
Originally Posted by
MizzNaaa
Okay, here are my two cents in.
You know that god awful phrase "Westerners just don't dance as good as us middle easterners"? I know the reason behind it, at least the reason it's said on my end of the world (here in Egypt). It's your emphasis on choreography.
I'm only 20, but I've been belly dancing since I was four-ish , that's almost 16 years, it's always been part of my life, and I've NEVER...EVER done a choreography. The only time I ever did a choreography was one me and my friend set up for my birthday party, we were going to do a belly dance duel, and we didn't even really 'choreograph' the moves, we basically just broke the song into segments to know which one of us gets what part. That was it! There were no moves agreed on. Every time we practiced the moves would be different.
The thing most (in my humble opinion) western dancers I've seen/watched/talked to don't get is that Bellydance is literally all about spontaneity and improvisation. Studying the technique makes sense of course, yes you need to understand how the moves are done, but treating Bellydance as a theatrical dance and breaking it down to 1, 2, step takes away from it's magic.
I hope to teach bellydance one day, cause I feel like I have a lot to show/tell people about our type of dance, and in my class there will be NO room for choreography until my students fully understand the technique and can easily express themselves to ACTUAL ME music by improvising.
So, you want my opinion? Go the the class, learn from your teacher, but ALWAYS make time to just sit, listen to ME music and understand it. Look up the lyrics, ask here, I'll help with any translations I could and most importantly; improvise.
Watch Egypt's top bellydancers; Naima Akef, Samia Gamal, Tahia Carioka, Suheir Zaki, Fifi Abdu, Badia Masabny, and watch other dancers who choreograph just to get new ideas but don't cop out and rely on choreography. So yeah, make time for improvisations and don't focus on travelling around much. Honestly, here in Cairo when we see a bellydancer moving over the dance floor too much rather than actually focusing on moving the common reaction is "She's covering up her inability to move".
Moving around is good, but it's only a minor part of the dance, you can literally have a very successful performance by just moving in a tiny 2x2 meter dance floor because it really relies on your technique and how well you express yourself in the music. Same thing for the variety of moves, you don't have to use 9374374 different and complex bellydance moves to have a successful performance, just watch Suheir Zaki, she's mesmerizing and yet, there are very little fancy moves, it's all about the expression.
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