http://www.jamieoliver.com/foodwise/article-view.php?id=2038Undoubtedly, tribal bellydance attracts a younger population into bellydance community. When I taught ATS before my surgery last April, I have half of students who were young girls around mid-late 20s while the rest are more mature ladies. Almost all my young students want to be like Rachel. They regarded ATS as the preparation for Rachel Brice-style tribal bellydance.
Local dancers then began to imitate Rachel Brice through DVD or other types of information. DVD used to be and remains as one of the major learning resources among local dancers and instructors (Now Youtube is the main channel). They learn how to break down movements and foot patterns through instructional DVD while performance DVD provides them abundant reference for their own show. As a bellydance DVD collecting-mania, I am not surprised to see something familiar from live stage all the time and it is usually no way better than the original version.
Imitation is part of the learning procedure and replica is another issue. Through imitating a role model, we learn and polish our techniques and gain experiences. Replica is to duplicate the same quality and it requires certain extent of skills and experiences. Somehow in Taiwan bellydance circle, such rush-developing market, people often misunderstand the true meaning and intention of imitation and replica. They often think they just imitate someone else for artistic reference and as a matter of fact, what they do is copying someone with poor taste and less quality. It ends up neither a good-will imitation nor a fine replica.
Once again, language is really a big issue. Many dancers/instructors have very limited capacity of understanding foreign languages and thus they can only rely on their eyes. What they saw on DVD is what they can learn.
Getting the identical Rachel look become very popular and we found out it is very difficult to find something exactly same as she wears. Those silver jewelry pieces look very old and are very pricy. Some dancers also started to try dancing like Rachel by solely visual imitation, which later turns to be not an ideal way. Without truly knowing the body placement and muscle control, it is very difficult to present a real tribal bellydance performance.
Some dancers imitating Rachel Brice might not really care about whether they are identical tribal bellydancers. As a newly developing market, we are indeed very eager to catch up with our other peer colleagues in this rapid expanding global community and thus we are kind of very open-minded toward all different styles, without much background information check or persistency on long-term developing on certain specific types or styles of dance.
In the meanwhile, we are so busy to catch up with the current trends that we don’t really focus on in-depth cultivation yet. In certain areas where resources and information are not that abundant like the capital city Taipei, dancers/instructors often have to offer different kinds of dance styles as their repertoires. - This is also true even at Taipei. Many dance companies will present several styles of dance in their annual recitals.
Learning different dance styles sometimes might be very confusing and it is usually not easy to truly balance between any two different dance styles. Think of those tribal dancers with strong posture and certain attitude look and the take-it-easy Egyptian oriental dancers, through different mindset, they thus have very different presentation and interpretation on this dance form. I do see many local dancers wearing oriental dance costume perform ATS movements as a group, or they are requested to dance Egyptian style bellydance and they have no idea they are dancing with tribal bellydance movements.
In a way, this is really like my dip theory: whatever underneath the creamy and yummy dip does not matter; they just want the look and they either don’t have time to think of the nature or essential elements of this particular style or they just simply want to try something new. To be only focus on certain types of bellydance could be very challenging and even risky to local dancers in terms of running a dance studio or maintaining both dance troupes and audience at this point. I am told that audience usually prefers versatile and of most importance, “pretty” bellydance.
Maybe it is true at this case. There indeed are certain cultural gaps between East and West. Somehow I still firmly believe that once audiences know they do have choices, they would have different preference. All we have to do is to provide them such choices and show them the true passion we have from this dance. Sometimes it just takes longer to achieve our goal. Perhaps in this rapidly-developing market, people simply forget they do have time and they need to take time to grow into a mature career.
I could only hope that one day, or in the very soon future, more and more local dancers/instructors would like me to have enough real delicious dips with breads of great quality so they have enough faith to hold on something in depth. Hopefully it won’t be too long…
Local dancers then began to imitate Rachel Brice through DVD or other types of information. DVD used to be and remains as one of the major learning resources among local dancers and instructors (Now Youtube is the main channel). They learn how to break down movements and foot patterns through instructional DVD while performance DVD provides them abundant reference for their own show. As a bellydance DVD collecting-mania, I am not surprised to see something familiar from live stage all the time and it is usually no way better than the original version.
Imitation is part of the learning procedure and replica is another issue. Through imitating a role model, we learn and polish our techniques and gain experiences. Replica is to duplicate the same quality and it requires certain extent of skills and experiences. Somehow in Taiwan bellydance circle, such rush-developing market, people often misunderstand the true meaning and intention of imitation and replica. They often think they just imitate someone else for artistic reference and as a matter of fact, what they do is copying someone with poor taste and less quality. It ends up neither a good-will imitation nor a fine replica.
Once again, language is really a big issue. Many dancers/instructors have very limited capacity of understanding foreign languages and thus they can only rely on their eyes. What they saw on DVD is what they can learn.
Getting the identical Rachel look become very popular and we found out it is very difficult to find something exactly same as she wears. Those silver jewelry pieces look very old and are very pricy. Some dancers also started to try dancing like Rachel by solely visual imitation, which later turns to be not an ideal way. Without truly knowing the body placement and muscle control, it is very difficult to present a real tribal bellydance performance.
Some dancers imitating Rachel Brice might not really care about whether they are identical tribal bellydancers. As a newly developing market, we are indeed very eager to catch up with our other peer colleagues in this rapid expanding global community and thus we are kind of very open-minded toward all different styles, without much background information check or persistency on long-term developing on certain specific types or styles of dance.
In the meanwhile, we are so busy to catch up with the current trends that we don’t really focus on in-depth cultivation yet. In certain areas where resources and information are not that abundant like the capital city Taipei, dancers/instructors often have to offer different kinds of dance styles as their repertoires. - This is also true even at Taipei. Many dance companies will present several styles of dance in their annual recitals.
Learning different dance styles sometimes might be very confusing and it is usually not easy to truly balance between any two different dance styles. Think of those tribal dancers with strong posture and certain attitude look and the take-it-easy Egyptian oriental dancers, through different mindset, they thus have very different presentation and interpretation on this dance form. I do see many local dancers wearing oriental dance costume perform ATS movements as a group, or they are requested to dance Egyptian style bellydance and they have no idea they are dancing with tribal bellydance movements.
In a way, this is really like my dip theory: whatever underneath the creamy and yummy dip does not matter; they just want the look and they either don’t have time to think of the nature or essential elements of this particular style or they just simply want to try something new. To be only focus on certain types of bellydance could be very challenging and even risky to local dancers in terms of running a dance studio or maintaining both dance troupes and audience at this point. I am told that audience usually prefers versatile and of most importance, “pretty” bellydance.
Maybe it is true at this case. There indeed are certain cultural gaps between East and West. Somehow I still firmly believe that once audiences know they do have choices, they would have different preference. All we have to do is to provide them such choices and show them the true passion we have from this dance. Sometimes it just takes longer to achieve our goal. Perhaps in this rapidly-developing market, people simply forget they do have time and they need to take time to grow into a mature career.
I could only hope that one day, or in the very soon future, more and more local dancers/instructors would like me to have enough real delicious dips with breads of great quality so they have enough faith to hold on something in depth. Hopefully it won’t be too long…
