"Serious" dance training

Aziyade said:

What would you expect a Serious Dance Student to continue to study, outside of movement?

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Technically nothing. When I first heard of dancers entering competitions using someone else's choreography it felt like they were cheating. I thought the real measure of a dancer was how she could interpret the music. I've since changed my thinking on this. Dancing and choreography are two different skill sets. It's great when one person has both, but it's not necessary. I wouldn't expect a principal ballerina to do her own choreo, and knowing that she didn't while watching her performance I wouldn't think less of her dancing ability. I don't think less of Samia Gamal or the Reda dancers for not creating the work that they execute so well.

I now feel that to be a good performer you should be able to execute the movements correctly and have stage presence. Perfect execution + dead eyes = me not being drawn to watch. We've become accustomed to having to do everything ourselves - training, choreography, promotion - because our dance form isn't mainstream. While that's a reality that isn't likely to change soon, it doesn't mean that someone who doesn't do all three well isn't a serious dancer.

Once a dancer makes the jump to instructor I feel like she should work in the other areas that have been mentioned such as cultural awareness, music interpretation, and choreography creation. I wouldn't want a teacher who thinks dancing means only following the drum and counting to four. Those are fine starting points, but a good performance is made up of so much more. Unfortunately many groups are formed by people who have a shared interest but limited ability. It's fine for them to get together and have fun, but when they start marketing themselves as professionals it's not always good.

Since most of you don't know me IRL, I should state for the record that I'm not a professional dancer. I am not conducting a business as a performer. I say that because I don't want you thinking that I'm upset with substandard "professionals" because they're taking away revenue. I'm upset with them because what they present to the GP is often half-assed at best. If someone only sees that one performance that will forever be in their mind what a belly dancer does. I hate that people outside our community feel like we are sluts after having seen the Kaya & Sadie video or completely inept after seeing a group of six week wonders at a public event.

AndreaSTL said:

I thought the real measure of a dancer was how she could interpret the music. I've since changed my thinking on this. Dancing and choreography are two different skill sets. It's great when one person has both, but it's not necessary. I wouldn't expect a principal ballerina to do her own choreo, and knowing that she didn't while watching her performance I wouldn't think less of her dancing ability. I don't think less of Samia Gamal or the Reda dancers for not creating the work that they execute so well.

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There are two differences. One is that Samia Gamal and any of the Reda dancers could dance - and dance well - without someone else's choregraphy. And many of the latter are more than capable of creating their own choreography.

But more to the point, belly dance is at its heart an improvised dance. If the only thing a dancer can do is follow someone else's choroegraphy then s/he is falling short of what I'd consider an essential skill set as a belly dancer. However, I would not fault them as a belly dancer if they could not follow choreography but were able to dance to a range of music themselves. However, I wouldn't hire them as part of a troupe.

Kashmir said:

But more to the point, belly dance is at its heart an improvised dance. If the only thing a dancer can do is follow someone else's choroegraphy then s/he is falling short of what I'd consider an essential skill set as a belly dancer. However, I would not fault them as a belly dancer if they could not follow choreography but were able to dance to a range of music themselves. However, I wouldn't hire them as part of a troupe.

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This. Improvisation isn't a traditional or integral part of ballet or other Western theatre dances AFAIK, but it is the absolute heart and soul of bellydance. That is one of the reasons why bellydance can't be compared in a straightforward way to these other dances. It's not really about just movement. You have to be able to feel the music, 'get' it on a visceral level, and be moved by it. Which means, realistically, that as a Westerner you will have to actually study the music because you haven't grown up with it, and study song lyrics and cultural nuances because they don't come naturally to you as a non-native.

This is fudamentally a social/folk dance, and if you can't get up and dance without somebody else's choreography then you are seriously lacking as a bellydancer (and not fit to be a professional IMO).

(by 'you' here I mean general you not specific you!)

What Kashmir and Roshanna said, absolutely. :clap:

I'd agree, improvisation is important in bellydance. It's also the thing I find the hardest. I've tried twice to learn ATS and the thing that throws me the most is the need to improvise, take the lead and then give cues to others and then follow improvised choreo. I'm instinctively more comfortable being given a choreography and learning it. Accordingly one of my objectives for the year is to attend a choreography course to try and understand the theory and learn to put the steps together because I know I need to get beyond following other peoples' choreo.

I don't know I'd call myself a serious dancer. I'm a student, a social dancer, an amateur dancer but it's not my profession.

Returning to the original question I've never known shouting, agressive correction etc in bellydance classes and I wouldn't stay in a class that did that. It's not like school PE where I had to tolerate being yelled at. Most of the ones I've taken have been led by incredibly positive, bouncy people. That said I don't mind being corrected, as long as it's done courteously and also recognises that there are some things I physically can't do (like a lot of floor work with back bends) because it hurts my back and neck. I don't mind being gently adjusted if my posture etc is incorrect.

I also dance a lot of tango and the teachers there are more inclined to adjust students in terms of posture, moving a foot where it should be. I've had my teacher come up behind me and move my shoulders. Then as it's a close partner dance, I tend to expect more physical contact than I do in bellydance.

Yorkshire Lass said:

I'd agree, improvisation is important in bellydance. It's also the thing I find the hardest. I've tried twice to learn ATS and the thing that throws me the most is the need to improvise, take the lead and then give cues to others and then follow improvised choreo.

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That said, "improvisation" in ATS is a completely dfferent kettle of fish. First, you practice the thing to death. Second you have to memorize cues and a fixed movement vocabulary. Third, there is little, if any, musicality. Improvisation in raqs is about feeling the music and becoming one with it - while making it interesting to watch if you are performing. You have the added difficulty of predicting where the music will go if you have never heard it before - but at least you don't have to worry about people being able to follow you so you can use any move you think fits.

To be fair. I think any "lack" of musicality in ATS has a lot to do with whoever is leading it. There are a lot of not very musical groups out there. But it's not true to say ATS innately lacks musicality, though obviously the form has its limitations.

Zumarrad said:

To be fair. I think any "lack" of musicality in ATS has a lot to do with whoever is leading it. There are a lot of not very musical groups out there. But it's not true to say ATS innately lacks musicality, though obviously the form has its limitations.

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Basing the comment on material on the FCBD site. Basically potential students are told to stick to certain types of music and rhythms. Basically what I think of as "musicality" in belly dance does not translate into ATS due to the inbuilt restrictions of the cueing and training. It isn't a matter of experience or skill it just isn't a part of the genre.

Yame said:

But is it really a question we should be asking? Is it a comparison we should be making?

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That's the real question, and sometimes I wonder. I mean even if our art form was totally mainstream, and taught as a 4-year major in colleges, would it still be an accurate comparison (Oriental versus Ballet or Modern.) ?

With us, we have to make it all happen. We have to pay for our own training if we want to keep going.

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Also to the point, we really have to PAY to actually perform, if you think about it. Where are the ballet dancers who are out there creating their own venues?

However I think I can answer for myself as an individual... for me, I think it does require extensive training. Because whenever I ask myself the question of what I should be doing to get better, my answer is always "more." Whether I'm going through a lazy period where I just take all my classes but hardly ever practice at home, or whether I'm going through my motivated period where in addition to my classes I'm also practicing daily. It doesn't matter how much I do, I always feel like I should be doing more.

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I love this, and I hear you. Sometimes I ask myself, "why am I working so hard to get basically nowhere?" There are no "jobs" here -- nothing pays enough to live on. What keeps me motivated is, like you, the desire to improve and the sheer love of it.

So even if we don't actually NEED the extensive training... I want it anyway. Because I want to dance, all the time. And I don't mean dance by myself at home (I've been REALLY unmotivated to practice on my own lately). I mean actual classes with other people, plus rehearsals, plus performances, plus dancing socially. The few times a year I get a chance to take workshop intensives where I am dancing for 4-8 hours a day for multiple days in a row, that's when I am the happiest. I wish I could have that in my life, all the time.

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ITA.

Practicing by yourself in front of a mirror is something, but it's not the same as being in class constantly being corrected by a strict teacher for hours and hours everyday.

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But again the question is -- do we NEED that kind of extensive training? I mean, not just you and me and the people who eat sleep and breath this because they CAN. But do even the highest quality professionals NEED this? Do the touring pros train like that?

So I think no matter what you'll do, it'll still be laughable from the perspective of someone who dances ballet or modern professionally. That's why I don't think we should be using those comparisons at all. We should still set the bar high for ourselves... in areas like mine, certainly the bar should be higher than it is right now. But I think we need to find our own balance, not try to base it off of these other dances that are so different from ours.

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Fair enough. And I can actually agree with everything you wrote. Thanks for the comments!

I asked: What would you expect a Serious Dance Student to continue to study, outside of movement?

AndreaSTL said:

Technically nothing.

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Really? Not even music? Not culture?

When I first heard of dancers entering competitions using someone else's choreography it felt like they were cheating.

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Me too -- but then I got to thinking about the nature of live bands and improv, and with the virtual death of the live bands, how dancers HAVE to rely on CDs. And when you rely on music that is the same each time you play it, I can how choreography starts to become the norm, and then I can see how since choreography is the norm, you have to sort of "extreme-ify" it, with more tricks and more layers and more props, and then suddenly it's evolved into "Competition style" dancing, where you actually do perform everything you can do, and dance everything you know, in 7 minutes.

I thought the real measure of a dancer was how she could interpret the music. I've since changed my thinking on this. Dancing and choreography are two different skill sets. It's great when one person has both, but it's not necessary. I wouldn't expect a principal ballerina to do her own choreo, and knowing that she didn't while watching her performance I wouldn't think less of her dancing ability. I don't think less of Samia Gamal or the Reda dancers for not creating the work that they execute so well.

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Well, therein lies the major difference between say ballet and Reda troupe, and your basic belly dancer: Barbie Bellydancer is a soloist, and doesn't have to take into consideration any kind of group stage dynamics, where Reda and ballet companies do. You need someone skilled in choreography in order to get the group to embody your visual picture, rather than just the soloist.

And actually, there have been ballet dancers who DID choreograph their own solos. Or improved them. During the Balanchine years at City Ballet, he let Suzanne Farrell do some of her own choreography -- or he would give her the idea, and she would execute it her way. It's not common, but it's not totally unheard of for a pas de deux that's not essential to the narrative to be left unchoreographed, for either the artistic director or the dancers to make themselves.

Once a dancer makes the jump to instructor I feel like she should work in the other areas that have been mentioned such as cultural awareness, music interpretation, and choreography creation.

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I don't think I can get behind the idea that musical interpretation is something that should be left until the dancer evolves into a teacher -- or is that what you're saying? I mean, if the real measure of a dancer is how she interprets the music, then it seems she would be really handicapped by not having a good and thorough understanding of it. Ya know?

Kashmir said:

Basing the comment on material on the FCBD site. Basically potential students are told to stick to certain types of music and rhythms. Basically what I think of as "musicality" in belly dance does not translate into ATS due to the inbuilt restrictions of the cueing and training. It isn't a matter of experience or skill it just isn't a part of the genre.

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In ATS the movements are all designed to fit into a 2/4 or 4/4 framework, so you have to work within that for the thing to make logical sense. That said, you CAN dance ATS to a debke, but because a lot of debke has those 6-beat phrases, the dance itself (which is built mostly in 4s) is going to be off for half the phrase. Thus it's going to look unmusical to a belly dancer, or to someone who really knows debke.

But then "musicality" in belly dance isn't like "musicality" in other dance forms. Like I've said before, ballet is not about being the "visual representation of the music" (although SOME choreographers will use that technique.) In ballet the dancers can be an unheard voice in the orchestra. Same with the Contemporary dance.

Kashmir -- when you're referring to musicality, I think some of us translate that as "lyricism" -- and there are some BAD ATS groups out there that are NOT lyrical, and are not able to create a lyrical performance out of their music. Those groups seem to work against the music rather than with it.

I'm also agreeing with Zum, in that I think that lack of lyrical quality is the result of a bad leader. But the MUSICALITY is a different matter.

Aziyade said:

But again the question is -- do we NEED that kind of extensive training? I mean, not just you and me and the people who eat sleep and breath this because they CAN. But do even the highest quality professionals NEED this? Do the touring pros train like that?

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I think the answer, ultimately, is "no." I think even our highest quality professionals, those world-class belly dancers who tour the world and represent the best of the best in our field, do not train as "hard" as the typical, average professional ballerina.

As much as belly dance may be difficult in a lot of ways, it just doesn't require the level of athleticism that something like ballet or modern dance require. And that's perfectly fine. Actually, I think it's a great thing.

Aziyade said:

Kashmir -- when you're referring to musicality, I think some of us translate that as "lyricism" -- and there are some BAD ATS groups out there that are NOT lyrical, and are not able to create a lyrical performance out of their music. Those groups seem to work against the music rather than with it.

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Unsure want you mean by "lyricism" so hard to comment. What I meant was the ability to react to the music in terms of rhythym, melody and lyrics in such a way as to make sense (to the audience). To organically switch between these modes in a way that enriches the music. This will sometimes call for something that just appears and then never reappears - a gesture, a movement, a layer. This you cannot do with group improvisation unless you have actually rehearsed it - when it is no longer strictly ATS. It also encompasses those odd changes of timing - a switch between a 6 then a 10 then a 4 (which I certainly cannot improvise to - but I can handle if I know the music well).

It is these quality which I enjoy in a mature belly dance performance and I call "musicality" which is far more than just keeping to the beat or working with the phrase.

Yame said:

I think the answer, ultimately, is "no." I think even our highest quality professionals, those world-class belly dancers who tour the world and represent the best of the best in our field, do not train as "hard" as the typical, average professional ballerina.

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I was thinking about this earlier today, actually. I don't think the comparison to ballet works, for many reasons. And I was wondering what *was* a fair reference point... The only one that really makes sense is the comparison to professional bellydancers at the top of their game.

I can't believe that Randa, Dina etc, or people like Aziza or Jillina wouldn't have pretty serious training schedules - but no doubt very different to what a ballerina would be doing. We have different needs from our training...

Darshiva said:

Actually, this is one of the reasons I have taken choreography out of my regular classes and turned it into a class on it's own - that you must pass an audition for. If you want to learn choreography, you have to earn it!

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Cool idea But then what are your non-choreography classes like? Are they more drilling, or improvisation based? I love improvisation and feel like it should be taught more, but I know a lot of people in my class struggle with it even more than the choreography...

ETA: by "my class" I mean fellow students...NOT ready to teach. Not in the slightest

Strong on both.

And you'll find people take to improv a lot easier if you do two things:

1) Call it something else non-threatening
2) Let them dance any style they want to, but encourage them to listen to the music in a middle eastern way & to use the moves they've been learning. (eventually they will start solely using bellydance moves because they work better with the music, and social pressure does the rest - the more long-term students are dancing bellydance & the newbies follow suit because they want to fit in)

I've never had any trouble with students learning improv. They might not realise they are learning it, but they are!

That's why I used the word "technically". Technically a dancer has to interpret the music, but it doesn't necessarily have to be her interpretation. She can be showcasing someone else's vision and I would still call her a dancer.

IRL I'm not a fan of competitions for several reasons, and one of them is what you mentioned. It seems like they are more about sensation and less about content. Dancers try to stand out and wow judges with more and more when sometimes pure and simple will do. If they even have to exist, my fantasy competition involves a full band and the dancer drawing a well-known song at random from a hat and dancing to it right then. I would actually go to watch this one! The judging would still be subjective, but the dancing would have more feeling.

Since everything about this dance is foreign to us (in the US), I know it's a lot to get a handle on in the beginning. There are moves you've never done to music you've never heard that's sung in a language you don't understand from a culture you've never been a part of. That can be a lot to overcome! I remember a fellow student who told me she concentrated so much on what she was doing that she didn't even hear the music. She just followed the teacher and/or counted. Ideally (for me) the teacher would give a new student a few months to feel comfortable with the movements then start sneaking in the interpretation with seemingly offhand comments. You don't have to outright tell them that you are teaching them how to interpret the music, but if you sneak it in there hopefully they'll absorb some of it. It's a lot like putting veggies in the meatloaf. Many kids have a knee-jerk "Ew, veggies!" reaction, but if they don't know what they're eating it's A-OK. It's the same with students who will freak out if you directly address and title what you're doing (ie calling it musical interpretation or improv), but if it's just there hanging in the background it's not threatening at all. Once they're a bit more comfortable you can bring it out into the open/share the recipe.

Sorry I wasn't clear about that before. I was going on in the technical vein. I would never advocate teaching strictly physical movements and nothing else IRL. (I have seen "professional" groups who have done this and it was less than entertaining to watch.) I'm not much of a writer, and besides I know what I'm thinking.

Jane said:

There are dance teachers from other genres of dance that yell, demean, cuss at, and even hit students to correct them in classes and rehearsals. Students accept this as a necessary part of "serious" dance training.

Have you experienced this? Do you think it's acceptable? Have you ever heard of this in a belly dance class? Thoughts?

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Wow, that is serious. Hey, if that's how you want to learn more power to you but I wouldn't be in a class like that. It's belly dancing not the army! Lol I thought belly dancers (all dancers really) were supposed to have grace and finesse. It seems a little counterproductive if you are trying to produce beautiful and fluid dancing.

Belly Dancing Housewife said:

Lol I thought belly dancers (all dancers really) were supposed to have grace and finesse. It seems a little counterproductive if you are trying to produce beautiful and fluid dancing.

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Having studied under that kind of training, and going back under it for another dance style, I think the main point is to drill the form and technique because grace and fluidity later in the game when you are closer to performing. Can't be a beautiful swan when you are dropping your pelvis and duck footing can you? Though I do think it takes a very special kind of person to enjoy or flourish under this style of training. I like it because well....it is my culture in a messed up way. You can always do better and there will always someone to tell you that.

We have a lot of fluffy bunny instructors out there who don't know how to deal with a student who wants to enter the highly-competitive pro arena.

Now, that's not to say there's anything AT ALL wrong with fluffy bunny having a good time and feeling pretty classes. That's what the majority of students want, and that's the basic belly dance experience in the US.

BUT -- moving from a "Let's express ourselves and you can do nothing wrong" kind of class into a "we're here because we are competing for spots in competitions or on videos or in festivals," can be a HUGE paradigm shift. I've been yelled at -- well, she was yelling over the music -- by a famous Egyptian dancer, and it did make a difference in how "seriously" I approached correction.

A lot of those instructors came from organized companies like Qawmiya and Reda Troupe, so they're used to a certain regimen. That doesn't excuse being crazy hateful, but I've not had much experience with that. I think sometimes people who are used to fluffy bunny teachers think they're being "yelled at" when they take lessons from a more intense instructor.

And of course, some teachers are just flat out crazy, so you have to factor that in.