This is going to be a dancey rant. Because it needs to happen. Consider yourself warned.
Over the faire I worked at, I spent time with some of the dancers I've known for just about my entire time doing belly dance. They've always been very chill, and decent people, but as dancers, they are incredibly frustrating.
Everything from costuming, to makeup, to their dancing itself, and attitude towards it is a project for me to be around. They have this sort of half assed attempt at education in regards to tribal belly dance that leads them to having barely decent costumes (that they don't even know what they're actually wearing) giant swirls on their face that they think are traditional harquus (normally small dots and simple lines), and a level of proficiency in dance that is just enough to where if they actually practiced with how they've been taught, they're likely to injure themselves.
The point of tribal belly dance is to use a series of moves with other dancers in an improvised format. It focuses on specific muscle isolation work, rather than trying to tell the entire body to do a move. There's a lot of things you can do in tribal that you can't do in other dancer formats, just because of how it is done comparatively.
They however, have been recycling the same choreographed sets for years upon years, without any real knowledge of tribal improv moves. To the point where they flaunt how quickly they learned certain choreographies, which really only involve a handful of moves repeated over and again. And because of the way they do the moves, it looks like they're trying to tell their body how to move, and it's being forced. They wind up looking sloppy because of it, and the crowd can tell.
On that note, this year was the first time I'd done a full performance with a prop. I used it alongside my set, in a way that accented things I would be doing otherwise, providing visible challenge, and kept me dancing in an interesting way. Any props they brought out turned into crutches. They looked like they were arguing with them, and it kept them from doing any other moves.
On the few occasions that dancers were trying to figure things out, or I was really familiar with their music and wanted to help explain how to do what they wanted safely, or add moves that would be more fitting, they sort of shooed me away as though they already had mastery of all things dance.
Now, apparently this isn't the case for them, but if anyone offers to show me a new move, I'm gonna hop on it. Even if I don't use it that day, I'm going to want it in my vocabulary for the future.
It's like seeing these levels of being a dancer. Most people give up learning when they're at the point where they can go on stage, and stagnate from there. They create more bad habits, and never feel like they need to fix them, because they already went through and learned once.
Then there are the dancers who are always learning, and always want to learn. They move out of their comfort zone, keep trying to improve, and feel drawn toward new things. And even though they may always be a student, they're often far better dancers than the people who quit trying to learn.
Over the faire I worked at, I spent time with some of the dancers I've known for just about my entire time doing belly dance. They've always been very chill, and decent people, but as dancers, they are incredibly frustrating.
Everything from costuming, to makeup, to their dancing itself, and attitude towards it is a project for me to be around. They have this sort of half assed attempt at education in regards to tribal belly dance that leads them to having barely decent costumes (that they don't even know what they're actually wearing) giant swirls on their face that they think are traditional harquus (normally small dots and simple lines), and a level of proficiency in dance that is just enough to where if they actually practiced with how they've been taught, they're likely to injure themselves.
The point of tribal belly dance is to use a series of moves with other dancers in an improvised format. It focuses on specific muscle isolation work, rather than trying to tell the entire body to do a move. There's a lot of things you can do in tribal that you can't do in other dancer formats, just because of how it is done comparatively.
They however, have been recycling the same choreographed sets for years upon years, without any real knowledge of tribal improv moves. To the point where they flaunt how quickly they learned certain choreographies, which really only involve a handful of moves repeated over and again. And because of the way they do the moves, it looks like they're trying to tell their body how to move, and it's being forced. They wind up looking sloppy because of it, and the crowd can tell.
On that note, this year was the first time I'd done a full performance with a prop. I used it alongside my set, in a way that accented things I would be doing otherwise, providing visible challenge, and kept me dancing in an interesting way. Any props they brought out turned into crutches. They looked like they were arguing with them, and it kept them from doing any other moves.
On the few occasions that dancers were trying to figure things out, or I was really familiar with their music and wanted to help explain how to do what they wanted safely, or add moves that would be more fitting, they sort of shooed me away as though they already had mastery of all things dance.
Now, apparently this isn't the case for them, but if anyone offers to show me a new move, I'm gonna hop on it. Even if I don't use it that day, I'm going to want it in my vocabulary for the future.
It's like seeing these levels of being a dancer. Most people give up learning when they're at the point where they can go on stage, and stagnate from there. They create more bad habits, and never feel like they need to fix them, because they already went through and learned once.
Then there are the dancers who are always learning, and always want to learn. They move out of their comfort zone, keep trying to improve, and feel drawn toward new things. And even though they may always be a student, they're often far better dancers than the people who quit trying to learn.
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