Re-Fuse-nicks
The saddest part about "bellydance fusion" -- a name that I personally am coming to despise -- is how limited it is. With rare excpetions, it's all based on jumping off other archetypes, from ATS to Goth* to Hula. Which is great, as borrowing is how Raqs Sharqi got kick-started, yet I'm not certain if there' s much future in looking like a rebuilt version of other people's pasts.
One of the things I've been slowly (glacially, or perhaps even continental-drift-ly) working on is trying to find a Raqs Sharqi that not only fits my personal needs as a performer, but also brings the form with some solid 21-st entry cred, without losing the elements that make Raqs Sharqi, esp. the Egyptian form, beloved and almost unique among dance styles. I refuse to think that this dance can't be brought, wholesale, into the new century, and even evolved in ways that don't lose the core conceptions and conceits.
And maybe it's just that I'm conceited, as one of my focal points on this is the core statement by Morocco and Tarik Sultan, that Raqs sharqi can only be preformed to the appropriate, Arabic, music. I do not feel that a dance loses it's essence merely by being preformed with music that's not of it's host genre, and that dance, in most cases (and certainly this one) is not separate from music, but should not be enslaved to it either.
To that end, I've been working on one aspect of this, in an attempt to kick-start the rest -- sagat work to Western tunes. And moreover, sgat work to Big Beat Electronica, with it's complex layering and high BPMs. Not only is it a challenge, it's something that is, on one level, far, far away from Classical Arabic Orchestrations. As much as I love that music, it's structure is well-known, even if it's challenges (esp. for Western dancers) nigh-infinite.
Electronica, however, esp. the kinds of songs I'm planning to work with, have so many different, and varied, and complex layers to play with, that a dancer could work for days just slicing apart the basics of just one song, much less trying to work movements into the various levels. And the speed is such that one must truly play sagat at a very skilled level simply to keep up, much less to actually play, as opposed to just clack. And when the dancer does, s/he becomes their own musician, bringing an Arabic feel to Western tunes, transforming a song into a new, more powerful and truly different fusion of cultures, honoring both in ways that other fusions struggle to meet.
And if I can do that with simply playing the sagats, imagine what could be done with other pieces of the dance? Imagine growing a fusion organically, from the ground up? So far, we can only imagine.
But I intent to make it real. Wouldn't that be cool?
[Sekrit message to Lynette: New articles coming soon. Got crazy, then traveled, then very sick. Sorry!]
* Yes, I've heard the "Goth isn't Fusion" arguments. No offense to those artists, yet I'm currently unswayed. Feel free to take it up with me in the comments. :)
One of the things I've been slowly (glacially, or perhaps even continental-drift-ly) working on is trying to find a Raqs Sharqi that not only fits my personal needs as a performer, but also brings the form with some solid 21-st entry cred, without losing the elements that make Raqs Sharqi, esp. the Egyptian form, beloved and almost unique among dance styles. I refuse to think that this dance can't be brought, wholesale, into the new century, and even evolved in ways that don't lose the core conceptions and conceits.
And maybe it's just that I'm conceited, as one of my focal points on this is the core statement by Morocco and Tarik Sultan, that Raqs sharqi can only be preformed to the appropriate, Arabic, music. I do not feel that a dance loses it's essence merely by being preformed with music that's not of it's host genre, and that dance, in most cases (and certainly this one) is not separate from music, but should not be enslaved to it either.
To that end, I've been working on one aspect of this, in an attempt to kick-start the rest -- sagat work to Western tunes. And moreover, sgat work to Big Beat Electronica, with it's complex layering and high BPMs. Not only is it a challenge, it's something that is, on one level, far, far away from Classical Arabic Orchestrations. As much as I love that music, it's structure is well-known, even if it's challenges (esp. for Western dancers) nigh-infinite.
Electronica, however, esp. the kinds of songs I'm planning to work with, have so many different, and varied, and complex layers to play with, that a dancer could work for days just slicing apart the basics of just one song, much less trying to work movements into the various levels. And the speed is such that one must truly play sagat at a very skilled level simply to keep up, much less to actually play, as opposed to just clack. And when the dancer does, s/he becomes their own musician, bringing an Arabic feel to Western tunes, transforming a song into a new, more powerful and truly different fusion of cultures, honoring both in ways that other fusions struggle to meet.
And if I can do that with simply playing the sagats, imagine what could be done with other pieces of the dance? Imagine growing a fusion organically, from the ground up? So far, we can only imagine.
But I intent to make it real. Wouldn't that be cool?
[Sekrit message to Lynette: New articles coming soon. Got crazy, then traveled, then very sick. Sorry!]
* Yes, I've heard the "Goth isn't Fusion" arguments. No offense to those artists, yet I'm currently unswayed. Feel free to take it up with me in the comments. :)
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I have a hard time doing "raqs sharqi" to anything that isn't actually Arabic. Maybe I'm small-minded, but I find that I fuse other things when it's not Arabic music, and that I'm simply INCAPABLE of having the same raqs sharqi soul when it's not Arabic music. And that's not to say that the music I'm trying to dance to doesn't have soul! The music and feel is just *different*, and it *makes* me step out of the pure raqs sharqi definition.
Note that by "raqs sharqi", I'm probably referring to something that is quite a bit more specifically Egyptian/Arabic than what you're probably meaning by it.
Example: I'm working on a choreography right now to a piece by Tool. Say if I extracted what I learned today from Tito to this choreography effort, uhm... It doesn't work. At least for me and at my skill-level. It *has* to be something else.
I really do mean Egyptian-style Raqs Sharqi by this, actually. And it may be impossible, overall, to do that exact style to something that's not Arabic Music. I don't want to fully discount that possibility...but I do think it's only a possibility.
I don't think you, or anyone, is small -minded, I just think we've not found the proper paradigm for making it work. that's part of what I'm trying to do here, is to build one possible map for laying out Raqs Sharqi onto different musical maps, without losing it's core integrity.
And, at the very least, I don't want to make Yet Another Tribal Offshoot...know what I mean? :)
(Have I mentioned how jealous I am that you got to study with Tito? *grin*)
My dance background has primarily been in folk dancing. (Fall 2007 noted the 20th anniv. of the American Folk dance class I took Freshman year of college that started my dance training.)
I've danced various european, asian, and mediterrean dances and have found no problem mixing and matching. There are times when celtic elements creep into my belly dancing.
I also belly dance to anything, including the Sesame St. theme. I want to do a routine to Patsy Cline's "You Belong to Me" (See the market place in old Algiers, send me photographs and souvenirs...)
But then, I don't perform a pure style like Egyptian. Since I've got such a strong folk background I tend to pick up bits and pieces I like from hither and yon and put them together with music I like. The outfits lean toward Turkish folkloric/19th cent. orientalism and the majority of the movements are pure raqs, but it's spiced with accents from all over.
Dance is one of those things where the artist is able to shut up the cataloguer. I have a much broader view of what's encompassed in belly dance than a lot of people.
(The cataloguer in me is contemplating heirarchies and how synonymous "raqs sharqi" is with "belly dance" and if Egyptian belly dance would be a narrow term and which terms would be related. I can't escape it! ;-p)