Dance at the most fundamental understanding is a study of relationships between the body, the mind and the music. (sound, center, ground)
To me, the Balady expression is a display of consistency of the relationship between the body, mind and instinct and therefore is very culturally colored as well. Different cultures highlight different aspects in music and have different focus in appreciation of nuances as well as beauty of movement and shape. The Balady expression is a societal exploration of dance within a society with a mutual understanding of what the highlights are, what focus there is and what nuances they look for. Whether this is put into words in an academic sense or not (or is even possible) is irrelevant. Academia observes something that already exists and explains it to others to be able to reproduce a similar understanding - and to the Egyptians; they already know what this is so there is no need to observe or explain. (did that make sense at all?). This does not mean that every Egyptian is an aspiring professional dancer - but an aspiring poet and romantic...the effort most probably is there. Art is explored in a poetic fashion rather than a theoretical fashion in the Balady expression. This exists in many other cultures and languages as well - each has a slightly different slant than others and some are closer to each other than others in their path of exploration.
The other expression is a visual/commercial/technical/business focused expression. It has more of an inverted focus than extroverted. It is almost as if the dancers are exploring inwards in the dance. Kind of a "look what I can do that you cant do" to out do each other. 1/2 of which the average Egyptian would never have the patience to look for - or put on edge, see the relevance of. Where Balady looks to include the viewer (communal effort), this visual/technical/commercial/business focus looks to exclude (individualistic effort). So it has a proper purpose in highlighting the uniqueness of an artist or “physical ability”.
I would dare say that these are 2 ways of achieving the same result – IF the dancer embraces the complete discipline of the dance…not only what conveniently is a part of his or her culturally trained habit.
Growing up between 2 cultures (Punjabi born in Norway) with both aspects present I had some rather confusing relationships with language, movement, poetry and just general cultural focus at times. I never completely could relate to either – and I never could feel completely disconnected either. If it had not been for my teacher, Lee Figenschow – herself a bicultural - I would probably never have been led on the path of an effort to understand this difference. I would most probably just dismiss one over the other.
I believe that when taking a dance form and implementing it into a culturally non-related society it is important to analyze and understand what come from this society has in regard to history, language, cultural thinking and the various forms of art.
Most commonly, a dancer will not have the privilege of serving a full on immersion study into a foreign culture’s way of understanding and expressing these at a restaurant, nightclub or even commercial stage show – and thereby is resigned to practice the more pure focus in their own environments (dance studios or when traveling).
I found Jillina’s article about dancing at AWS on Gilded Serpent to have an acknowledgement of this difference where she speaks of ‘doing the Egyptian thing’ VS ‘doing the American thing’.
http://www.gildedserpent.com/cms/2009/11/27/jillinaahlan09/
I wish more of the big names out there would acknowledge and speak more of the worth of the range of focus and ability in presentation they are required to accommodate in their careers. I find it to be a vital learning and teaching tool.
To me the first step is for people out there to understand that Bellydance is not just Bellydance – it has many facets, nuances, directions and cultural impacts.
Is that my job as a dancer? No. Is it my job as a person with the effort to build bridges between people’s understanding of each other through dance? Yes. Is that my job as a teacher? Yes. Is it a dancer’s job to have this understanding in order to assess his or her job description for each engagement? Definitely.
I believe that it is important not to undermine the value of the expression and poetic approach or the value of the technique and analysis approach – and realize that one can not exist without the other. That is what makes a dancer to me. The rest is just practice.
David
| Next > |
|---|
