July 2006 Archives

I've never been one to push overly hard on the "All One Dance" aspect of the wide varieties of dance branching off raqs shaquri. But I am one to ponder the dance community's reaction to the issues in Lebanon and Israel. When I was able to see a report concerning Amani, the famed Lebanese dancer, I thought it'd be useful to post it to a wider audience than her Tribe.net group. Luckily, the report, from a dancer attending the just-finished weeklong dance festival there, is mostly positive, given the grave situation:

I [Beverley] stayed on after the fesival, which delivered beautifully, when I'm finished the piece Im writing about it, I will post it, but right now still in Lebanon, watching the war with horror for the destruction it is causing.

The good news is Amani, her team and I are all safe. I will leave in the next few weeks as planned and keep you updated. Meantime, I dance (and eat) while Beirut's Burning.

What else to do against a marauding army? Amani has been watching my back and we are all safe.

And the follow up, as of Sun. in America, is that she's still alive, and well, but still trapped in Beruit.

One of the great gifts of modern technology is that we do NOT have to be shacked to media reports of any bias, or to the commentary of friends and family, or, worst of all, willing only to listen to one side of a conflict. Blogs, forums, even podcasts are bringing us the day-to-day realities, the fears and joys, of people involved on either side of this conflict.

And it makes it easier to help, as this thread on Rachel Brice's Tribe.net group shows. If you want to help, do these two things, please:

1. Go to the "How to Actively Help" thread, find a charity you admire, and contribute.


2. Pass that link onto a friend. :)

This is a re-post of a comment on a Tribe.net thread. I really kind of like how I broke down this options, in a way I don't think I've ever seen written out. So please excuse this bit of ego. Basically, there are 4 "core attributes" for making money in raqs shaquri, or any of the related forms:

1. How much are you willing to hustle/sacrifice,


2. How much creative skill do you have,


3. How much raw business sense can you get,


4. How close you are to mainstream senses of beauty.

You'll notice that beauty is last. I've know a tolerable number of lovely and fairly talented raqs shaquri artists, who make a good, even a living, wage, for upwards of a decade or so. Yet they didn't learn how to do what I call "deep promotion", the stuff past basic networking, getting business cards, etc. They didn't have a long-term creative vision for their dancing, something to keep striving for. And they never really learned how to hustle, how to work on the fly and walk the tightrope to figure out how to make their vision a reality.

If you can put those aspects together, I've seen that you can make a living wage, on your own, as a dancer. But right now, it's an environment where you pretty much learn it on your own. I can try to list off what dancers I know do to gain income:

• Teach Regular Classes: Fairly steady source of income, but a LOT of work to make it happen, and there's the cost of a place to teach out of, as well as possibly insurance, etc. You'll also need to be talented as both as a dancer and as an instructor to make more than one or two sets of classes happen.


• Teach Privates and Seminars: This is less steady, yet tends to be higher pay. You'll need more talent than as a regular teacher, in my observations, as well as a good sense for networking and/or raw charisma.


• Restaurants gigs: Many dancers start, and end, their money-making from dance here. Pay ranges from good to abysmal; I don't know any dancers who live solely off their wages from a restaurant gig. Need at least decent talent, some level of mainstream beauty, and personal charisma. The more of these you have, the better off you'll be.


• One-off gigs ("bellygrams", parties, etc.): Sometimes started around the same time as restaurant gigs, although some dancers, like myself, do these without doing any regular gigs. Same requirements as Restaurant gigs, but surviving them takes extra hustle to get, and keep getting, these kinds of gigs.


• Form a dance company: HARD. Need to have all four attributes in top shape to do this. Will usually also need to teach regular classes as part of this. You make money performing, and also a percentage from company member's performances. This leads to a hopefully fairly steady income, so long as you keep your talent up, and keep the networking and hustling going.


• Produce videos: Should not do without having a good reputation; if people aren't asking you on a regular basis for your videos, it's a sign. Hard to do, what with getting clearance for music, a good video team, developing something that works well as a non-interactive piece of instruction, etc. Much of this is a great deal of up-front cost. But a good video will mean a stream of revenue for you for some time.


• Become a vendor: Almost every dancer who's got videos is a vendor to some extent. Some dancers, though, vend more than average, which hurts as far as up-front stock-building money, etc. If you love to dance, this is a hard road. If you're not good with the business sense, it's a hard road. Vending is, overall, a hard road, yet it's the one with the surest long-term path to making money in this form; that's part of the reason Fat Chance has so much stuff for sale…