Dance Yourself Happy!

Dancing Across the UK and Catching Up with Old Friends

I’m aware that it’s ages since I’ve last written.  Somehow life – and dance – just got in the way.  But it’s been a joy to immerse myself in dancing and teaching over the last few months as it’s what I love most.

Johara Dance Company's ‘Elemental’ tour is now well underway and on Saturday we did a show at the Bloomsbury Theatre, London.  Whereas on previous occasions, we relaxed into the performance,  this time we were all affected by nerves.  The combination of performing in front of our ‘home crowd’ and knowing that the performance was being videoed made everyone edgy.   And speaking for myself, I don’t think it was my greatest performance.  That said, it was great to get such effusive feedback from dancers and teachers I really admire such as Maggie Caffrey (pictured below with partner Jacques, Sharon Gordon and Kathak teacher and performer, Sushma Mehta) and Heather Burby, as well as from friends and family.  We knew that this show was breaking new ground but I think the audience was surprised by it.  Jo Wise should be congratulated for taking the dance in such a radically new direction.  Like other company members, I feel really privileged to be a part of the experience.

 This month I’ve also been crossing the UK to teach workshops.   I had a lovely – though wet - weekend in Cornwall teaching Bollywood for Liz Newman, and the following week taught a Bollywood workshop in Stirling for Warda before going to the weekend at Ford Castle, organised by Farida Dance.

 One of the things I love most about this dance is catching up with old friends – as well as making new ones.  At Ford it was as though my dance history was flashing before my eyes; I first met Sara Farouk over fifteen years ago and  haven’t seen her much since; Tracey Gibbs was one of the first dancers I ever met, and Anne Kingston, Kay Taylor and I, well, we go back an awfully long way too. And I enjoyed spending some time with Charlotte Desorgher, whom I’ve only met fleetingly before.

 The atmosphere at Ford is always great, with everyone up for enjoying themselves.  Kay and I spent much of the time doing the final assessments for teachers on the last JWAAD Diploma Course.  It was great to see how they had all evolved into such good teachers, each with their own individual teaching style.

I did teach some workshops myself – my take on the Bambuteyya (aka as the Drunken Sailors Dance – not I hasten to add the official description!); Cairo Goes to Hollywood (aka as Camping it Up with Confidence) and Samba Reggae Fusion.  I don’t think I’ve ever had such fun teaching – largely due to the enthusiasm with which the women threw themselves into all of the classes. 

Ahlan Wa Sahlan Pt 4 - The Power of Randa, Sufi Spinning and the Closing Gala

At the beginning of the week, we registered and booked the workshops we wanted to do.  It's fortunate that the dollar is so weak against the pound because it certainly didn't come cheap!   Three-hour 'Super master classes' with the likes of Randa, Dina and Soraya were $80, three-hour master classes were $60, and two-hour classes were $40.  Add in the cost of the opening and closing galas and registration, and it's one expensive holiday.

Now that more and more Egyptian teachers are coming to the UK, and there are tailor-made tours such as those organised by Farida Dance, it seems sensible to choose master classes or two-hour classes with the non-Egyptian teachers.  Firstly, there were fewer people so you actually got to learn something, and secondly, the subject matter was often more interesting. 

For example, I really loved the Tanoura workshop I took with Madrid-based teacher, Mohamed El Sayed. He seemed a gentle, joyful kind of person and it was wonderful to work with live music too; he brought along a singer, req, nay and darbuka players.  Mohamed obviously has a big following in Spain and South America as the majority of people in the class were Spanish speakers.  This was a big advantage as he didn't speak any English, and I found his translator's English  far less comprehensible than Mohamed's Spanish, which fortunately I more or less managed to follow.

After getting used to turning by changing direction and varying arm positions, we all got to spin as a group.  Sufis spin only to the left, and this takes some getting used to. Every few minutes there was a dull 'thud' as another person keeled over. 

After the break we got to spin in the big Tanoura and Sufi skirts. They really are magnificent. The Tanoura ones are made for performance, much more colourful and weighted with a thick band of rubber, while the Sufi ones are hemmed with very thick rope. Apparently there is only one person in Egypt who makes them. (I was momentarily tempted to buy one for some home spinning but then remembered the excess bagage we'd already accumulated over the previous few days and thought better of it!)

The music has a haunting, meditative quality with an insistent rhythm that builds up in speed. It's a very special feeling having that weight to ground you when you feel that otherwise you are spinning so fast that you might take off.  I find sitting still to meditate extremely difficult, but spinning is a great way of clearing the mind.

Maja, a Russian-born dancer based in Miami, gave another interesting class in Gypsy Tribal Fusion. I loved the combination of Arabic, Flamenco and Romany Gypsy movements.  At one point she taught us how to use silk fans.  We had to make do with plastic plates, which made me smile until Jo pointed out that it was no more ridiculous than making people put a shoe on their head as a candelabrum substitute (which, yes, I have been known to do).

Having said that I felt I learned more from the non-Egyptian teachers, I really enjoyed the piece of choreography we learned at Randa's masterclass. 

The Ahlan Wa Sahlan Festival Pt 3 - The Magnificence of Mona and Catching up with Keti Sharif

It's curious being here with a VIP.  As organiser of the Bellydance Congress, Jo is very much in demand. Other international teachers, who previously didn't show much interest in the UK scene, are falling over themselves to say 'hello'.  As Jo admits, it makes her life much easier.

I'm enjoying meeting new people - and bumping into dancers I have met at other workshops, such as Bernard from Paris and Raja, from Lille - a truly wonderful dancer, full of passion and flair, who I first met at a Horatio and Beata Intensive and then performed with in a show in Biarritz when a Parisian dancer fell ill.  (My abiding memory is of her stunning finale - and of getting locked out of the theatre with my friend Yvonne during rehearsals and having to scale a wall to get in, only to find that there was no time for me to practise with the orchestra, or even mark through what I was going to do to somebody else's music in front of an audience of 500 people.)

That ranks as one of my scariest experiences, but the masterclass with Mona el Said wasn't far behind. My God, she's the ultimate maa’lima (boss woman). She gave short shrift to anyone wishing to sit down, telling them that they should go back to their room if they were tired, and told the people on the door to shut it in no uncertain terms.

But she danced with such passion that she made me cry.  She doesn’t teach as such, you just follow her dancing to a piece of music, which keeps you on your toes as the choreography changes each time she dances.  She used all the signature moves I have seen in videos of her over the years.  I’m not sure how the younger dancers felt about her, some looked rather bemused. I was interested to see that there were (only!) about 80 students in the workshop, compared with 150 for Soraya and nearly 200 for Randa. But Jo and I agreed that she’s a legend and has to be respected as such.  It was dancers like her and Fifi Abdou that made me fall in love with this dance.

Bollywood In The Forest

Last Saturday saw me trekking over to Ruardean Woodside in the Forest of Dean for a Bollywood workshop I was teaching for Kim Danby and her students.  It's always a joy to teach there as they are all so enthusiastic and eager to learn new things.  Inevitably they remember my choreography better than I do - but that's just something I've learned to live with!

Knocked Out By a Wild Woman!

It's taken me about a week to recover from the excitement of last weekend's Sirocco Festival - which is either a reflection of my advancing years or the fact that I don't get out much! (More likely to be the former as most of my week seems to be spent on the M4.)

The Sirocco is apparently a wind which comes in from the Sahara, bringing warmth to Europe. According to the organiser, Wendy Buonaventura, 'our festival celebrates the meeting of East and West via the inspiration of dance and music'.

Unlike other dance events which focus on mainly Egyptian or Arabic style this was truly a fusion-fest, with classes in everything from Performance & Symbolism, Cuban Egyptian and Arabic Tango to Sufi trance dance, Tribal style and Arab-Flamenco. Because the teachers and performers taking part have a great deal of acting and performance experience, there was a highly theatrical dynamic to the whole event which I found really interesting. With so much emphasis on Egyptian technique in most festivals, it was really refreshing to put that to one side and to 'explore our creative energy and the spirit of dance within'.

No-one epitomised that spirit of creative energy more than Berlin-based Raksan, a true 'warrior woman'...

Burlesque Fest!

Sequinned nipple tassles, oversized feather fans and frilly knickers can mean only one thing - the ultra-glamorous, highly camp and achingly chic world of burlesque. A number of dancing friends are obsessed by it but apart from seeing a few performances, it's not something I know much about.  However, having spent a week attending a workshop, a performance and a documentary screening on the subject, I've learned quite a bit more.

Firstly I attended a workshop with Venus Noir, Bristol's doyenne of burlesque, at the Space in Stroud last Saturday. I had seen Venus perform at Hub in the Subs, a cabaret evening in Stroud and was impressed by her sophistication, elegance and forties-style glamour.  The women-only workshop was great.  Venus was down-to-earth, approachable and generous. 

After learning a sequence with a parasol the sixteen of us had to perform it one by one on the stage.  It was nerve-racking but certainly got us to polish up on our performance skills.  During the course of the workshop we learned to remove gloves and stockings, tantalise with floorwork - and even twirl nipple tassles if you wanted to. (Not really an option for me.)  Everybody came away enthusing about the class. 

What the workshop really brought home to me was the fact that burlesque is playful, cheeky and sometimes humorous.  Contrary to popular belief, it's not about stripping but rather about teasing your audience and celebrating the female form. Which explains why 70% or more of burlesque audiences are women.

On Tuesday I attended an evening of burlesque at the Koko Club, Camden with Gwen and Harriet - both burlesque aficionados.  (The last time I went there it was the Camden Palais, which really shows my age.)  I knew I was heading in the right direction when I saw gaggles of women in hobble skirts, hats and veils and vertiginous heels queuing outside - it was worth the entrance price just to watch the audience.

The evening was headlined by Immodesty Blaise and compered by Julian Clary. It was fabulous.  Immodesty's sets were spectacular - the first had a giant bakelite phone centre stage and the second a huge gilded rocking horse - and her costumes to die for.  She also is incredibly charismatic.  But one of my favourite performers was Dirty Martini, from the US. A larger-than-life, size 20 cross between Mae West and Marilyn, she was irresistably camp. I particularly enjoyed her recreation of a piece that apparently scandalized US audiences in the 40s, where she pretened to be caught in a giant glittery spider's web while a black gloved 'spider' scurried across her body.  Definitely a night to remember.

The following day I attended the premiere of a documentary on Princess Farhana of Hollywood, a burlesque and belly dancer who has run a number of workshops in the UK.  Having kept the two aspects of her work quite separate for a number of years, she's now 'come out' to the belly dance community about her burlesque work and embraces them both.

Not everyone is convinced that burlesque is more than just stripping, and many dancers are anxious to keep it quite distinct from belly dance.  As one highly-respected  belly dancer, who has been involved in the dance scene for over 30 years, pointed out, she had spent most of her career trying to improve the public's perception of the dance and convince people that it was an art form and NOT stripping.  She felt that this current flirtation with burlesque was undoing a lot of the good work that she and others had done.

Personally, I think it depends on the skill of the performer and the context of the dance.  I would tend to keep belly dance and burlesque quite separate - I wouldn't do burlesque to Arabic music, for example - but I don't think there's anything wrong with either.  There is no way that I would ever choose to strip down to nipple tassles and pasties, but I do think burlesque teaches you performance skills that can be invaluable in belly dance.  And you don't have to remove much; one of the sexiest performances at the workshop was someone taking five minutes to remove a pair of gloves.

Where I Teach

I am based in Gloucestershire and London and teach Egyptian Dance, Bollywood and Arabic/African fusion workshops around the UK and in France.  If you are interested in running a workshop in your area please do email me on yvette_cowles@yahoo.co.uk.

For a full list of my various workshops - which can be tailored to your exact requirements - do visit Yvette's Workshops now!

1st Concours Choreographique Des Danses Orientales, Paris

My day began at 6.30am when I set off for Paris to meet Raphaelle for what was billed as France’s ‘First Oriental Dance Choreography Competition’, organised by Massai Arts, on 10th February 2008. (Not quite true, I discovered, as there already exists an Oriental Dance Competition in France, though only for soloists.) Little did I know as I started my journey, that it would be a marathon day for all concerned.

The usually reliable Eurostar broke down at the entrance to the Tunnel, and there we waited for about an hour. Given that Raphaelle was picking me up and that we were going straight to the performance, I was understandably anxious. I needn’t have worried. Oriental dance aficionados are well used to working to Arabic time, but we were still waiting to enter the theatre an hour after the show was due to begin! Thankfully, there was a jovial atmosphere as we waited in the crisp Paris sunshine, but the general enthusiasm had began to wane slightly when at 3.30pm we had still not seen any dancing.