How's Bellydance at Taiwan Part VI - Just Give Me Choreography & Nothing Else!

Learning choreography without thinking is dangerous. You don’t get the chance to really review yourself and further develop your own style. Perhaps for those choreography-only dancers, one’s own style is not what they want.

With such strong demand of choreography, bringing back from other masters overseas is not enough. DVD becomes another major source for choreography, and now it is Youtube. Nevertheless, visual imitation is easy and knowing the kinetic operation is another. It would take people away from the real dance and what we have is such boring and unlike duplication.

Some local instructors also do their own choreography pieces, or what they think that is THE CHOREOGRAPHY. Choreography is a very professional art and requires certain experiences and talent. As Suhaila said in her workshop at Taipei this April, choreographers often have different way to listen to the music and observe this world than others. That’s why we have very few outstanding choreographers and a great deal of excellent dancers out there. Many just cannot tell the difference between combos/drills and true choreography.

Still another issue from the heavily-choreography-oriented phenomenon is that people have strange idea toward improvisation. I was told by one teacher at class that improvisation is all about dancing without preparation and thinking. You put a piece of song for show and you just dance to it.

People like me who don’t really get into choreography things naturally go for improvisation dancing like ATS. It provides me great freedom and helps me get rid of the fear that I might not remember the choreography correctly that if I dance with my friends on stage, I might make myself looks like a fool. I felt a sense of security not to dance someone else’s choreography. However, once you begin to learn how to improvisation, you realize there is more to learn in advanced so you have capacity to do improvisation.

As my dear mentor Carolena Nericcio once said, a really great improvisation should be like choreography while the perfect choreography should look like improvisation. Now when I have chance to learn choreography, I will focus on how those movements are put together in order to response the music, or how floor pattern is set to present fluid musicality. I found out that I have more to learn through a choreography piece now rather than just to force myself memorizing everything movements and steps in this piece. It becomes more instructional and yet, more fun.

Recently I had chance to dance Suhaila’s choreography with my dance friends in another dancer’s party. For the first time, I realize that in addition to body movements, transitions, and stage presence, there is something more for dancing a choreography piece – the emotion or something like that. Perfectly executing all movements in a dance is great and to really give self-expression through this choreography is something else, a much better reward.

How's Bellydance at Taiwan Part VI - Just Give Me Choreography & Nothing Else!

Another issue, or symptom from the heavily-choreography-oriented phenomenon is that people either misunderstand or improperly interpret this dance, simply because they know nothing about the history, culture, and society where the dance is originated. Language barrier may explain part of the reasons and I truly believe that this should not be an excuse, especially for those who make living with this dance or claim themselves as professional or full-time employee in this field.

Readers probably note that I didn’t mention much about tribal bellydance or tribal fusion bellydance choreography here. Indeed, we love Rachel Brice as others do in the world. Somehow such strongly-improvised dance style – well, I am not saying oriental dance is always choreographed, truly challenges local dancers who are trained with learned choreography. They could only imitate the shape of movement because they don’t know the anatomy of movement.

So some technique training like Suhaila Salimpour format is obvious what we need to fill the gap. However, for most of dancers who mainly focus on learning choreography and already make quick money from this, it is too much waste in terms of time and energy to do some fundamental technique training like this - It is really a matter of personal choice. I just wish they know what they could do if they could have took such training!

Yes! It all came back to the beginning when bellydance was so new and hot in Taiwan. Instructors had to send out not only her teachers but her students to meet the highly popular demands of performances. They had no time for fundamental training and choreographies by other masters were seemingly the perfect solution.

It remains the same situation till now. Saida, the beloved bellydance diva by local bellydancers just came to give workshops. Many instructors came to learn mainly choreography pieces so they could go back to teach for another session or for performance. There is nothing wrong for this. However, they only want to remember the choreography without really appreciating the true beauty of Arab dance which Saida wishes to present. This is not only a great loss for them, but also would prevent them from being really like Saida dancing, which is all they want to become.

How's Bellydance at Taiwan Part VI - Just Give Me Choreography & Nothing Else!

Choreography truly means a lot to local bellydance community.

Students and instructors all are so accustomed with the idea of learning bellydance via choreography that sometimes it causes problems, well, at least some potential problems.

One of the biggest issues from such heavily-choreography-oriented phenomenon is that we are kind of kept away from learning more about bellydance in a wider and deeper respect. There are so many elements consisting inside choreography: dance movements, music and rhythms, emotion preparation, historical knowledge, inspiration…. For some unknown reasons, dance movement is the most emphasized element for local instructors and students as well when a piece of choreography is taught. Those movements are perfectly duplicated and flawlessly executed, technically, without fully understanding on music, rhythms or cultural contexts.

So what? Girls just want to have fun. Dressing in sparkling costume and happily dancing are all they want! Sometimes I am very confused about this: passion is the best motivation and we should dance just for it. Somehow this passion drives me into more curiosity and strong interest in learning more about this beautiful dance: history, culture…everything!

Without really knowing the dance in depth, dancers, instructors and students find limitation when they encounter with finger cymbals, which is widely regarded as one of dance prop rather than musical instrument. Obviously if one has no knowledge on Middle East or Arab music and rhythms, or some musical or rhythmic training, one cannot play finger cymbals in a proper way. Some dancers or instructors with several years of experience have no idea about the difference between a downbeat and an upbeat, which is quite common here. Sometimes I am so amazed at how they could do upbeat dancing and finger cymbal playing!

How's Bellydance at Taiwan Part VI. -Part VI. Just Give Me Choreography & Nothing Else!

Many dancers and students here like me, have a love-hate relationship with the issue of choreography.

Choreography is a great way to put everything together and have some fun. We learned bellydance through choreographies brought back by our teachers when bellydance was first introduced to Taiwan. Since the demands grew so fast while instructors who were capable and available then were relatively rare, choreography became a great way to “duplicate” the knowledge of bellydance to the rapidly growing students. Instructors could send out her students to teach others.

This becomes main stream for local bellydance studios to design their programs. Students learn different choreographies from entry level to advanced level and usually instructors will teach one piece of choreography for each session, which is often ten weeks.

It is also main stream to put props into the learning of choreography here. Students usually learn veil dance as the second choreography in the entry level/basic level while cane dance is another prop; in the immediate level students might learn a more challenging veil or cane dance choreographies and sometimes either some fusion style bellydance choreographies or more challenging props like tin lights, Shamadan (candelabrum). Zils (finger cymbal) is regarded as a prop like veil and cane by many local instructors.

In some cases, instructors will offer students sort of “trial” in which introduces different styles or forms in bellydance world. For instance, students might learn several sessions of oriental dance or cabaret bellydance and then they begin to learn the concept of posture and ATS.

As the development of bellydance in Taiwan grows along with the passage of time, now we are able to invite many bellydance intstructors/bellyancers to give us workshops. It is not surprising that the choreography workshops remain the most desirable ones among local students/instructors.