Bellydance: Experiences

Leaving on a jet plane

I'm flying out for a couple of hours for a 12 day cruise of the Baltic sea. I will have a ton of pictures when I get back, promise!

Workshop Review: Virginia of Miami

August 2nd and 3rd, Simone's Seventh Veil sponsored Virginia of Miami here in St Louis.

This was my 2nd time taking a workshop with her, the first having been a couple of years ago not long after I first moved to St Louis. Amazingly, she remembered me - she said she has a good memory for faces, but I call that amazing! I got to be her chauffeur for part of the weekend, and was really impressed with how down-to-earth and "normal" she was. Even though she is such an internationally known teacher and dancer, there isn't a bit of diva-ness to her.

Organization

The workshop, like all Simone's-sponsored workshops, was held at the Kirkwood Community Center. It was in a basketball gym, with a stage set up along one of the long walls. The room was well air-conditioned, and fairly quiet (though the air conditioner does make a loud noise every time it kicks in)

Andrea of Simone's was vending a large selection of costumes, hip scarves, and accessories. Shahina was down from Chicago vending silk veils and a handful of costumes.

Some breakfast-type snacks were provided before the workshop: Fruit, muffins, bagels and juice. Lunch is not formally included, however Andrea provides hummus and tabbouleh to supplement whatever lunch you bring. Most people eat inside, but there is a very nice park on the other side of the parking lot which would be a nice place to eat when the weather is nice.

Saturday - Oriental Choreography

I'm not really sure why, though I'm sure it's largely due to people being busy over the summer, the workshop attendance was not too big. Of course, for the organizer's sake, I would like to see workshops be packed with people. But from a purely selfish perspective, it was *amazing* to have four and a half hours with Virginia where she was able to give us all some individual attention. Since almost everybody taking the work shop had been dancing for at least 3 or 4 years, so she was able to teach at a very high level. It was at a more advanced level than most of the workshops I've gotten to take. She did a great job of adjusting her teaching to the skills of the people in the room.

Unfortunately, I was still nursing my most recent summer cold. Once we started working on spins in the morning, my sinus pressure combined with the spinning made me dizzy. I had to sit out half of the morning session, until I could run out at lunch to pick up some decongestant and B vitamins. Just a warning: Her choreos include a fair amount of turning, so be prepared.

She taught a totally gorgeous 8 minute oriental choreography. It was an extremely challenging choreo, that I was just not able to memorize. I took some notes, but they were incomprehensible to me just an hour after the class was over. Anyway, I would have little opportunity to ever perform an 8 minute song. What I got from the choreo, though, were some fantastic transition steps. That's one thing that Virginia has some great insight about - she uses some fantastic footwork to transition between combinations. That's something to pay special attention to when you're taking her class. These transition steps included a lot of attention paid to the placement of your weight, to make sure you would end up with the correct foot free to do the next step.

Virginia also made a point of first teaching the steps, then adding what she called the "nuance" - hand placement, facial expressions, when to breathe, all the stuff that makes a dancer look natural and polished.

She has a cute way of speaking, ending almost every other sentence with "yes?" or "yeah?" Along with just being her own recognizable way of speaking, it also is her way of confirming that the class is keeping up with her teaching.

Saturday Night - Showcase

Saturday night's show was fairly short, but good. (Well, I say that, but it could well have been 8 great performers... and me. My friends tell me I danced well, but they're my friends, they're not objective) But it was nice to not be at a showcase until the middle of the night. The show was done before anyone could get burnt out or bored.

Virginia stuck around in costume after the show to take pictures with people. She was very gracious about posing for pictures and chatting with star-struck students.

Sunday - Cane

Sunday, we covered dancing with a cane. Yet again, I was very happy for the class size. We were all able to swing our canes only occasionally hitting each other. I don't think it's ever possible to completely avoid some mayhem when there are multiple people working with canes.

Virginia taught her own preferred style of cane dancing, which includes a little more influence drawn from the men's tahtib. She also includes some ways of spinning the cane that are not culturally authentic, though they are quite cute. Virginia is extremely knowledgeable about the history and cultural context of the assaya, and includes a lot of information about how to look like you know what you're doing with a cane.

She started the class by taking us through basic cane history and technique, then teaching us her new ways of spinning the cane. Once we were up to speed, she taught a very nice kind of modern cane choreography. It had a good saiidi flavor, while incorporating some fun extras like the spins I mentioned above, and a fun little trick where we kind of levered the cane across our backs. I can't describe it, but it was cute and it worked with the music. She managed it pretty well, but when the class tried it, there were a lot of canes clattering to the floor.

Overall Impressions

I wholeheartedly recommend taking a workshop with Virginia. She is so down-to-earth and gracious, and is obviously committed to making students feel like they come away from class with as much information as possible.

The influences of Yousry Sharif and Mahmoud Reda are very clear in her dancing and choreography. So if you are a big fan of their styles, you will get a nice taste of it in her workshops. I have never studied with Reda, but I have taken a workshop with Yousry Sharif. While his teaching style can be quite intimidating, Virginia takes a lot of his style and combinations and presents it in a much accessible workshop. She has a very rich background in Egyptian style oriental dance.

She does, however, take those influences, and really makes her dance her own. The little details and nuances she teaches in her workshops are valuable for learning how to show your own personality in your dance. I think she excels at teaching the details that take technically correct movements and fill them with vibrancy and personality.

---

• See More Workshop Reviews
• See All Reviews

My humble beginnings

I'm still working on my review of last weekend's workshop with Virginia.

In the mean time, enjoy this picture of me at the very beginning of my dance career. hee hee.

Shimmying for 4 minutes straight, I think.

I performed at the workshop show tonight, and I'll be the first to say I doubt it was my best performance (I don't actually remember most of what I did, so I can't say for sure. But it certainly felt weak) I felt tired and out of it today, so I wanted to choose a song that was familiar and that I always enjoy dancing to. I ended up going back to John Bilezikjian's version of Aziza. I have been dancing to so much shaabi lately, I wanted to show that I can actually do oriental. I just couldn't get into Egyptian orchestral stuff tonight, so I had to chose a different kind of classic. It was a good choice, I think - a little different from the rest of the music other people danced to.

I know that I shimmied... a lot. For almost the whole 4 minutes, I think. Well, I mean it's all oud, it demands shimmies! I figure-8-ed a lot too. and at some point, probably shimmied and figure-8-ed at the same time. I know I had helicopter hands, but oh well. I don't know if I'll ever manage to tame them completely.

Overall, I won't know how it really went until I see the video.

Meet me at Virginia! Right here in St Louis!

Sorry, I just couldn't get past the pun, even if it isn't a particularly good one.

I'm at another workshop this weekend, this one local. Virginia of Miami is teaching oriental today and Saiidi tomorrow. If you're there, find me and say hello. I'll be dressed like I always say I will be, tie-dye velvet  bellbottom jazz pants - today in red, tomorrow in blue. I love my silly bellbottoms!

See you there!

Class is tough without a brain

The last two nights, I've been tired and spacy during class. I'm eating well and sleeping well, but we've had very quickly-changing weather for the last few days - first torrential rain, then 95+ degree heat, which always throws me for a loop. Add to that, the fact that my office is so aggressively air conditioned, that going in and out of the a/c to the outside heat is threatening to give me a summer cold (which I am fighting off with lots of vitamin C)

Class is tough for me when my brain isn't cooperating. I find myself always on the wrong foot, forgetting a step in the middle of a simple combination, etc. Lots of time spent sticking out my thumbs to look at which hand makes the "L" to remember which foot is the left one.

Wednesday night, we worked on a walking shimmy (not a 3/4, which I can do, but a steady shimmy over walking) My hips definitely know how to do it, because I could do it as long as I didn't think about it too hard. Unfortunately, as soon as my very tired brain joined in, it would totally fall apart. And to make things even worse, every time it collapsed, I would get a little frustrated, and would start to concentrate a little harder. And of course, that meant with each re-start I lost it even faster - spiraling to a little meltdown where my walking shimmy just evaporated, and the harder I grasped for it, the more impossible it became.

i know this happens to everyone, so I'm curious - I'd love to hear about the times you guys have trouble doing something when you think too hard.