Now Accepting Students for Private Sessions

I'm not currently offering weekly classes, but I would like to extend the opportunity for students to schedule private sessions with me. First lesson includes a 30 minute dance consultation - let's figure out what you want to do and how you want to do it - and then we'll dive into your hour session.

These sessions will help you get on the right track for your dance aspirations. I don't teach trends or tricks; I teach technique an...d theory - and I'll work you HARD. We'll take the sessions at a pace that is comfortable, yet challenging for you. If it's easy, you're not learning! Private sessions are for specific feedback to accelerate your dance growth, so constructive criticism is an essential part of these sessions.

Topics include:

- Musicality
- Music Theory
- Arabic Styling
- Drills
- Zills
- Spin Technique
- Veil Technique
- Shimmy technique
- Layering drills
- Choreography

I may have you work on other technique before we approach your topic of choice. This is a good thing. Great dancers build proper technique and then can easily extend that technique to their inspiration. Don't hurt yourself or compromise your dance integrity!

Please message me if you are interested and we can schedule your first session. $35 an hour or $60 for 2 hours, travel expenses apply to teach in your home.

You can also send an email to majda dot anwar at gmail dot com

Thanks!

The Integrity of Dance: Choreography and Expression

It's 6:45 PM on a Saturday and I'm getting ready for a show. We're at a local workshop show filled with local dancers performing. This is the first time we are performing one of our pieces with four dancers instead of three. The pinnacle of the piece involves a complicated Cross and Box pattern where we flip flop from one to the other. I'm not too worried about it since The back stage area is actually another ballroom that allows us plenty of space to rehearse our piece one more time before going on stage.

"Make sure to take small steps and make your shimmy bigger. The larger steps mess up the formation." Our director said, as we kept our zills quiet in respect to the other performers.

I practically make no steps to go into the formation, which gets hard when I get excited on stage. Ziah, Teejei, and Aziza remind me of this and I laugh it off.

"If I screw up on stage, I'll just make a joke of it" I said, knowing that a little touch of humor always saves me in a choreography. I've lost a shoe, ended up backwards on stage, and ripped a tear in one of my skirts, but some a performer's ability to get over the mess ups is key to a great performance. Humor works for me, and people seem to look forward to the expressive facial expressions I'll make when I do miss a step, ahem, or three like in our piece Dunje.

As we wrap up our mini-rehearsal, I think about what this choreography will look like in two years. It'll be beautiful and interesting to watch not because I'm about to run into Ziah and laugh about it, but because we'll be so comfortable in the music the audience will see the music for how we interpret it with our dance.

My dance company always has to rehearse before a show. Our choreographies are complicated, and need to be rehearsed in the space before we perform or we are very discombobulated! I love having that confident feeling of nailing a choreography, and I think this really boils down to an integrity of dance all of us strive for. It will take Awalim an average of 1.5 - 2 years until we feel a choreography is solid enough to emote the music in a way without worrying about the choreography itself. I LIVE for that feeling. By intense practice, rehearsal, and multiple performances of one piece, you're able to grow as a performer and listen to the music in ways you never heard before as you were worrying about your steps. Think about it this way, when you go to a concert to see your favorite band, do you go to see their new stuff or your old time favorite song?

The integrity of dance, for me, lies within your dedication to your movement. From the control of a choreography you are able to handle a degree of expressive freedom you don't always feel when improvising. You start to hear the music at a level of detail that will lend your expression to shape the music in a visual manner without worrying about which movement to do next. Its truly a beautiful experience.

"But I did that choreography last time!" Oh, what a slippery slope that statement is!

Don't throw away a choreography because you did it "last year" or even four years ago! It's still in its infancy as a piece. Years from now you will notice things about your dancing you didn't notice when you first created it. Think of choreography as an extension of your creative expression, why would you want to throw away what you've worked so hard on just after 1 or 2 performances?

Next Post - Dance Integrity: Ethics in Our Industry

Video: The performance from the workshop, Piece: Dunje

Drum Solo Construction

This past week I taught a drum solo workshop in Orlando, and I had a great time creating a workshop based on “how to construct a drum solo.” I know from personal experience, creating a drum solo that is memorable, show-stopping, and awe-inspiring is a daunting task. What I did notice while researching drum solos, however, is that most Middle Eastern drum solos have common elements if made for a belly dancer, more specifically they will probably have the following elements: Entrance, Answer and call, Pop/slap, Beledi resolution, Shimmy section (could also be finale), Finale punch line.

Entrance – introduces the dancer, the percussionist(s), and sets the tone for the rest of the piece. Could be a recurring rhythms such as ayoub or malfouf, a unique rhythm set that spaces between each riff, or a simple roll to warm the percussionists fingers.

Answer and call – a “power of four set” where the percussionist introduces a riff, and another percussionist (maybe the dancer utilizing zills) answers. Dancers could utilize this section with intricate isolations and musical interpretation.

Pop/ slap – literally referring to the pop and slap technique on the doumbek, these “power of four” sets gives a different texture to the rhythms and riffs the percussionist is presenting. The dancer should in turn give a different texture to her movement with level changes, directional faces, and internal isolations i.e. percussive belly rolls.

Beledi resolution – usually by this point of the drum solo both you and the percussionist have almost pulled all of your “tricks”. The percussionist then starts a basic beledi rhythm as a break for everyone including the audience. Middle Eastern audiences will clap in catharsis and familiarity to this rhythm. The dancer should relax at this point and conserve her energy for the build up to the finale, doing simple or folkloric steps. Awalim has used this break as an opportunity to use ATS in our choreography.

Shimmy section – exactly what it says, the part that everyone waits for. The percussionist will utilize rolls in which 95% of the time the dancer will answer with hip shimmies. Be creative with however you want to interpret those rolls; if you have a mean belly flutter, by all means, dazzle us! I know I was when Zoe Jakes pulled this technique at the latest BellyDance SuperStares show with percussionist Issam Houshan.

Finale – finales are the absolute peak of your drum solo, whether the last section builds or speeds in tempo with a traditional fellahi, or goes crazy with a million poly rhythms: make sure you save your highest point to be your final point. If you have lead your audience as you should with a drum solo, they should jump out of their seat when you end on this high note.

So, what are the pieces I pulled this information from? The following pieces:
Amer’s Drum Solo: Arabesque Dance Company
Naima’s Hip: Hossam Ramzy
Cat’s Meow: Susu Pampanin and the Cairo Cats
Rejoicing in Upper Egypt: Musicians of the Nile
Missr!: Raquy and the Cavemen

More “classic” drum solos can be found from the following albums:
Raquy Danziger – Naked, Jordan
Hossam Ramzy – Sabla Tolo Vol. 1,2,3
Issam Housham – The Dancing Drum
Susu Pampanin– Dancing Drums
Carmine Guida – Shake ‘Em Up Belly Dance Drum Solos
Sohail Kaspar - The "Magic" of John Bilezikjian
Mary Ellen Donald – Gems

Video Clips from trip

AUC Folkloric Troupe August 2008



Randa Kamel - Nile Maxim December 2008



Sufi Troupe at Al Azhar Park November 2008

My new apartment!

After months of broken promises from the American University regarding its very unsuccessful move to the new campus, the majority of international students have decided to move out of the temporary housing – before they move us to yet another location. My friends and I have found an amazing apartment in Zamalek, 5 minutes from the corniche, and right above a grocery store. What more could you ask for?


In other news, this week the AUC folkloric dance troupe started rehearsal. We are currently learning a beledi routine that is 10 minutes long. This is a sort of audition process. The choreographer is a very well established dancer and choreographer here in Cairo, and he is kicking out butts! The technique for Egyptian style taught by Americans is different enough, let alone learning from an Egyptian! It’s a completely different aesthetic, body posture, and movement from the tribal style I have become comfortable with over the last three years. It’s becoming painfully obvious how much raqs sharqi I’ve forgotten…nothing like six hours a week of practice to help me remember!

Before these rehearsals started, I had a private session with Astryd Farah before she left for the States. Her choreography was beautiful, and I appreciated the attention to detail of the lyrics of the song. Hopefully she will be coming to Atlanta in the future for a workshop. Besides her session and the session with Raqia, trying to contact instructors here is hard because everyone is teaching workshops in Europe or North America at the moment.

My music lessons are going very well. We learned Sidi Mansour this week in class. Dr. Wael also gave us a paper on the Early – Islamic era of oriental music. He will be giving us papers on all five of the eras of oriental music. We have to write summaries on each section, I will post them here for all of my scadian friends ☺ I’m going to start taking qanoon lessons twice a week instead of one to learn as much as I can before I go back.

As far as traveling goes – my friends and I are planning to go to Sharm el Sheikh in the next weekend or so and I’m going to Dubai!!

Update!

Lots of wonderful things have happened - I visited Alexandria, went to the pyrmaids again, survived my Arabic survival course, classes started on the new campus and oh! I had a private with Raqia Hassan...

But...

My computer is dead, the internet is down in the hotel, and internet is barely running on campus, so a more detailed account of Alexandria and taking from Raqia will come soon.

Tonight I go to my first Arab music ensemble class, very excited about that.

Video Clip from Bedouin Night Dinner

This is a short video clip of the Saiidi dance we saw at dinner. This show was really nice, there were 3 female, and 3 male dancers. They did 4 sets, with 6 costume changes, it was soo awesome! There was also a Sufi dancer who spun for at least 10 minutes, it was beautiful. I will write more when I have time...I just posted the video, so it may be a little while before it is processed - so be patient!

More Cabaret and some disapointment...

I survived! I guess it was inevitable to not be sick when traveling to another country...Before leaving, the health center at Georgia Tech prescribed me some ‘traveler’s medicine’ for situations like this. That was my lifeline!

After a day and a half of staying in bed, I was finally well enough to go out again. We had initially made reservations at the Semeramis, but we called and they said Dina (nor any other dancer) was dancing tonight. For LE1000 per seat, I wasn’t about to pay that much and not see some dancing. So after calling around we finally settled on going to el-Leil.

El-Leil is one of Cairo’s oldest nightclubs. It used to be a hub for the stars of dance such as my idol, Soheir Zeki. Tonight, it had a more modest line up although fun nonetheless. I have no photos from el-Leil because photography was not allowed here, and the club had many bouncers to make sure that no photos were taken. It basically had the same set up as the other club we went to, with about 6 acts progressing in size, sound, and talent throughout the night.

This organization of entertainment gave me a thought. Cairo nightlife has it right! Why should the paying customers have to hop from club to club paying to get in each time, trying to find a new place to sit, and when we can pay one price and have the entertainment hop from club to club? Think about it!

So what about the dancer? She was horrible. First of all, let me say that this new style of bra that Eman Zaki started is horrible. The style I am referring to is a demi cub that seems to get smaller and smaller, with the connection of the two cups getting wider and wider apart. Dancers look more like porn stars than dancers – and this dancer was not an exception. Maybe the real reason why she didn’t dance was fear that she would loose her top. Never mind the fact that she oiled her chest up to look very tacky. Otherwise she was very beautiful in her liquid silver and pearl costume, perfectly done hair and make up, and she knew when the song ended and where all the Saudis were in the audience.

I’ve recently just begun to understand something. Let me tell the American belly dance community why a lot of people go on a rant about why this dance should be called ‘oriental dance’ and not cabaret dance. An Egyptian cabaret dancer, a dancer who dances at a cabaret in Cairo, does not hold in her best interest to actually interpret the music or actually pay the slightest bit of attention to dance as an artform. Her number one priority is to flirt and socialize with the audience to get tips for her and her band. She will walk around, chew and smack gum, fix her hair, lip sync to the music, and rarely move around stage while she is ‘performing’. I can only imagine the intricate steps, gestures, and interpretations Dina or Randa Kamel exude while they become the physical embodiment of the dance. I haven’t seen a real oriental show yet, and I hope someone can change my mind about what Cairo has to offer because as of right now, I am disappointed.

Anywhoo, these are my thoughts and opinions as I am experiencing them in the moment…next blog will be about our trip to the pyramids complete with pictures!

An Egyptian Cabaret

8-18-2008

My birthday. Last night was truly an experience. Mahmoud, our driver, recommended a ‘mid-level’ cabaret for my dad and I to go to. The club was on a boat on the Nile that was permanently docked. In fact, we didn’t realize it was a boat until some waves made the whole place rock back and forth about 2 hours into our evening.

We saw 6 different acts that night, I can’t remember them all in detail, but I will list them. Each act had a different band, as the evening progressed, the bands became bigger, and the talent became better. With that said, by 5 AM my ears were going to bust from the headliners – 2 Arabic sisters singing and their band that took up almost the whole stage. The first act of the night was a single female singer, with a smaller band, a lot of duff players, and a single keyboard player for melody. Next, was a dancer, shaabi singer (who was my favorite of the night). After this act, a female singer with some male back ups came with a larger band. After her, a Saudi themed act came. I say themed because their entire repertoire was not strictly gulf. And finally after this act we saw a male singer and dancer combination. Both dancers of the night were more interested in mingling and making sure to look nice and lip sync the songs than actually dancing, which is what I expected from this level of cabaret.

People watching at this event was much more entertaining than the entertainment itself. My father and I were seated behind a Saudi who was in Western style. He seemed to be a regular as all of the singers and dancers greeted him before they performed. Directly behind us were two women completely veiled in abayas – both of which had a very hard time not staying in their seat for the Saudi pieces. To our left were a couple of women decked in full Arab fashion which includes – eyes, earrings, bracelets, and hair (if not covered by hijab). They were coolly smoking shisha all night lulled by the music and enjoying lip syncing to the songs as well. Apart from these tables, there was one more table across the way that was also a sight to see – a group of Saudi men. Dancers take notice – learn your gulf and Saudi dance and music! To the performers, knowing this music and dance was like knowing an ATM pin number. Sing a Saudi song – get showered in 100 Egyptian Pound notes. Quite simple. Get a Saudi to dance on stage with the music? More showers of money. It was like the money was confetti to these Saudi men. What a sight to see!

My dad and I seemed to get the VIP treatment, for every act that got on stage, there was a shout out to all the Saudis, and all of the Jordanians in the room (namely my dad and myself). The staff waited on us hand and foot – a little much for this American girl. At one point the waiter cut my fruit for me, which just made me laugh. Since it was my birthday, my dad ordered a cake for me and the two Arabic singer sister sang happy birthday in their loudest decibel possible. The hafla was great fun to watch, but a little torturous as I had to rein myself in from dancing. Good Arabic girls don’t get up to dance at the fall of a hat – a feeling I think I’m going to have to get used to as my stay progresses. I wanted nothing more than to rip that stage (and those stationary dancers) into a oblivion with just me, my zills, and my red scarf…but that was not an option. A little light dancing here or there, that’s it!