Practice, practice, practice..........

Here in North Central Kentucky, in the Bluegrass area we are having our first real snow storm of the season. Winter is finally and truly upon us. One of the things that happens every winter that just drives me nuts, is that classes get cancelled.

Of course, they need to be cancelled! I would hate for someone to drive in dangerous conditions to go to class and possibly risk being in a horrific car accident. Anyone living up North is used to the drill, anyone with kids dread those county wide 'Snow Days' when all the schools close and all of a sudden you are scrambling to find safe childcare so you can go to work. Snow and ice on the roadways are no fun and sliding into a ditch after hitting a patch of black ice can easily become life threatening.

This all brings up the subject of what to do if you miss your dance class or classes because of inclement weather.  One thing I have observed myself and I am sure many of you would agree; extra/fun activities like dance classes, art classes and other hobbies, no matter how much you LOVE them and feel awesome after participating in them, they can sometimes be really hard to just plain GET TO. We all have busy lives and if you are like me in the past, you go to work 9 hours then you have a family to care for, cooking, cleaning, homework, PTA meetings, band concerts, doctors appointments....life is full of busy things that MUST be done. Well what I have noticed about myself and many other people, if you get into a habit of attending your classes or activities (no matter what) you will keep going even when you feel like just kicking up your feet and taking a breather or you have no energy and just do not feel like going, once you get there you realize how much fun it is and you are VERY glad you forced yourself to go. 

Those little bits of 'ME TIME' are incredibly important for our own self preservation. Believe me, those house chores and bills and stuff will still be there when you get home a couple hours later, BUT you will feel much better about tackling them because you have had time to renew yourself! I digress...LOL....anyway, what I have noticed is that if you get 'OUT OF HABIT' and start missing your classes due to illness, work, family obligations or bad weather, it is VERY VERY hard to get back into the habit of going. We forget how much we LOVE our hobbies and how we feel rejuvenated and ready to take on the world after our little bit of fun time and then we just stop going permanently.

So, back to the bad weather and missed classes.....

I always tell my students how very important it is to practice their dance at home between classes. If you really want to improve your abilities and grow as a dancer, you must put some time aside to practice regularly. Again we are met with all the obstacles that life throws at us, time is at a premium but as I tell my students, even 10 to 15 minutes a day makes a huge difference. This is even more important when you have cancelled classes or if you have to miss a class due to life getting in the way. My philosophy is if your class gets cancelled and you were planning to go, then you have that time set aside already so use it! If you yourself had to cancel going and time is an issue, at least do 10 minutes. 

Do not let yourself get out of the habit of dancing, do not let your body forget how great it feels to dance!

Here are a few tips for practicing at home and a few things I do for my practice time (I think you'll get a giggle out of a couple of these)

1) It goes without saying, but I will say it anyway. You need music, in this modern age it is so easy to obtain music for very little money. I post links for songs that I use in my classes and advise my students on what to buy and where, but I also suggest being adventurous and finding their own music. Even if you only buy a few songs at 99 cents a piece you will have 10 minutes of dance music to use. A few great place to buy MP3 songs are www.Amazon.com, www.cdbaby.com, www.maqam.com but there are tons of others!

2) You only need a little bit of space, the size of your movements are not nearly as important as the quality and control. A great belly dancer can dance a whole performance on a tile. If you are practicing traveling steps, just make them smaller, space is relative.

Some 'spaces' I use to practice my moves? While in the Shower. In front of my bathroom mirror. My kitchen (while cooking or doing dishes). Sitting at my desk while online (I am practicing flutters right now...lol). The checkout line at the grocery store (especially when I have an Extreme Couponer in front of me). Plus so many other places.  I do use my living room quite often, but I end up dancing with my three year old son in my arms, which DOES hinder movement...lol.

                     Here is a cute example of dancing in the kitchen :)

3) Any time, any where is a great rule to follow. A few minutes of Omis or Shimmying several times a day can really improve your skills fast! It takes lots and lots of repetition to build muscle memory (make sure your doing it right though so you do not build muscle memory the wrong way). What is muscle memory?

4) Some people are planners and need to have a set rule of what they are going to do before they do it. Some are spontaneous and do what feels good at that particular time. I like to use both methods. One thing that is really important though; you will never get better if you do not practice those particular moves that are too hard for you, you know those ones you don't like to do because you feel awkward and weird! Those awkward, weird movements are the MOST important to practice. That being said, it helps tremendously to write out a plan of what you are going to practice so you don't only practice that which is fun. take a few minutes to make an outline of what you have been doing in class recently and make a list of things you really need to work on.

5) Practice both directions, or both sides of your body...if you have one side that is easier than the other (most of us do) practice more on the harder side.

6) When you DO take class, take notes to use as study/practice guides when you are at home. I ask all my students to keep a notebook and take notes and I pass out handouts occasionally with extra info. I can tell who takes notes and practices and who doesn't. The note takers excel and learn faster and are always prepared for the nest challenge.  How to take and organize great notes.

All I can say is hopefully if you have the sad experience of missing your awesome, rejuvenating, and incredibly fun dance classes due to weather or life in general, that you can practice at home, keep the love of dance flowing through your veins and not become a dance class drop out :)

(of course this goes for any extra activity that brings you joy)

Blessings and Happy Shimmies, Safiya

Improvisation Pt1.....Dancing with Passion....

Improvisational Dance- The heart of Middle Eastern Dance:

This Topic is one very close to my heart......

I have been a dancer all my life. Since I could walk, I danced. I was very fortunate to be raised in a loving family environment, and was encouraged to express myself through dance, song, music and acting. My family has always been loud and boisterous, has always expressed to the world their thoughts and feelings without inhibition. I believe this has given me a much better understanding of the art of expression than the average Western woman.

It is very sad to see how many people, through their need to fit into society’s strictures, develop an inability to express deep emotions. “Don't cry in public”, “Don't laugh too loudly”, “Don't bring attention to yourself”; This societal mindset has made it very difficult for many to be able to just let go, and dance with abandon.

I have seen many dancers who are so very talented, and can do wondrous things with their bodies, yet are absolutely terrified of Improvisational dance. The thought of movement without thought, without knowing what your music is going to do next, without thinking about what step to take, what emotion to act out.....it boggles the mind of some of the most gifted dancers I've ever met.

So, I am dedicating this Blog to Improvisational dance. In the days and weeks that follow, I will add tips, and lesson plans that I use for my students; methods to help get rid of your inhibitions and teach you to, hopefully, find the emotion in the music and live it through your dance.

I can tell you from personal experience, there is nothing in dance that will take you to the heights of ecstasy, than to dance in the moment and move through the music as one.

For I say to you ladies and gentleman......

"The heart of Middle Eastern Dance lies in the heart of the Middle Eastern Dancer".

First and foremost, I'd like to draw your attention to the history of dance. Before it was a performance, show or presentation, it was simply a means for human expression. Since the beginning of time, revelations of joy, excitement, grief and pain have been dramatically communicated through dance. It has been used in celebrations as a hallmark for births, weddings and victories of battles won. As well, dance was frequently performed in ceremonies to cleanse oneself and others of grief, illness, and bad humors, not to mention the eclectic art of dance used in prayer and worship throughout the world.

Dance in its rawest form is human emotion, transformed into a human in motion.

Ultimately, I believe in order to truly appreciate Middle Eastern dance, it should be performed in its original state....in a form unspoiled by the constraints set forth through choreographed movement. You must learn to feel the music and understand the emotions portrayed in the songs you wish to dance to, and this is something that can only be achieved by dedicating years of study to dance and its basic movements, and by learning about the cultures whose music you wish to dance to. For some, this also means studying the languages of those same cultures.

Since belly dance has become so westernized, and dance schools have become the norm, the dance form itself has had to evolve to some degree to meet the needs of the students and beginner dancers. Where once it was simply learned from 'the cradle' so to speak, as part of the normal social lives of the people from these Middle Eastern countries, now there are many adults and teens who wish to learn 'Belly Dance', who know nothing about the cultures from whence they originated. Unfortunately, many Westerners have skewed ideas of these cultures and their dances due to Hollywood’s, often times, unfair and illusory portrayal of what they really are, so teachers of Middle Eastern dance are left with not only teaching the movements of the body, but are also saddled with the task of bringing to light some of the background of the countries of origin in order to keep the dance forms true to their nature.

Unfortunately, this type of dance education is unregulated, and there are many teachers out there who are unqualified to teach…some only taking classes for a year or two before going out and beginning to teach themselves, and others unable to impart even the most basic of knowledge in regards to the origin of the dances they are teaching.. This, I believe, is one of the reasons for many dancers being unable to improvise…for lack of the proper training and education of where and why the dance originated, and how the people of these countries used it to express themselves.

Another problem that Westerners learning Middle Eastern dance face is the huge difference in the type of body movements used. While belly dance is composed of movements that are natural and complimentary to the human anatomy, they are unlike anything that most westerners are used to doing. Beginner dancers need to spend a great deal of time just learning to control muscles they didn’t even know they had, and this is where choreography plays it’s important part. Teachers create dance arrangements, or ‘works’, with repetitive movements to help their students build 'muscle memory', and in the early days of a dancer’s education these choreographies are definitely an essential step in the growth and development of a dance student.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a growing trend in Modern Middle Eastern dancers (aka:Belly Dancers), that many have become dependent upon the choreography and have either lost touch with or never been taught the art form of improvisation.

I have seen many wonderfully talented performers who are obviously dancing a choreographed piece. Just like actors on a stage, they are quite capable of 'acting out' and showing the emotions of the song, but sadly they still do not have the quality of natural fluid grace and expression found in the performance of a dancer who is simply letting the music move them freely through heart and soul… to live in 'that moment' through the music. While choreographed dance itself can be a wonderful thing used for group dances, and theatrical pieces, it can never touch the dancer and audience as wholly or deeply, and certainly can’t emotionally move them as much as improvised dance does.

Looking back at the fact that one of a teachers greatest tools in teaching dance is to use a simple, short choreography, we must not forget that at some point in a dancers education they should learn to connect with their music emotionally and stop dancing by numbers.

Once a student is comfortable with the basic movements and has built sufficient muscle memory to move comfortably through a choreographed dance, and then the student should be encouraged to experiment in self expression. This does not mean that these students should be pushed into performing an improvisational piece at this time. There are many ways to have group exercises and games that encourage movement through emotion, which can be handled in a classroom setting. Each person needs to move along at their own pace, and some will have no interest at all in learning improvisation.

I must stress that it is very important that a dancer already has a comfortable grasp of basic steps and movements, as well as an understanding of how to flow from one movement to the next before attempting to learn to 'free' dance, without pre-choreographed steps.

One of the exercises I use for my students that has worked really well....

1st. I will play a small piece of music that we will dance to.
2nd. I will ask for suggestions of some steps or movements my students think would go well with the music (example: one student might say a hip circle, another may say hip drops, another maybe step touch step)
3rd. I take these steps and put them together for 2/ 8 count sequences ( example: step together step to the right 4 cnts, left hip drop 2 x's 4 cnts, big hip circle to left ending facing another direction 8 cnts )
4th. We will repeat this sequence 4 times facing a different direction each time.
5th. Then I have students take turns sitting out and watching, so they can see the difference in how it looks when the dancers are facing different directions.
6th. We discuss how the movements flowed one into the other, the dynamics of directional changes, etc.
7th. Then we repeat the whole exercise, but use different steps.

(This exercise is great to help students learn to put steps together to form a flowing pattern, and what steps feel and look good with what music, it teaches about directional changes, and forming choreographies)