A few months back, I had to do some belly dance teacher soul searching. I teach American Tribal Style Belly Dance. Recently, the creator of this amazing dance form, Carolena Nericcio, has become increasingly vocal that all ATS dancers should do the dance the way she does, or it shouldn’t be called ATS. Now, I teach a form of ATS that is very closely based on the Fat Chance dance vocabulary with a few stylistic decisions made here and there, some by me, some by my first teacher. Carolena has expressed that moves that haven’t been approved by her should not be considered ATS.

I understand where she’s coming from. I have seen a lot of ATS over the last 8 years. Some has been really good, some mediocre, and some really not true to the ATS style.   ATS has spawned a whole movement of growing and changing (and sometimes difficult to define genres of belly dance). There is a great article on this at tribalbellydance.org. What a lovely movement this has been. Art giving birth to art.

So a couple months ago, after a few discussions and after reading the above article, I had to do some soul searching. If everything I’m performing and teaching is not exactly as Fat Chance would do it, am I really doing American Tribal Style?

I let this marinate in my mind for a bit and kept teaching the style as I learned it with some occasional stylistic choices and decisions made amongst my dancers to clarify cues and transitions to make our dancing cleaner.

I thought about how some of the stylistic decisions had been made by my first teach, Myra Krien, and thought of her decades of belly dance experience and decade of ATS experience. I trust her judgment.

I also thought about the incredibly strong technique and stylistic base she instilled in me in my several years of training with her.

I still had some doubt in my mind, until my two best ATS students went to TribOriginal last month. One of the workshops they took was with a couple of lovely ladies who perform ATS and study directly under Carolena.

First of all, my students expressed how confident they felt in this workshop and how they felt like their arms were in the correct places, their posture was correct and they had a pretty easy time following along and picking up the new moves they learned.  Other students asked for tips when they were getting something easily or their way of executing the movement looked correct. This made me feel very proud; proud of them for their dedication to classes and how much they’ve learned, proud of me for teaching them so well, and proud to be part of such a massive global dance movement.

This along with this next tidbit restored my confidence in my right to call myself an American Tribal Style dancer. They learned in this workshop that even the Fat Chance language is still evolving.  Even the base dance form is evolving. In beautiful ways. And we evolve with it.

And I feel confident enough in my ATS training and experience to make some technical, artistic or stylistic choices and still keep the integrity of the ATS language and style in tact.  As with any language, there may be slightly different dialects from place to place. Language is fluid, more about what you’re communicating than the exact words you are speaking. The sentence, more powerful than an individual word.  Art communicates in an organic way, with a life of its own.

I can honestly say I think we are representing American Tribal Style well.

The last of my ferrets passed away this weekend.  He was 7, which is quite a good life-span for a ferret.

It’s only now in the total absence of ferret presence in my life that I realize how much my daily habits were affected by my ferret babies. Today is the first day since he died and I find myself looking down everywhere I walk to make sure there’s no ferret in my path, watching as I open doors for ferret escapees, casually glancing around to see what the ferret is doing, and react to every little sound by thinking it’s a ferret making noise.

It’s strange to suddenly not be a ferret owner after having been one for the better part of a decade.  It wasn’t always easy. Ferrets are high maintenance pets with special living needs and are prone to health problems. But they are delightful, funny, spunky pets like no other which makes up for the former.

That being said, I’m not ready to start it all again yet. In fact, I think I’ll take a break before getting any pets.

I will miss being a ferret owner.  And I certainly miss my ferret babies.

Havoc, Chaos and Vermin

They were cute weren’t they?  Perhaps I’ll adopt some more one day.

Wow. I’ve never seen anyone do as many tosses with poi as this guy does.  Some really clean stalls, too. Very impressive control. Really cool style.

Wow, April was my last blog post? Ok, so I’m a little behind here. Everything is pretty good. I’ve taken a generally optimistic turn. Dance classes have been going great.

At the beginning of the summer I started a new Beginning American Tribal Style class in a new, more popular time slot. I’ve gained a lot of new students. It’s been a lot of fun. I’ve designed it around the very basic ATS movements and the standard triplet zill pattern. It takes 6 weeks to cycle back through so everything gets reviewed every month and a half.

The students are great. Very excited, and very supportive of each other. I try to bestow upon them the little gems of knowledge I’ve collected and find the most useful. Planting seeds.

Starting in the fall, I will have an ATS Beginning II class following my Beginning class that will focus on beginning combo moves and specialty moves with a couple specialty zill patterns. I’m planning on also designing this class on a 6 week cycle.

I love having a bigger class and new students who I can really help develop a safe and strong technique. I feel newly inspired by my students each week. I always leave class rejuvenated and energized.

The only downside to the new class schedule is there’s no official time now for my Intermediate students from my troupe who have been dancing with me the last 2 years. The Intermediate class has been tacked onto the end of troupe rehearsal since we are the performance level dancers. Unfortunately, our time usually gets swallowed by other parts of rehearsal. Must find some way to remedy this….

Oh yeah, check out this short clip taken by an audience member of me and my Performance students performing some slow ATS at Panoply a couple months ago.

I got some bad news earlier today (nothing life or death, just a little disheartening).

When I went to dance rehearsal tonight, I was feeling a bit down, but not too far into the 3 hour long rehearsal, I had forgotten all about it. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, this worn down feeling would come over me but with no immediate recollection of why. I had to actually remind myself where this feeling was coming from.  And it happened two or three completely different times.

It got me thinking about what was going on in the back of my mind and it reminded me of this very interesting article I read yesterday from the always interesting blog, Cosmic Variance.

“Schacter believes that pieces of data relevant to any particular memory — times, images, sounds — are stored piecemeal in different parts of the brain. When we want to “remember” something, another part of the brain assembles these pieces into a (hopefully) coherent picture.”

It’s a fascinating article about how what happens in the brain when we remember something is very similar to what happens when we imagine something in the future.

And tonight at dance class, some emotional part of my brain was thinking about the unpleasantness before my conscious brain was immediately aware of it.  The emotion came before the thought.

How interesting.

Me and some troupe mates did a demo at Fleet Feet tonight at their annual Diva Night. It was much more crowded than I expected. I thought it would be a dozen women in a shoe store doing Diva-esque, female-bonding type things. Turns out, it was actually around 40 women, lots of demos and shopping and food…

Our demo started late due to a malfunctioning cd player. The microphone was also not working, so I think only about 5 people heard what we were telling them about the style of belly dance we were performing. We danced a Turkish Rom piece to Rompi Rompi (which you can actually have the pleasure of viewing in my side-bar video widget).

Seeing the reactions to some things when an audience is not accustomed to belly dancing can be interesting.  At one point in the choreography, we do a couple toxims (hip figure eights) and claps our hands together and trace the same movement with our hands. From some of the ladies reactions you would’ve thought we’d just done pelvic thrusts across the floor toward them a la male stripper style. They seemed to enjoy the demo, it’s just funny when there’s an unanticipated reaction.

I did have one of the worst costume malfunctions I’ve had in awhile. My ring hooked on my belt fringe and would not release. I ended up just sliding my ring off and left it hanging from the fringe. Aside from a couple of audience members who were staring at it dangling there for the rest of the demo, it was a good quick fix. In fact, by the end of the song, I forgot it was there.

After performing we did a mini demo class. Only about 5 women actually tried dancing. There might’ve been more if the mic had worked so more of them knew what was going on, but what can you do? We passed out a lot of fliers, and we were all in all well-received so hopefully we’ll get some new students or even some future gigs.

My TribalCon experience this year was absolutely amazing! This was my second year attending, and I think this year’s was even better than last year’s.

The venue was the same: Holiday Inn in downtown Decatur, Georgia. Decatur is a darling little town with beautiful old buildings and funky little shops and cafes. However, it’s also a bit confusing. Both years I’ve gone, me and my carpool buddies have gotten lost as soon as we get to Decatur. This year we were lost for about an hour and a half. It was both hilarious and frustrating! At least I was in the car with a couple of very fun girls. It turned out we were very near the hotel several times but somehow kept passing it in large circles.  I really have no idea how this happened.  We had directions from multiple sources and still got lost.

Once we (finally) arrived, we got ready for the hafla, which is great fun. The musicians attending the event for the music workshops play and the dancers dance. This year, the music had a much more Balkan, gypsy feel. Last year, I believe it was more folkloric.  One big difference I noticed was while last year, the dancing was mostly dominated by American Tribal Style Dance and some Tribal Fusion, this year there was a Balkan line dance, lots of poi and even some hooping. I want to say it was actually less crowded, but it could also be that this time I knew what to expect and felt less overwhelmed, so I just perceived it as less crowded.

The workshops were of course amazing! Ariellah’s yoga workshop was energizing and challenging. She’s a lovely teacher and dancer and recommends taking yoga on a regular basis to open up the muscles we use in belly dance thus allowing for more movement.

Donna Mejia is an amazing woman! I didn’t know who she was before the workshops, but I certainly do now! She’s one of the most inspiring women I’ve ever met. She’s strong, yet feminine. If I’ve ever met a woman who embodies the poem Phenomenal Woman by Maya Angelou, it’s definitely this woman. She taught interesting combos and a lot of useful info on posture.  My favorite quote from TribalCon was something she said in her class. We were doing dance combos across the floor in lines and she responded to many dancers looking timid. She told us, “Now is not the time to hold back, ladies. When you’re looking back on your life, you’re not going to say ‘gee, I’m so glad I held back at that TribalCon workshop on Feb. 21, 2009.  I really benefitted from that…” Good point.

Ashara taught a workshop about ticking (the repetitive momentary stalling of a movement often seen in Tribal Fusion usually in response to really quick beats in music or mechanical sounds in electronic music). She broke down the theory and musculature aspects of the movements and gave us exercises to practice to master the movement). These types of moves are difficult for me. I have limited experience with that style of Fusion so I really appreciated the practice techniques I learned in her class.

Mira’s class is always challenging and provokes thought about doing the unexpected. She is well-known for her very impressive and difficult layering. She also takes typical belly dance combos and changes something to make them more interesting. For example, if a combo traditionally involves grapevines and hip lifts, she’ll make you do grapevines and hip drops instead. Her class is fun and will make you sore!

One of my very favorite classes was with Onca and August of the Mezmer Society. It was The. Most. Hilarious! workshop I’ve ever taken. It was about narrative belly dance, which is essentially belly dancing and dramatic, theatrical acting. We were making faces at eachother, interacting with eachother and dramatically dancing our way through emotions and characters such as drunken wench, passion, etherealness, and innocence. At one point, we were put in two lines facing each other and were each assigned contradicting emotions. We were to dance toward each other, interact and cross to the other side/other emotion. It was hysterical. Such a great workshop.

There were also a couple lecture styles classes this year that taught us about the anatomy of our bodies and how to dance in a safe and healthy way.

The All-Star Show was beautiful as always. My troupes performance went very well. We did a World Tribal Fusion piece, and at the end the dancers and musicians traded places. We played for them and they did a spoon dance.

The show’s after party was possibly the most fun thing that weekend. It was like the hafla, only catered, and everyone was ready to really let loose and dance the night away with lots o’ wine, good-spirited wildness and old-fashioned debauchery. I got to play with my poi in a large open space for the first time in a very, very long time, but unfortunately got carried away (which I realized when I showed up to the workshops the next day and it hurt to lift my arms! Oops!)

Overall, it was an incredibly inspiring, educational and fun weekend! I can’t wait until next year!

Badass.

I’m apparently feeling very inspired tonight.  I have a ton of blog post ideas running through my head.  The inspiration is even spawning ideas for a separate belly dance only blog (cross-posted here, I’m sure) and website and videos. Performance videos, class video blogging, interviews, discussions!  And I can post my teacher info there.  It will be a place to solely express my dancer persona.

Don’t get too excited (I’m mostly talking to me here).  Unfortunately, I’m sure retail will hammer the creative streak back out of me in a matter of days and I’ll go back to exhausting, boring, acronym spewing, sales promoting, mind numbing management like they pay me to.  (ugh)

Maybe it’ll last.  If it doesn’t at least I know it’s still there somewhere and it will return at some point.  I just need to accept the fact that I have to accomplish my creative goals very slowly, in increments, over long weekends and random inspired evenings like tonight.

Now unfortunately I need to be heading toward bed so I can get up and pretend to be a retail person in the morning.

I was watching a Bill Hicks interview last night about the worst gig he ever did.  Kind of got me thinking about all the shows I’ve done.

Most of them have been positive experiences, but I think we’ve all had that embarrassing on-stage mishap, such as a runny nose (a huge fear of mine! Seriously, there are no good options!), costume malfunctions or having your show rudely interrupted by some cheek-sucking greyhound talking on her cell phone in the front row.

I don’t really get stage fright anymore.  Not much at all.  I used to really bad, so bad smiling was actually painful.  I’ve gotten over it through the years though.  Performing forces you to grow a thick skin at some point.  There’s really no other choice.

The worst performance experience I’ve had was with my first dance troupe.  We were invited to entertain at an auction for some good feminine cause like breast cancer awareness or something like that.  It was held in an absolutely gorgeous auditorium in a Masonic Temple with beautiful stain glass creations lining the walls, a feigned starry sky for a ceiling and an antique, multi-layered, forest-themed backdrop behind the stage.  All the seats were filled.

The auction was being held in the form of a fashion show with many wearable pieces donated by local artists.  We waited for over an hour in the dressing room watching the models prepare and come and go as the show went on.  The audience was loud with excitement. We were in for a good show.  Audience energy can give a huge boost.

Finally, the bidding stopped and we were going on to dance, which I believe was to be followed by some refreshments. We were introduced and our music started.  As we glided onto the stage, the crowd was rowdy.  We began dancing, they began walking around and in huge droves, exiting the theater!  There must have been at least a hundred and fifty women there, all leaving!  After a few minutes the only sound in the theater was our music.  There was only four audience members left.  If there’s ever a good time to run off stage and cry into your tassel belt, this was it.

We stayed of course.  For one thing, we were getting paid for a twenty minute set, and the four people who were watching actually did seem to enjoy themselves.

Looking back, I’m sure all the bidding just got the ladies riled up and they were ready to get their merchandise and have a drink.  But it feels pretty awful to have a whole theater walk out on you like that.