of Miss Brown, the schoolmistress. Geraldine and Jamie swear things flew through the air unaided when they lived there. Lights turned themselves on and off and footsteps were heard when they were alone in the house.
Next door is Zandra’s tiny home. She moved into this little house after her husband Oscar died. Outrageous, marvellous Oscar, who, on his first day working at the Stock Exchange put half a client’s inheritance he’d been entrusted with on a single horse at Ascot. Which lost.
At the little crossroads, with the tree and the cast iron sign that my husband Paul designed for the millenium celebrations, is the pub, The Kentish Horse. Kentish, rather than ‘of Kent’, because it’s west of the river Medway and because things like that matter round here. The pub is low slung like the houses. Low and whitewashed and welcoming. An open fire in the winter and a magical view across the Weald from the willow shaded garden in summer.
What do we have next to the pub? The church of course. And here in the churchyard, arranged side by side are Mike Roberts, Robin DP and Peter Bellamy. Old friends lying together, just as they once drank together and brought their children up together in the village.
If we turn the corner, we’re in Cow Lane, tiny Cow Lane, winding its way down towards Horseshoe Green. Walking down Cow Lane always makes me feel nostalgic for some reason. Maybe it's the way the hedgerows, softened by honeysuckle and hawthorn, make the lane seem slightly misty. Or is it the way the lane slopes gently downwards towards a half hidden pond and then opens out to a glorious view across the county border into Sussex? Whatever the reason, I always feel that I'm being drawn backwards in time - a time of baskets and bonnets and East End families coming down for the hop picking.
Along Cow Lane, the vicarage is as grand as Victorian vicarages can ever be. Michael, the city trader, who lives there now with his warm-hearted wife Jayne and their family, rises at 5am to take the train from our tiny unmanned station up to the City. In the past, before the cuts, the station master would often call round the wives in the village: “Mrs Roberts? Just to let you know, the down train is delayed tonight, so don’t come to pick up Mr Roberts until 6.15.”
Before Michael, the vicarage was home to Jane - one of many redoubtable elderly women round here who worked for the Special Operations Executive during World War 2. Desperate to do her bit for the war effort, Ann managed to talk her way into this secret organisation of British spies by pretending she spoke Chinese.
Posted, aged 21, to Shanghai, her adventures included being billeted overnight in a Chinese brothel (her honour protected by a group of young British officers) and hiding thousands of pounds of government money in her handbag to exchange it on street corners at vastly inflated rates. This unofficial money laundering resulted in the Shanghai office of the SOE making a remarkable £77 million pounds profit - money which went to provide assistance to Allied prisoners of war.
As I continue along Cow Lane I always pause at Old Farm. To admire its crazily steep cat-slide roof, to peer through at the rich tangle of roses and clematis in the beautiful old garden but also to imagine my dear friends inside. Alexander upstairs writing - his mind soaring across centuries and oceans as he writes his stories of the founding of nations. His wife Silvia cooking in her big country kitchen or working on her beautiful food photographs.
This is the village I’ve lived in and loved for the past sixteen years. A tiny hamlet on the highest ridge of the beautiful High Weald of Kent. A hidden corner of what’s known as The Garden of England; rich in history, even richer in community. A place where we can still leave our doors unlocked and where the social life revolves around laughter-filled suppers with neighbours who have become true friends. Where Harvest Supper or the annual New Year’s Day booze-fuelled lunch are attended by almost everyone. Because they are great, joyous, heart-filling affairs.
I’ll never forget my first Parish lunch - an annual summer event held in Alexander and Silvia’s magical garden. In one corner the two hosts wrestled chickens and burgers over a bank of blazing barbecues; in the other, tables groaned with salads and puddings which had arrived in bowls and tupperware from every home in the village.
I stood at the top of the garden and looked out at the deep old-fashioned double borders, flanked by shaded lawns rolling down to a magnificent view over fields populated by lazy cattle. Around 70 people sat chatting on the lawns; beer, wine or Pimms in one hand, a filled paper plate in the other. Everyone was talking, all were sitting with friends.
And as I gazed around I realised, with a real sense of wonder, that I knew more than 60 of these people well enough to sit down and be welcomed into their group. Paul and I had lived in this tiny village for less than a year, but already we knew over 60 people - had been invited to their homes, had shared food and laughter with them and could strike up conversation with any one of them at any time.
How different from urban Croydon where we had previously lived. Please don’t get me wrong, I love Croydon, indeed I’m a town girl at heart. But a quick ‘hiya, how are you doing’ is all that is expected in terms of neighbourliness there. And the strangest thing was that, after less than a year, this tiny place with its slightly eccentric characters and its long sense of history felt more like home than anywhere I had ever lived.
See how low the cottages sit, how tall and foolishly fancy the chimneys are. Look how proudly the year 1879 is carved on the front. Mind you, that’s not so old to boast about - at least not for round here. Hever, not so far away, has a castle with a proper drawbridge and moat. Where poor Anne Boleyn was first courted by Henry VIII all the way back in 1526.
But still these houses feel old. And quaint. The whole village feels quaint. See the old school house in golden stone with its dedication to Queen Victoria’s jubilee on the front? They say it’s haunted by the ghost of Miss Brown, the schoolmistress. Geraldine and Jamie swear things flew through the air unaided when they lived there. Lights turned themselves on and off and footsteps were heard when they were alone in the house.
Next door is Zandra’s tiny home. She moved into this little house after her husband Oscar died. Outrageous, marvellous Oscar, who, on his first day working at the Stock Exchange put half a client’s inheritance he’d been entrusted with on a single horse at Ascot. Which lost.
At the little crossroads, with the tree and the cast iron sign that my husband Paul designed for the millenium celebrations, is the pub, The Kentish Horse. Kentish, rather than ‘of Kent’, because it’s west of the river Medway and because things like that matter round here. The pub is low slung like the houses. Low and whitewashed and welcoming. An open fire in the winter and a magical view across the Weald from the willow shaded garden in summer.
What do we have next to the pub? The church of course. And here in the churchyard, arranged side by side are Mike Roberts, Robin DP and Peter Bellamy. Old friends lying together, just as they once drank together and brought their children up together in the village.
If we turn the corner, we’re in Cow Lane, tiny Cow Lane, winding its way down towards Horseshoe Green. Walking down Cow Lane always makes me feel nostalgic for some reason. Maybe it's the way the hedgerows, softened by honeysuckle and hawthorn, make the lane seem slightly misty. Or is it the way the lane slopes gently downwards towards a half hidden pond and then opens out to a glorious view across the county border into Sussex? Whatever the reason, I always feel that I'm being drawn backwards in time - a time of baskets and bonnets and East End families coming down for the hop picking.
Along Cow Lane, the vicarage is as grand as Victorian vicarages can ever be. Michael, the city trader, who lives there now with his warm-hearted wife Jayne and their family, rises at 5am to take the train from our tiny unmanned station up to the City. In the past, before the cuts, the station master would often call round the wives in the village: “Mrs Roberts? Just to let you know, the down train is delayed tonight, so don’t come to pick up Mr Roberts until 6.15.”
Before Michael, the vicarage was home to Jane - one of many redoubtable elderly women round here who worked for the Special Operations Executive during World War 2. Desperate to do her bit for the war effort, Ann managed to talk her way into this secret organisation of British spies by pretending she spoke Chinese.
Posted, aged 21, to Shanghai, her adventures included being billeted overnight in a Chinese brothel (her honour protected by a group of young British officers) and hiding thousands of pounds of government money in her handbag to exchange it on street corners at vastly inflated rates. This unofficial money laundering resulted in the Shanghai office of the SOE making a remarkable £77 million pounds profit - money which went to provide assistance to Allied prisoners of war.
As I continue along Cow Lane I always pause at Old Farm. To admire its crazily steep cat-slide roof, to peer through at the rich tangle of roses and clematis in the beautiful old garden but also to imagine my dear friends inside. Alexander upstairs writing - his mind soaring across centuries and oceans as he writes his stories of the founding of nations. His wife Silvia cooking in her big country kitchen or working on her beautiful food photographs.
This is the village I’ve lived in and loved for the past sixteen years. A tiny hamlet on the highest ridge of the beautiful High Weald of Kent. A hidden corner of what’s known as The Garden of England; rich in history, even richer in community. A place where we can still leave our doors unlocked and where the social life revolves around laughter-filled suppers with neighbours who have become true friends. Where Harvest Supper or the annual New Year’s Day booze-fuelled lunch are attended by almost everyone. Because they are great, joyous, heart-filling affairs.
I’ll never forget my first Parish lunch - an annual summer event held in Alexander and Silvia’s magical garden. In one corner the two hosts wrestled chickens and burgers over a bank of blazing barbecues; in the other, tables groaned with salads and puddings which had arrived in bowls and tupperware from every home in the village.
I stood at the top of the garden and looked out at the deep old-fashioned double borders, flanked by shaded lawns rolling down to a magnificent view over fields populated by lazy cattle. Around 70 people sat chatting on the lawns; beer, wine or Pimms in one hand, a filled paper plate in the other. Everyone was talking, all were sitting with friends.
And as I gazed around I realised, with a real sense of wonder, that I knew more than 60 of these people well enough to sit down and be welcomed into their group. Paul and I had lived in this tiny village for less than a year, but already we knew over 60 people - had been invited to their homes, had shared food and laughter with them and could strike up conversation with any one of them at any time.
How different from urban Croydon where we had previously lived. Please don’t get me wrong, I love Croydon, indeed I’m a town girl at heart. But a quick ‘hiya, how are you doing’ is all that is expected in terms of neighbourliness there. And the strangest thing was that, after less than a year, this tiny place with its slightly eccentric characters and its long sense of history felt more like home than anywhere I had ever lived.
Friday, 12 October 2012
Partying with Dina
I know the question you’re all dying to ask… So what’s Dina like? You know, as a person…
Let’s face it, Dina is the biggest star in the bellydance firmament. She’s Lady Gaga, Madonna and Beyoncé rolled into one. The woman whose costuming and dance style changed bellydance forever. Who commands enormous fees and who has bellydancers screaming her name on the rare occasions that she performs in the West.
So really, she has every right to be the very biggest diva in a world where, frankly, a lot of diva behaviour goes on.
Of course Khaled and I were worried about what she’d be like. Would she be difficult? Would she be demanding? Would she expect us to run around her like servants. We had both experienced behaviour like that from other big stars we’d helped bring to the UK in the past.
But I have to report, Dina is a total darling!
Firstly, she’s tiny. And seems slightly shy. She does that dip thing so many of us do when she gets a compliment or when she meets someone for the first time. She sort of dips down and slightly away from you, as if not wanting to make herself too big and important. And she has a lovely sweet, shy smile.
She also has a great sense of humour. The audience got a sense of that in the Saturday night show as she joked and backchatted with them between her dances. And backstage she was really joyful and funny. I mentioned in my last post the cartoon run she did from the wings, winding herself up and going off like Roadrunner. And we could see that she was having the time of her life in the wings watching the show. We had assumed she’d be ensconced in her dressing room until her time came to dance. But no, there she was with the rest of us backstage, laughing and zhagareeting and clapping along to our performances.
But her sense of humour really shone at the Sunday evening dinner.
I have to tell you here and now - the Sunday evening event is billed as a relaxing dinner at the end of a busy festival. But in fact it always turns into the mother of all parties! Get together an international crowd of bellydancers who have been working hard all weekend (and going to bed early to be fresh for each morning’s workshops) and you’ll get the best party you’ve ever been to!
The restaurant had promised to clear a space for us to dance but when we arrived, the table that should have been moved away was still there. Occupied by two very elderly, very tipsy, ladies who had been there since lunchtime and were showing no sign of moving. We all got increasingly jittery as 8, then 9 o’clock came and went and still they stayed put.
Then they stood up and got their coats and you felt the tension in the restaurant tighten as we anticipated the moment we had been waiting for. Two waiters carried the table away and it all kicked off! Khaled immediately got up on his chair and started dancing. Aziza, not to be outdone was up on hers in an instant! It was the signal we all needed and the rest of the party went wild!
Then there was the remarkable moment when Dina got up to dance. We had put together a CD of mixed bellydance party music – Shaabi, pop, a few drum solos and some classic favourites. Suddenly Tahtil Shibbak came on and everyone looked to Dina. She got up from the table, pretended to elbow her way through the crowd and, memorably dressed in combat boots, trousers and a buttoned up cardigan, launched into a wonderful, lightly caricatured version of her signature dance. Laughing her head off all the way through.
As the party continued I think all of us were pinching ourselves to find ourselves dancing around in a circle with Dina. But none of us had a more memorable time than Behiye Binnaz, a lovely, popular girl in the local bellydance community, who suddenly found herself dancing in the centre of the circle with Dina, Kazafy and Khaled pretending to be her backing dancers. They were playing the part of the Ghawazee dancers who often appear in old films behind stars like Samiya Gamal. As people realized what was going on, we all joined in and Behiye was surrounded by the whole international crowd, joyfully clapping along and calling out her name.
I can’t begin to tell you the respect I felt for Behiye in managing to hold it together, when most of us would have blushed and run away. In her modesty, she did try to escape a few times, but we wouldn’t let her. So she danced and danced and danced. With some of the greatest names in bellydance cheering her on.
And then when the track finished and she sat down, her teacher, Ann Hall, came over and showed her the video she had taken of the moment. And Behiya wept rich tears of joy and disbelief.
What else to tell you? Well apparently there’s a video somewhere of Dina climbing a ladder outside the restaurant, but I haven’t seen that yet. And there was the beautiful moment when I saw Aziza and Dina, two dancers I admire more than any in the world, exchange glances of friendship and understanding. And what about the Debke line which snaked around the restaurant, filled with some of the biggest dance stars in the world?
But the biggest, most scandalous news I can give you? Dina had three puddings!! Yes THREE! Ice-cream, cake and chocolate brownie with cream and yet more ice-cream.
How on earth does she stay that tiny?
Let’s face it, Dina is the biggest star in the bellydance firmament. She’s Lady Gaga, Madonna and Beyoncé rolled into one. The woman whose costuming and dance style changed bellydance forever. Who commands enormous fees and who has bellydancers screaming her name on the rare occasions that she performs in the West.
So really, she has every right to be the very biggest diva in a world where, frankly, a lot of diva behaviour goes on.
Of course Khaled and I were worried about what she’d be like. Would she be difficult? Would she be demanding? Would she expect us to run around her like servants. We had both experienced behaviour like that from other big stars we’d helped bring to the UK in the past.
But I have to report, Dina is a total darling!
Firstly, she’s tiny. And seems slightly shy. She does that dip thing so many of us do when she gets a compliment or when she meets someone for the first time. She sort of dips down and slightly away from you, as if not wanting to make herself too big and important. And she has a lovely sweet, shy smile.
She also has a great sense of humour. The audience got a sense of that in the Saturday night show as she joked and backchatted with them between her dances. And backstage she was really joyful and funny. I mentioned in my last post the cartoon run she did from the wings, winding herself up and going off like Roadrunner. And we could see that she was having the time of her life in the wings watching the show. We had assumed she’d be ensconced in her dressing room until her time came to dance. But no, there she was with the rest of us backstage, laughing and zhagareeting and clapping along to our performances.
But her sense of humour really shone at the Sunday evening dinner.
I have to tell you here and now - the Sunday evening event is billed as a relaxing dinner at the end of a busy festival. But in fact it always turns into the mother of all parties! Get together an international crowd of bellydancers who have been working hard all weekend (and going to bed early to be fresh for each morning’s workshops) and you’ll get the best party you’ve ever been to!
The restaurant had promised to clear a space for us to dance but when we arrived, the table that should have been moved away was still there. Occupied by two very elderly, very tipsy, ladies who had been there since lunchtime and were showing no sign of moving. We all got increasingly jittery as 8, then 9 o’clock came and went and still they stayed put.
Then they stood up and got their coats and you felt the tension in the restaurant tighten as we anticipated the moment we had been waiting for. Two waiters carried the table away and it all kicked off! Khaled immediately got up on his chair and started dancing. Aziza, not to be outdone was up on hers in an instant! It was the signal we all needed and the rest of the party went wild!
Then there was the remarkable moment when Dina got up to dance. We had put together a CD of mixed bellydance party music – Shaabi, pop, a few drum solos and some classic favourites. Suddenly Tahtil Shibbak came on and everyone looked to Dina. She got up from the table, pretended to elbow her way through the crowd and, memorably dressed in combat boots, trousers and a buttoned up cardigan, launched into a wonderful, lightly caricatured version of her signature dance. Laughing her head off all the way through.
As the party continued I think all of us were pinching ourselves to find ourselves dancing around in a circle with Dina. But none of us had a more memorable time than Behiye Binnaz, a lovely, popular girl in the local bellydance community, who suddenly found herself dancing in the centre of the circle with Dina, Kazafy and Khaled pretending to be her backing dancers. They were playing the part of the Ghawazee dancers who often appear in old films behind stars like Samiya Gamal. As people realized what was going on, we all joined in and Behiye was surrounded by the whole international crowd, joyfully clapping along and calling out her name.
I can’t begin to tell you the respect I felt for Behiye in managing to hold it together, when most of us would have blushed and run away. In her modesty, she did try to escape a few times, but we wouldn’t let her. So she danced and danced and danced. With some of the greatest names in bellydance cheering her on.
And then when the track finished and she sat down, her teacher, Ann Hall, came over and showed her the video she had taken of the moment. And Behiya wept rich tears of joy and disbelief.
What else to tell you? Well apparently there’s a video somewhere of Dina climbing a ladder outside the restaurant, but I haven’t seen that yet. And there was the beautiful moment when I saw Aziza and Dina, two dancers I admire more than any in the world, exchange glances of friendship and understanding. And what about the Debke line which snaked around the restaurant, filled with some of the biggest dance stars in the world?
But the biggest, most scandalous news I can give you? Dina had three puddings!! Yes THREE! Ice-cream, cake and chocolate brownie with cream and yet more ice-cream.
How on earth does she stay that tiny?
Tuesday, 25 September 2012
Gala Show with Dina! Backstage stories!
There are twenty minutes to go
until curtain up. The audience is in the auditorium, the house lights are up
and backstage all is slightly frenzied final preparations.
Dina’s hairdresser (Hipsinc’s
very own Chantel) has just left, Orit has lost the friend who is meant to be helping her
dress, Aziza is in her dressing room cutting a thigh-high slit into the skirt
she just bought that afternoon to wear in her second set and I have only just
started my makeup. Which usually takes around an hour to get right.
We get the final call. Five
minutes to go until curtain up. Aziza and I reach the wings at the same time:
“OMG Charlotte, do you have any hairspray?” I don’t. The closest dressing room
is the boys’ – we’re not likely to find anything there. The next one is Dina. I
start to run to Dina’s dressing room to see if she has any hairspray Aziza can
borrow. But Khaled has overheard our conversation. “Don’t worry Aziza, Kazafy
has hairspray!”
You heard it here first. Aziza
was wearing Kazafy’s hairspray on stage at Shimmy in the City.
The show started and the audience
went crazy! Watching a great show from the audience is wonderful. The
performers are focusing all their attention on you and of course you see the
dance from the direction you are meant to. But the audience may or may not be
aware that off in the wings are all the other performers, having the time of
their lives. Clapping and zhagareeting and cheering their co-performers on.
At one point in the second half,
Dina turned to me and said: “I’m having a wonderful time! I’ve never done this
in my life before – stood backstage with everyone and watched from the wings.
It’s fantastic!”
And I have to tell you all, Dina
had the time of her life in London this year. She loved the teaching but she
absolutely adored performing for such an appreciative audience. She rarely
travels to international festivals (I think I’m right in saying Shimmy in the
City was only the third festival she had done outside Egypt) and it was amazing
for her to dance for an audience that was so genuinely (and loudly) excited to
see her.
All performers are in need of
appreciation. We all fear we are not quite good enough. And the pure joy
and pleasure on Dina’s face when she came off stage was a beautiful sight to
behold.
So would you like a few more insider
memories of backstage at Shimmy in the City?
Well, there was the fact that the
haze machine broke down during the first half. The technical team managed to
fix it during Prince Kayammer’s set, but there was a massive cloud of smoke for
no obvious reason during his drum solo. I panicked when I saw all that haze
because I knew it was meant for my own solo which followed. It was as I feared. Prince’s bright, perky drum solo, loads
of haze. My moody start, no haze. Such is life as a performer…
I think you also need to know that only a minute before that moody start I was frantically ironing my veil. As I mentioned in my previous blog, when you are organising a show you never have enough time for your own preparation. During Prince Kayammer's drum solo I was in the room known as 'wardrobe' listening to every beat of it through the backstage loudspeakers and trying to work out if it sounded like the music was coming to an end. If it did, and the applause started, I would have to dash to the wings and go on stage with a half ironed veil. I made it with about 30 seconds to spare!
And I'm dying to tell you about the remarkable sprint that Dina did at the end of every set. She would gesture to the sound technician to start her next piece of music and then literally run through the wings and into her dressing room, where Elena Eleftheriou was all set to help her out of one costume and into the next. Just over a minute later she would reappear back in the wings and do a crazy cartoon preparation, winding herself up for the next run on to stage, laughing all the way!
I think you also need to know that only a minute before that moody start I was frantically ironing my veil. As I mentioned in my previous blog, when you are organising a show you never have enough time for your own preparation. During Prince Kayammer's drum solo I was in the room known as 'wardrobe' listening to every beat of it through the backstage loudspeakers and trying to work out if it sounded like the music was coming to an end. If it did, and the applause started, I would have to dash to the wings and go on stage with a half ironed veil. I made it with about 30 seconds to spare!
And I'm dying to tell you about the remarkable sprint that Dina did at the end of every set. She would gesture to the sound technician to start her next piece of music and then literally run through the wings and into her dressing room, where Elena Eleftheriou was all set to help her out of one costume and into the next. Just over a minute later she would reappear back in the wings and do a crazy cartoon preparation, winding herself up for the next run on to stage, laughing all the way!
There was also the mad run with
Khaled through the main foyer and bar of the Fairfield Halls at about 9.30pm.
Me wearing a galabaya, him wearing a very tight, brief two-piece costume and a
large quantity of glitter and makeup. He needed to get from backstage to the
back of the auditorium for his second entrance and that was the only way to go. We got some very funny
looks I can tell you!
Then there was the moment we lost
Orit on the TV screen backstage and didn’t know what to do. The backstage screen
only shows the stage and about half of the auditorium and Orit had gone into
the audience to dance. Towards the end of her set she went high up into the
auditorium and we lost her. Then her music finished. And she didn’t reappear.
Where had she gone? Was she still
in the audience or had she decided to go out of one of the doors in the
auditorium to get backstage? We left it a couple of minutes to see if she would
reappear, but nothing. No music, but still no Orit. What to do? Should we bring
the house lights back down and start the next performance?
Thankfully, after what seemed
like an age to us (but was probably only half a minute) she reappeared and we
were able to wait for her to come back onto the stage. And we avoided the
embarrassment of bringing the lights down on one of the world’s top stars!
One of the best times for me was
the wonderful four minutes I spent watching my Project Lift Off girls perform.
I had decided to choreograph a crazy country sha’abi piece for the group, which
consisted of 19 dancers who had been regularly attending my courses for the
past few months. It included several fast, complex step patterns, some great
jokes, and a lot of characterization and theatricality.
I had frightened the life out of
them in the first rehearsal, six weeks earlier, when I told them that we had to
make sure the performance was really good, because not only would there be
around 400 experienced international bellydancers in the audience, there would
also be my Hollywood studio executive and the film writer. Oh and Dina, Aziza,
Orit and Kazafy would probably be watching from the wings!
I’m not sure they totally
believed the bit about Dina watching from the wings, and as one of the dancers
posted on my Facebook page after the event, she almost passed out when she
looked out into the wings and there was Dina watching!! There was also Khaled laughing
his head off at their antics and me, bursting with pride at the quality and
enthusiasm of their performance.
But possibly the memory I’ll
cherish forever is of Khaled and I standing in the wings watching Dina perform.
I was standing behind Khaled, my arms around him. He was clutching my hand. And
with tears in our eyes we whispered to each other that this was the dream we
had both held for years, but never quite imagined would really happen. And here
it was. And it was perfect.
Monday, 24 September 2012
Shimmy in the City workshops and show preparation!
Gosh it's been a crazy, full-on weekend! Non-stop work, an amazing show, and all topped off by the craziest party night I've ever experienced!
Saturday began with dancers congregating from every corner of the world to take workshops with some of the very biggest names in bellydance. Aziza and Kazafy kicked off in the morning and then the big moment came at 12.30 when the doors opened for Dina's technique workshop - the hottest ticket in town!
I was hidden in the theatre, preparing the show for the whole day, but I peeked in at one point to see everyone on the floor, gazing in rapt attention as Dina explained some fine point of technique to them. The feedback afterwards was just amazing. People were knocked out by her generosity of spirit, her superb teaching skills and her incredible technique. Any fears about the ability of such an enormous star to teach disappeared in an instant.
My day continued non-stop. I had allocated time slots for each star to come and rehearse and talk to the technical crew about their lighting and sound requirements, so there was a steady stream of performers coming through. Then there were dressing rooms to organise, programmes to fold, water and snacks to be organised and music to be checked. And I also had to try and remember to get my own rehearsal and lighting tech in!
With me throughout the day (and also on Friday) was Gwyn, the film writer. This weekend was the start of her research for the script she is writing for the Hollywood studio and it was an amazing opportunity to see behind the scenes at a big event. Gwyn's a keen bellydancer herself so I lost her several times in the souk, but she managed to control herself to an extent!
One of the drawbacks of organising a show is that you never get enough time to prepare for your own performance. Each year I tell myself I'll shut myself in my dressing room at least an hour before the show and get my makeup and hair done properly. I never manage it! There's always some last minute crisis. This time I had exactly twenty minutes to get changed and made up.
The truth must be told! I went on stage with my toenail paint smudged, the roughest face paint I've ever done, no glitter and no false eyelashes!! Well, as long as the dance was OK hopefully no-one noticed!
And now it's checkout time at the hotel. Dina has just left and Aziza and I have to pack up and leave. Aziza is staying with me for a few days so we can both chill and recover from the weekend. I'll try to write more later (it'll be tomorrow at the latest) because I know you're dying to know what it was like backstage. I can tell you now - it was fabulous!
Saturday began with dancers congregating from every corner of the world to take workshops with some of the very biggest names in bellydance. Aziza and Kazafy kicked off in the morning and then the big moment came at 12.30 when the doors opened for Dina's technique workshop - the hottest ticket in town!
I was hidden in the theatre, preparing the show for the whole day, but I peeked in at one point to see everyone on the floor, gazing in rapt attention as Dina explained some fine point of technique to them. The feedback afterwards was just amazing. People were knocked out by her generosity of spirit, her superb teaching skills and her incredible technique. Any fears about the ability of such an enormous star to teach disappeared in an instant.
My day continued non-stop. I had allocated time slots for each star to come and rehearse and talk to the technical crew about their lighting and sound requirements, so there was a steady stream of performers coming through. Then there were dressing rooms to organise, programmes to fold, water and snacks to be organised and music to be checked. And I also had to try and remember to get my own rehearsal and lighting tech in!
With me throughout the day (and also on Friday) was Gwyn, the film writer. This weekend was the start of her research for the script she is writing for the Hollywood studio and it was an amazing opportunity to see behind the scenes at a big event. Gwyn's a keen bellydancer herself so I lost her several times in the souk, but she managed to control herself to an extent!
One of the drawbacks of organising a show is that you never get enough time to prepare for your own performance. Each year I tell myself I'll shut myself in my dressing room at least an hour before the show and get my makeup and hair done properly. I never manage it! There's always some last minute crisis. This time I had exactly twenty minutes to get changed and made up.
The truth must be told! I went on stage with my toenail paint smudged, the roughest face paint I've ever done, no glitter and no false eyelashes!! Well, as long as the dance was OK hopefully no-one noticed!
And now it's checkout time at the hotel. Dina has just left and Aziza and I have to pack up and leave. Aziza is staying with me for a few days so we can both chill and recover from the weekend. I'll try to write more later (it'll be tomorrow at the latest) because I know you're dying to know what it was like backstage. I can tell you now - it was fabulous!
Friday, 21 September 2012
Shimmy in the City Day One!
Well, it's not often I admit defeat, but blogging throughout the day was way too ambitious given that I'm also running a pretty large international bellydance festival AND hosting the biggest star in the bellydance firmament! And I've got so many stories to tell you from today! Where to start?
Do I tell you about the wonderful atmosphere as dancers from Portugal, Russia, Japan, Singapore, Belgium, France and of course the UK, started to gather in the big ballroom of the Fairfield Halls? To compete, to perform, to support their friends, or just to watch and marvel.
Or should I try to describe the incredible colours of the souk? The fabulous costumes from the very best importers and costumiers the UK can boast.
Do I tell you about the moment that Dina, tiny, delicate and utterly beautiful, walked through the doors of the arrivals hall, wearing the biggest smile I've ever seen?
Or about the ripple that grew into a roar as she arrived at the hafla? And everyone got to their feet and clapped and cheered and zhagareeted until they could clap no more. Whilst Dina looked completely abashed and shy and adorable as she acknowledged our love and thanks for everything she has given our dance.
I could tell you about trying to cram four people (Khaled, me, Eman Zaki and Gwyn the film writer) into my small car along with eight enormous suitcases.
Or the surprise to see Dina's chauffeur appear in the hafla, in the guise of the leader of the band!
But it's late and I need to sleep. So I'll just leave you with a few pictures, including my favourite of the day - Eman and Khaled squashed together in the back of that car just after we had miraculously managed to fit everything in.
And here's the big moment we had been waiting for - Dina arriving at the airport.
And finally, Aziza, Orit and I dancing at the hafla, just before Dina's arrival.
I'll try to write more tomorrow. I'll be spending the day in the theatre, preparing the show. And then at 7.30 the curtains will open on the biggest, most exciting bellydance show the UK has ever seen! See you all there!
Do I tell you about the wonderful atmosphere as dancers from Portugal, Russia, Japan, Singapore, Belgium, France and of course the UK, started to gather in the big ballroom of the Fairfield Halls? To compete, to perform, to support their friends, or just to watch and marvel.
Or should I try to describe the incredible colours of the souk? The fabulous costumes from the very best importers and costumiers the UK can boast.
Do I tell you about the moment that Dina, tiny, delicate and utterly beautiful, walked through the doors of the arrivals hall, wearing the biggest smile I've ever seen?
Or about the ripple that grew into a roar as she arrived at the hafla? And everyone got to their feet and clapped and cheered and zhagareeted until they could clap no more. Whilst Dina looked completely abashed and shy and adorable as she acknowledged our love and thanks for everything she has given our dance.
I could tell you about trying to cram four people (Khaled, me, Eman Zaki and Gwyn the film writer) into my small car along with eight enormous suitcases.
Or the surprise to see Dina's chauffeur appear in the hafla, in the guise of the leader of the band!
But it's late and I need to sleep. So I'll just leave you with a few pictures, including my favourite of the day - Eman and Khaled squashed together in the back of that car just after we had miraculously managed to fit everything in.
And here's the big moment we had been waiting for - Dina arriving at the airport.
And finally, Aziza, Orit and I dancing at the hafla, just before Dina's arrival.
Thursday, 20 September 2012
Thursday - pickup day
Well, it's 5.30am and the adrenaline has kicked in! For the organisers, Thursday is really day one of the festival - it's the day we start picking up the stars from the airports and we all begin congregating at the hotel.
Last night Aziza tweeted me a photo of her plane with the message 'I'm on my way!' I've just checked Aziza's flight and it's due in early - 6.50. So I'll drink my tea, jump in the shower and off I go! I warned her I'd take a photo of her coming through arrivals - she's the only person I know who can come off an overnight transatlantic flight looking adorable and I think the world needs to see the cruel truth!
So what did I tell you? Eight hours on a plane overnight from Canada, no sleep at all, and she looks great! Laughing too! We're now back at my place, drinking coffees, stroking my cats and catching up after what seems like years but in fact is just 18 months. So much to share - our time together never seems long enough.
And now it's 12.30 and Orit is due to land at Heathrow any minute, where the taxi I booked yesterday will be picking her up. Kazafy and Prince Kayammer are already here, so that just leaves Dina. Dina's big performance night in Cairo is Thursday so she'll be flying in on Friday. We'll be picking her up at around 2pm and bringing her to the hotel for a rest before joining us all for the Friday night hafla - which is surely going to be the classiest bop ever seen in bellydance circles!
I'll be updating my blog throughout the day for the next four days, so check back regularly or keep an eye on my Facebook updates for all the latest news!
8pm and the question on my mind is 'why does something I think will take an hour always take three?' And why do all the tiniest last minute jobs take an absolute age? Or do I just have to recognise that when you've got a dear friend with you that you only see once a year, you really do need to factor in a year's worth of catch up.
Anyway. We just arrived at the hotel and guess what? The hotel reception staff are Arabic and they're unbearably excited because they've learned that Dina is coming to stay! How cool is that?
And the hotel is chock full of gorgeous looking girls from every corner of the world that just have that bellydancer look about them - you know, long hair, great figure and an unmistakeable hint of last night's glitter and eyelash glue about them.
So, now I'm off to the bar and a chance to see who's up for a chat and a glass of wine. See you all tomorrow at the hafla!!
Last night Aziza tweeted me a photo of her plane with the message 'I'm on my way!' I've just checked Aziza's flight and it's due in early - 6.50. So I'll drink my tea, jump in the shower and off I go! I warned her I'd take a photo of her coming through arrivals - she's the only person I know who can come off an overnight transatlantic flight looking adorable and I think the world needs to see the cruel truth!
And now it's 12.30 and Orit is due to land at Heathrow any minute, where the taxi I booked yesterday will be picking her up. Kazafy and Prince Kayammer are already here, so that just leaves Dina. Dina's big performance night in Cairo is Thursday so she'll be flying in on Friday. We'll be picking her up at around 2pm and bringing her to the hotel for a rest before joining us all for the Friday night hafla - which is surely going to be the classiest bop ever seen in bellydance circles!
I'll be updating my blog throughout the day for the next four days, so check back regularly or keep an eye on my Facebook updates for all the latest news!
8pm and the question on my mind is 'why does something I think will take an hour always take three?' And why do all the tiniest last minute jobs take an absolute age? Or do I just have to recognise that when you've got a dear friend with you that you only see once a year, you really do need to factor in a year's worth of catch up.
Anyway. We just arrived at the hotel and guess what? The hotel reception staff are Arabic and they're unbearably excited because they've learned that Dina is coming to stay! How cool is that?
And the hotel is chock full of gorgeous looking girls from every corner of the world that just have that bellydancer look about them - you know, long hair, great figure and an unmistakeable hint of last night's glitter and eyelash glue about them.
So, now I'm off to the bar and a chance to see who's up for a chat and a glass of wine. See you all tomorrow at the hafla!!
Wednesday, 19 September 2012
Countdown Wednesday!
It's Wednesday, it's 7.30 in the evening and I'm shattered! But I thought it would be fun to give you an insight into a typical day in the run up to a big festival like Shimmy in the City. I'm nothing if not public spirited!
My day started, as has every day this week, with a head-to-head with the big whiteboard in my home office upstairs in my home in rural Kent. This morning it was covered with tasks. Now there is just one left. But after I've finished this blog entry it will be covered with jobs for tomorrow!
So what exactly did my list look like today? OK here goes...
Well, I can tell you that the show will be opened by the fabulous Aziza. I truly cannot think of a more exciting opening! There will be three sets, with Orit closing the first set with an entrance piece, followed by a heartfelt Tarab - the emotional style of musical interpretation she will be teaching in her Sunday workshop. A request has been sent to the lighting team for lots of smoke haze!
In between Kazafy will dance two duets plus a saidi stick solo. Khaled will be showcasing the most incredible costume I have ever seen, which he made himself (you will not believe this one - it's genius!) Prince Kayammer will dance an oriental solo, I'll be doing a seriously emotional number, (cue more smoke haze) and there will be lots of going into the audience and generally warming you up for the moment you've all been waiting for...
... a full set from Dina! Yes, 30-45 minutes of the queen of bellydance! On stage. In Croydon. Right in front of your very eyes!!
I can't imagine how amazing the atmosphere in the auditorium is going to be, but I reckon it's going to be noisy and it's going to be electric!
Now I'm off for my dinner, cooked by my titanium hipped husband. Then it's an early night in readiness for a 7am drive to Heathrow and Aziza!
My day started, as has every day this week, with a head-to-head with the big whiteboard in my home office upstairs in my home in rural Kent. This morning it was covered with tasks. Now there is just one left. But after I've finished this blog entry it will be covered with jobs for tomorrow!
So what exactly did my list look like today? OK here goes...
- Write, design and print out 500 programmes for the show.
- Print out the running orders to go up on dressing room doors and backstage.
- Type up and print out certificates for everyone entering the competitions.
- Write and oversee the design of flyers advertising next year's festival (yes, we work that far in advance, and unfortunately I only received photos of the stars yesterday morning!)
- Book a cab for Orit (she's coming on a different flight from that expected and I won't be able to pick her up).
- Liaise with the technical team at the theatre on lighting and sound requirements.
- Edit and publish to You Tube a rehearsal video for my Project Lift Off performers.
- Book an extra show ticket for a guest of the studio executive for my Hollywood film
- Organise a hire car because my own car suddenly sprung a tyre leak and the garage can't repair it until tomorrow. (I'm picking up Aziza from the airport at 7.30am and I need a car!)
- Put in an application for a performance and teaching slot at MOVE IT show in March - I know I should have done it last week but, things always get left until the last minute at times like this!!
- In addition I had to shop for my husband for the weekend - he's just had a hip replacement so can't drive to the supermarket! Bad timing or what?
Well, I can tell you that the show will be opened by the fabulous Aziza. I truly cannot think of a more exciting opening! There will be three sets, with Orit closing the first set with an entrance piece, followed by a heartfelt Tarab - the emotional style of musical interpretation she will be teaching in her Sunday workshop. A request has been sent to the lighting team for lots of smoke haze!
In between Kazafy will dance two duets plus a saidi stick solo. Khaled will be showcasing the most incredible costume I have ever seen, which he made himself (you will not believe this one - it's genius!) Prince Kayammer will dance an oriental solo, I'll be doing a seriously emotional number, (cue more smoke haze) and there will be lots of going into the audience and generally warming you up for the moment you've all been waiting for...
... a full set from Dina! Yes, 30-45 minutes of the queen of bellydance! On stage. In Croydon. Right in front of your very eyes!!
I can't imagine how amazing the atmosphere in the auditorium is going to be, but I reckon it's going to be noisy and it's going to be electric!
Now I'm off for my dinner, cooked by my titanium hipped husband. Then it's an early night in readiness for a 7am drive to Heathrow and Aziza!
Tuesday, 18 September 2012
Behind the scenes at Shimmy in the City!!
Well, I've just sent out the last Shimmy in the City newsletter and now the fun really starts!! From tomorrow onwards I'll be blogging and tweeting my way through one of the most exciting weekends British bellydancing has ever seen!!
Khaled has just picked up Kazafy from Heathrow, I'll be giving you the show running order tomorrow, Aziza, Orit and Prince Kayammer arrive on Thursday and on Friday we go to pick up Dina and the festival swings into action!!
So bookmark this link and check back every day to get the latest gossip, fun and insider info from Shimmy in the City!
Khaled has just picked up Kazafy from Heathrow, I'll be giving you the show running order tomorrow, Aziza, Orit and Prince Kayammer arrive on Thursday and on Friday we go to pick up Dina and the festival swings into action!!
So bookmark this link and check back every day to get the latest gossip, fun and insider info from Shimmy in the City!
Tuesday, 28 August 2012
A darkness at the heart of bellydance
I was intending to write today about my joy on signing my contract with the film studio. But a Facebook posting from Lorna Gow, the only British dancer working professionally in Cairo today, has driven me to come clean about something I feel very strongly about, and which has affected me personally on a very profound level.
WARNING: This story details experiences of rape and may be traumatic for anyone who has been through such an experience themselves.
WARNING: This story details experiences of rape and may be traumatic for anyone who has been through such an experience themselves.
Lorna wrote:
“So very very sad… Landlady discovered I am a dancer and has thrown me out. I have spent the entire week packing and crying. I am totally gutted. This flat has been my home for nearly 6 years and I can't count how many fun times I have had here not to mention all the wonderful people from all over the world who have stayed here with me. Thank you all. Here's wishing for a more tolerant, accepting Egypt in the future....”
Most women who learn bellydancing in the West find it incredibly empowering. The community is largely supportive and accepting of all and women tell me again and again that bellydance has changed their lives. They say they have learned to accept themselves and their bodies for the first time since adulthood, that it has helped them overcome fears and phobias and that they have made wonderful new friends as well as discovering a rich culture and a beautiful art form.
But the dark alter ego of our dance is the attitude in its home country towards dancers. There’s a very strange dichotomy in Egyptian society. Egyptians love music and dancing and elevate famous dancers to the status of megastars, yet at the same time, they look down on them, viewing them as ‘haram’ or sinful. In films, bellydancers are portrayed as sexual temptresses, trying to lure the hero away from the heroine and to have a dancer in the family is a cause of terrible shame.
In Egypt, dancers are assumed to be prostitutes. And indeed some are. The reason most top dancers in Cairo are Westerners is that nice Egyptian girls do not dance in public. And certainly not in revealing clothing. The natural extension of this attitude is a belief that all women who dance in public are sluts.
And it’s not just dancers. There is a firm conviction amongst Arab men that all Western women are sexually rapacious – desperate for sex with any man, at any time of the day or night. It’s an attitude I discovered when I lived in the Middle East and which is confirmed by female friends who live out there now. And I experienced the horrible consequences of that attitude myself, the first time I visited Egypt.
I first visited Cairo in 1982, at the age of 24. I was living in the Gulf at the time and wanted to learn more about bellydance in its spiritual home. While I was there I was gang raped. I had met two young men who were also on holiday in Cairo and we had stopped off at their apartment before going on to a nightclub. There was suddenly a frantic knocking at the door from the concierge, who told us the police were in the building because they had learned that there was a girl in an apartment with two men. He insisted that what we were doing was illegal and we would be arrested. He suggested the boys went out the front way and he would take me down the back stairs to safety.
You can guess the rest. Half way down the stairs I was pushed into a side room where he raped me. He then brought men from other apartments in the building to have sex with me. I assume he charged them for the privilege. Although I wept and begged them to stop, only one did. One Japanese man at least had the decency to stop raping me in response to my pleas. The Arab men just continued.
I would guess that these men assumed I was a prostitute because I was with two men. And that therefore I was fair game. In recent years, when I talked about it to friends who live in Cairo or who visit regularly, they told me that sort of thing doesn’t happen there. But I have a feeling that military rule may just have kept a lid on it. Because the public gang rape of Western women is becoming frighteningly prevalent in Egypt since the revolution.
In Tahrir Square on the very day of Mubarak’s resignation, a Western female reporter was violently gang raped with hundreds of men watching on. It happened to a French woman in January this year and then, just eight weeks ago a British female student was violently and publicly raped in Tahrir Square, even though she was with two Western male friends. Her friends were overcome and the woman was brutally sexually attacked by an enormous crowd of men. In public. In broad daylight. In the middle of the biggest square in Cairo.
And it has been going on for years much closer to home. In our very own bellydance community. Not gang rape as far as I’m aware, but the sexual abuse of Western dancers by certain Arab men who believe that all dancers are sluts and are asking for it.
I don’t actually blame these men for their attitudes – if you have been told something all your life, of course you will believe it. And this belief in the sexual rapaciousness of Western women, compounded by a belief that only bad women dance in public, is all pervasive and very, very strong.
In America last year there was a high profile scandal when the wife of Yousry Sharif – one of the best known and most respected Egyptian dance teachers in the world – accused him of years of physical and sexual abuse. And shockingly she said that he had always made it clear to her that he believed that all Western women who bellydance are sluts (yes, those same women who give him his living as a bellydance teacher). Furthermore, she challenged all women married to Arab men to acknowledge that their husbands despise Western women.
Now I know that it’s absolutely not true that all Arab men despise Western women. Wonderful men like Khaled Mahmoud and Hossam Ramzy respect us enormously and are good and kind and supportive to us and our community. They have been living in the UK for a long time and understand and respect our values. And I’m sure there are many other Arab men here who are just as respectful.
But I also know of shocking incidents in our own UK bellydance community. One of my closest friends was raped several years ago by a prominent member of the community. This man then told her friends, other dancers and even some potential employers that she had come on to him and begged him for sex. She was so traumatised by the event that for two years she wouldn’t leave the house alone. And I understand it has happened to others.
I know this is difficult stuff to talk about – to say that many Arab men think we are sluts for being Western AND bellydancers is not only tough and unpleasant, it also risks feeding the Islamophobia that is increasingly prevalent in our society. But it is very important that we Western women understand that attitudes are different in other societies and our modern ways can be very easily misinterpreted by men who hold ugly, outdated beliefs about us.
And I believe passionately that women should be open and honest about the abuse that happens to us and fight prejudice with all our might. It’s only by bringing things out into the clear light of day that we can look at them honestly and attempt to change the world for the better.
Cairo is a wonderful, amazing, exciting city. I love it and I love the Egyptian people, despite what happened to me in the past. But if you are going there at the moment, please dress modestly and do everything you can to keep yourself safe. And ideally go with an organised group such as Kay Taylor’s Farida Adventures.
Most of all, behave with propriety and self respect, both here and abroad. And of course continue to enjoy all the beauty and pleasure that there is in bellydance.
Wednesday, 15 August 2012
How I teach - a clarification
Someone wrote to me via Facebook the other day with reference to a statement in my previous post Challenging and Changing the Way I Teach that "for years I’ve only taught moves that are manageable for the least fit at any particular level." She was concerned that the way I had written the post gave the impression that I teach to the level of the least able students in class - the 'lowest common denominator' and that I was thereby not challenging the more able students enough. That's definitely not the case so I replied to her to explain and she suggested I write up a clarification in my blog so there was no confusion. So here goes...
Like most bellydance teachers, I have a very wide mix of ages and fitness levels in every class. When I started teaching in Croydon my oldest student was 84 (see Memories of Lilian in this blog) I also had a student aged 75 who had recently had two hip replacements and was walking with a stick and another who was, by her own admission, mortally obese.
It would not have been safe or appropriate to have taught deep stretches or a jazz-style warm up for those women. So, given that I was focused on creating a class that was accessible to all, rather than one aimed at preparing professional dancers for a career in bellydance, I tailored my teaching accordingly.
All my classes are challenging in terms of moves - at beginners level, learning upwards 8s or the Egyptian Walk is a challenge for anyone. At improver/intermediate level I bring in more complex step patterns, prop work and short choreographies as well as more challenging moves. And I make the class more aerobic to encourage greater fitness. If students get as far as my Croydon advanced class (and this is not for everyone - I have to be convinced that a student can manage it) then they get a far more demanding class with very challenging technique and choreographies. At this level I also introduce some physically demanding drills and latterly I've brought in half an hour of the dance conditioning that I teach in my London Project Lift Off class.
Oh and a clarification too for those people who have said they don't have time to teach body conditioning as they want to spend the time teaching dance. I agree it's hard if you only teach an hour's class, but early on I decided to make my Croydon advanced class one hour 20 minutes long, so with 30 minutes of conditioning we still have nearly an hour of bellydance technique etc. And my Project Lift Off classes are two hours - so 45 minutes of body conditioning gives us loads of time for everything else! However, it's fair to say that I currently go to a demanding jazz class at the Pineapple which is an hour long, of which 35 minutes is dance conditioning and only 25 minutes is taken up with 'dancing'. And it's packed to the gunnels every week with dancers at both student and pro level.
It's also fair to say that until recently even my Croydon advanced class was aimed at a fitness level that I felt everyone in that class could achieve. I was aware that several of the women were unable to get down on the floor (or as they say, they can get down, but they can't get up again!) So I didn't teach floor work and I also didn't do deep stretches or strength work such as press ups. But I've had such remarkable results with my London Project Lift Off classes that I decided I would go ahead and introduce those things to the Croydon class. The ladies that struggle with floor work do the moves standing up and everyone does as much of the body conditioning as they can cope with and then sits and laughs at the rest of us if they retire defeated at any point!
I should also point out (as someone also mentioned on Facebook) that I have decades of experience in this stuff. As well as having a degree in dance and education, I was one of the first teachers of stretch classes in London in the early 80s and I have been a dancer for five decades. I also have a decent understanding of anatomy and physiology as well as a good knowledge of safe exercise and a deep interest in current exercise practice, injury prevention and sports science. And, at a time when people can qualify to teach Zumba in a weekend, I care passionately about standards in teaching.
I hope this clears up any ambiguities in my previous post and please do feel free to comment on anything I write - I'm always really happy to answer questions or comments. Most people tend to comment via Facebook or by private message or email but it would be lovely to get them in the comments box below, so that the questions and answers are there for everyone to see and join the debate. A couple of people have said that they have had trouble adding comments here on the blog, so I've changed some of the settings and hopefully it will work now. Do let me know if you still have trouble posting here and I'll try to sort out what's going wrong.
But of course, do also feel free to comment via Facebook or email if you prefer!!
Like most bellydance teachers, I have a very wide mix of ages and fitness levels in every class. When I started teaching in Croydon my oldest student was 84 (see Memories of Lilian in this blog) I also had a student aged 75 who had recently had two hip replacements and was walking with a stick and another who was, by her own admission, mortally obese.
It would not have been safe or appropriate to have taught deep stretches or a jazz-style warm up for those women. So, given that I was focused on creating a class that was accessible to all, rather than one aimed at preparing professional dancers for a career in bellydance, I tailored my teaching accordingly.
All my classes are challenging in terms of moves - at beginners level, learning upwards 8s or the Egyptian Walk is a challenge for anyone. At improver/intermediate level I bring in more complex step patterns, prop work and short choreographies as well as more challenging moves. And I make the class more aerobic to encourage greater fitness. If students get as far as my Croydon advanced class (and this is not for everyone - I have to be convinced that a student can manage it) then they get a far more demanding class with very challenging technique and choreographies. At this level I also introduce some physically demanding drills and latterly I've brought in half an hour of the dance conditioning that I teach in my London Project Lift Off class.
Oh and a clarification too for those people who have said they don't have time to teach body conditioning as they want to spend the time teaching dance. I agree it's hard if you only teach an hour's class, but early on I decided to make my Croydon advanced class one hour 20 minutes long, so with 30 minutes of conditioning we still have nearly an hour of bellydance technique etc. And my Project Lift Off classes are two hours - so 45 minutes of body conditioning gives us loads of time for everything else! However, it's fair to say that I currently go to a demanding jazz class at the Pineapple which is an hour long, of which 35 minutes is dance conditioning and only 25 minutes is taken up with 'dancing'. And it's packed to the gunnels every week with dancers at both student and pro level.
It's also fair to say that until recently even my Croydon advanced class was aimed at a fitness level that I felt everyone in that class could achieve. I was aware that several of the women were unable to get down on the floor (or as they say, they can get down, but they can't get up again!) So I didn't teach floor work and I also didn't do deep stretches or strength work such as press ups. But I've had such remarkable results with my London Project Lift Off classes that I decided I would go ahead and introduce those things to the Croydon class. The ladies that struggle with floor work do the moves standing up and everyone does as much of the body conditioning as they can cope with and then sits and laughs at the rest of us if they retire defeated at any point!
I should also point out (as someone also mentioned on Facebook) that I have decades of experience in this stuff. As well as having a degree in dance and education, I was one of the first teachers of stretch classes in London in the early 80s and I have been a dancer for five decades. I also have a decent understanding of anatomy and physiology as well as a good knowledge of safe exercise and a deep interest in current exercise practice, injury prevention and sports science. And, at a time when people can qualify to teach Zumba in a weekend, I care passionately about standards in teaching.
I hope this clears up any ambiguities in my previous post and please do feel free to comment on anything I write - I'm always really happy to answer questions or comments. Most people tend to comment via Facebook or by private message or email but it would be lovely to get them in the comments box below, so that the questions and answers are there for everyone to see and join the debate. A couple of people have said that they have had trouble adding comments here on the blog, so I've changed some of the settings and hopefully it will work now. Do let me know if you still have trouble posting here and I'll try to sort out what's going wrong.
But of course, do also feel free to comment via Facebook or email if you prefer!!
Tuesday, 31 July 2012
Changing the way I teach
This Sunday was the final session in my Project Lift Off course before the summer break. As ever, we left the class exhausted, smelly and spent; our hair wringing wet against the napes of our necks, our muscles trembling. I like to think we also left with our adrenaline running high, our spirits lifted and our determination stronger than ever.
In Project Lift Off I’m trying to do no less than change the face of British bellydancing (I’ve never been one for small challenges) and in our first, faltering steps I can see the beginnings of that metamorphosis. It’s not that I want to change bellydance itself - although within my personal remit is the desire to create a new style to live alongside existing ones - but to change the way ‘serious’ bellydancers view themselves.
I grew up as a dancer. From the age of five to twenty five dance was my central core - it was how I viewed myself, how I introduced myself. One of my earliest memories is of my first ballet lesson, aged five. I remember the large ornate, but slightly mottled, mirror in the classroom, I remember my pink ballet slippers, I remember struggling with the steps. But most of all I remember knowing that this was what I wanted to do.
I lived, breathed and slept ballet throughout my childhood, until late adolescence when my ever-widening hips and chunky legs shattered all my dreams. But my disappointment led me to discover contemporary dance and, later, jazz - both of which are more accepting of larger body types. At college I studied Laban and contemporary dance and after graduating spent every day doing jazz and jazz-ballet classes in the nascent Pineapple Dance Centre in London’s Covent Garden.
What all these dance forms have in common is a fierce discipline. The daily class is non-negotiable. Late arrival in class is frowned upon. The body is trained and stretched beyond normal limits and tiredness or sickness is just something to be worked through.
The daily jazz class at the Pineapple was taught by a fearsome black American. Entry was by invite only and those of us not yet admitted would press our noses against the misted up windows of the enormous studio, filled to bursting with dancers working their bodies to a state of exhaustion. Every so often one of us would pluck up the courage to ask if we could join. He’d look you up and down and usually say no. Then one day he might relent and you were in. But you could never rest on your laurels - one missed class you might get away with, three in a row and you were out, never to be allowed back. A holiday could be booked in advance, sickness wasn’t on the agenda.
I remember the joy and total fear I felt the day he said yes to me. It wasn’t yes, you can come tomorrow, it was yes, go and find a place at the back of class. I was finally in and I was working my body harder than it had ever been worked before. Forty-five minutes of press ups, sit ups, leg lifts, buttock clenches. Then half an hour of centre work - arms, legs, turns, jumps. And finally, for fifteen minutes at the end, the hardest, fastest, scariest jazz routine I had ever faced.
I started that class feeling out of place and not up to the job. My brain couldn’t compute the routine fast enough for my legs to keep up and my body felt weak and uncoordinated, despite years of dancing. But after a few months of daily class I was strong, supple and fast, able to manage a passable attempt at the routine and no longer feeling like I was about to die during the conditioning section.
The longest part of a typical jazz class isn’t the dancing, it’s the body conditioning, which prepares the body and gets it strong and flexible enough to dance. Ballet is the same - the barre and centre exercises form the majority of the work done. Actual dancing takes up only a short section at the very end of class. Contrast this to a bellydance class, where we typically do a short warm up and then we’re straight into ‘moves’.
This is largely because of hobbyist nature of our dance - most women who bellydance do it once a week for fun. They want to learn how to shimmy and undulate, not do the equivalent of a gym circuit for half the class. And I believe that my main job, for most of my students, is to give them a damn good time whilst learning to dance to wonderful music. After all, the vast majority of bellydance students have no desire or pretension to perform professionally.
But whether because of the hobbyist nature of the dance, or because many people view bellydance as a folk dance rather than an art form, even at the highest level we don’t treat ourselves like other dancers. We don’t work at strengthening our body, we don’t stretch it out. We might complain about our upper arms wobbling as we do a shoulder shimmy, but it doesn’t occur to us to do triceps dips in class to stop it happening.
And the truth is that for years I’ve only taught moves that are manageable for the least fit at any particular level. I have never expected even my most advanced students to do the splits or a deep backbend in class, because I know that few of their bodies are capable of either. And that goes for my own body too. But the result of my lack of dance conditioning in the intervening years between that daily jazz class and today, is that when I dance on stage I often find my legs don’t feel quite strong enough to carry me. And when I choreograph for even my most advanced students I give them what I know they are capable of, rather than what I would really love them to do.
So with Project Lift Off I decided that it was about time I started to work with bellydancers in the way teachers and choreographers work in other dance forms. To treat them like ‘proper’ dancers. To give them 45 minutes of tough, tough body conditioning in every class. To push them beyond what they think their limits are and then a bit further. To give them routines that their brains and their bodies can hardly handle. Because I know that that way we can all grow.
The truly remarkable thing for me personally, is the way my own body has responded. It’s been an inspiration and total revelation to me. I’m 54 years old and post-menopausal. I assumed I would have to direct the most demanding parts of the conditioning without doing it myself. I certainly didn’t expect my ageing body would get much stronger or particularly flexible. But it has responded exactly the way it did 35 years ago, and just as fast. Every muscle is building strength and length, I’m almost down in the splits and even my old creaking knees are responding to the demands I’m putting on them with a sigh of relief. In fact my whole body seems to be thanking me for making it work, as if that’s what it was made for.
And I’m by no means the oldest in my class. The wonderful, inspirational Ann Hall is challenging even the youngest in stamina, strength and flexibility. And I know she won’t mind me saying she’s racing towards her seventh decade.
And what of the impact on our dancing? Well, it’s early days yet - Project Lift Off has only been going a few months - but I’m already noticing significant improvements in everyone’s dancing, myself included. I’m noticing far greater flow and connection; stronger, more explosive movements as well as more beauty in grace and line; and much faster assimilation of complex routines from everyone.
We’re about to start on our next adventure - a big performance piece for the main Saturday night show at Shimmy in the City. It’s a challenge for me to choreograph for twenty dancers, most of whom have only been studying with me for a few months. But even more, to try and create something interesting and dynamic without putting impossible demands on the dancers at the stage they are right now. I've decided to create a lively sha’abi piece to a classic number which I hope will lift the audience’s hearts.
Wish us luck!
In Project Lift Off I’m trying to do no less than change the face of British bellydancing (I’ve never been one for small challenges) and in our first, faltering steps I can see the beginnings of that metamorphosis. It’s not that I want to change bellydance itself - although within my personal remit is the desire to create a new style to live alongside existing ones - but to change the way ‘serious’ bellydancers view themselves.
I grew up as a dancer. From the age of five to twenty five dance was my central core - it was how I viewed myself, how I introduced myself. One of my earliest memories is of my first ballet lesson, aged five. I remember the large ornate, but slightly mottled, mirror in the classroom, I remember my pink ballet slippers, I remember struggling with the steps. But most of all I remember knowing that this was what I wanted to do.
I lived, breathed and slept ballet throughout my childhood, until late adolescence when my ever-widening hips and chunky legs shattered all my dreams. But my disappointment led me to discover contemporary dance and, later, jazz - both of which are more accepting of larger body types. At college I studied Laban and contemporary dance and after graduating spent every day doing jazz and jazz-ballet classes in the nascent Pineapple Dance Centre in London’s Covent Garden.
What all these dance forms have in common is a fierce discipline. The daily class is non-negotiable. Late arrival in class is frowned upon. The body is trained and stretched beyond normal limits and tiredness or sickness is just something to be worked through.
The daily jazz class at the Pineapple was taught by a fearsome black American. Entry was by invite only and those of us not yet admitted would press our noses against the misted up windows of the enormous studio, filled to bursting with dancers working their bodies to a state of exhaustion. Every so often one of us would pluck up the courage to ask if we could join. He’d look you up and down and usually say no. Then one day he might relent and you were in. But you could never rest on your laurels - one missed class you might get away with, three in a row and you were out, never to be allowed back. A holiday could be booked in advance, sickness wasn’t on the agenda.
I remember the joy and total fear I felt the day he said yes to me. It wasn’t yes, you can come tomorrow, it was yes, go and find a place at the back of class. I was finally in and I was working my body harder than it had ever been worked before. Forty-five minutes of press ups, sit ups, leg lifts, buttock clenches. Then half an hour of centre work - arms, legs, turns, jumps. And finally, for fifteen minutes at the end, the hardest, fastest, scariest jazz routine I had ever faced.
I started that class feeling out of place and not up to the job. My brain couldn’t compute the routine fast enough for my legs to keep up and my body felt weak and uncoordinated, despite years of dancing. But after a few months of daily class I was strong, supple and fast, able to manage a passable attempt at the routine and no longer feeling like I was about to die during the conditioning section.
The longest part of a typical jazz class isn’t the dancing, it’s the body conditioning, which prepares the body and gets it strong and flexible enough to dance. Ballet is the same - the barre and centre exercises form the majority of the work done. Actual dancing takes up only a short section at the very end of class. Contrast this to a bellydance class, where we typically do a short warm up and then we’re straight into ‘moves’.
This is largely because of hobbyist nature of our dance - most women who bellydance do it once a week for fun. They want to learn how to shimmy and undulate, not do the equivalent of a gym circuit for half the class. And I believe that my main job, for most of my students, is to give them a damn good time whilst learning to dance to wonderful music. After all, the vast majority of bellydance students have no desire or pretension to perform professionally.
But whether because of the hobbyist nature of the dance, or because many people view bellydance as a folk dance rather than an art form, even at the highest level we don’t treat ourselves like other dancers. We don’t work at strengthening our body, we don’t stretch it out. We might complain about our upper arms wobbling as we do a shoulder shimmy, but it doesn’t occur to us to do triceps dips in class to stop it happening.
And the truth is that for years I’ve only taught moves that are manageable for the least fit at any particular level. I have never expected even my most advanced students to do the splits or a deep backbend in class, because I know that few of their bodies are capable of either. And that goes for my own body too. But the result of my lack of dance conditioning in the intervening years between that daily jazz class and today, is that when I dance on stage I often find my legs don’t feel quite strong enough to carry me. And when I choreograph for even my most advanced students I give them what I know they are capable of, rather than what I would really love them to do.
So with Project Lift Off I decided that it was about time I started to work with bellydancers in the way teachers and choreographers work in other dance forms. To treat them like ‘proper’ dancers. To give them 45 minutes of tough, tough body conditioning in every class. To push them beyond what they think their limits are and then a bit further. To give them routines that their brains and their bodies can hardly handle. Because I know that that way we can all grow.
The truly remarkable thing for me personally, is the way my own body has responded. It’s been an inspiration and total revelation to me. I’m 54 years old and post-menopausal. I assumed I would have to direct the most demanding parts of the conditioning without doing it myself. I certainly didn’t expect my ageing body would get much stronger or particularly flexible. But it has responded exactly the way it did 35 years ago, and just as fast. Every muscle is building strength and length, I’m almost down in the splits and even my old creaking knees are responding to the demands I’m putting on them with a sigh of relief. In fact my whole body seems to be thanking me for making it work, as if that’s what it was made for.
And I’m by no means the oldest in my class. The wonderful, inspirational Ann Hall is challenging even the youngest in stamina, strength and flexibility. And I know she won’t mind me saying she’s racing towards her seventh decade.
And what of the impact on our dancing? Well, it’s early days yet - Project Lift Off has only been going a few months - but I’m already noticing significant improvements in everyone’s dancing, myself included. I’m noticing far greater flow and connection; stronger, more explosive movements as well as more beauty in grace and line; and much faster assimilation of complex routines from everyone.
We’re about to start on our next adventure - a big performance piece for the main Saturday night show at Shimmy in the City. It’s a challenge for me to choreograph for twenty dancers, most of whom have only been studying with me for a few months. But even more, to try and create something interesting and dynamic without putting impossible demands on the dancers at the stage they are right now. I've decided to create a lively sha’abi piece to a classic number which I hope will lift the audience’s hearts.
Wish us luck!
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