Thread: Isis wings - EDUCATE ME!!

hello :)

ive been recently using isis wings in class and im planning to perform sometime in april for a fundraising event at my school. i guess i know basic stuff e.g. how to hold the sticks, but i'd like some tips about posture (i know that isis wings exagerrate good -and bad- posture), where to aim my barrel-spins(is that what you call them?) and ANYTHING else you want to share related to the topic!

thanks alot
xx
Athena

Posture -- keep your chest lifted and wide open. I've learned from years of teaching that lots of folks come into dance class with tight chests and shoulders and need lots of stretching to really open up. When your arms are up in a V-shape, they shouldn't be coming forward of your ears, and ideally would be behind your ears.

Lift your arms from your upper back. While dancing with wings, your elbows need to be straight and wrists FLAT. This was the hardest part for me, I badly wanted to cock my left wrist up and ruin the line of the wings. I thought I had it under control but then learned from video that as soon as you take the mirror away, I start cocking that wrist again. Aaargh!

Hold the wings lightly, don't grip. For me, letting the end of the rod rest against my inner forearm helped me become aware of moving the wrist when it happened.

Also, build your strength and stamina so you can hold your arms UP strongly throughout the dance (and/or build in places where your arms are down to rest and you dance with your body for a while). Many of us wind up dancing with our arms at or below shoulder height by the end of the dance and the wings are 'wasted.'

p.s. can't help with barrel turns, I'm just now getting mine almost passable, they're my arch enemy!

you may want to invest in ayshe's wings DVD......., it's very detailed.........

it's best if you work with a teacher to perfect, but that DVD is a great supplement! she's the wing diva!

ditto, lauren, on the barrel turns..............gaaaaah!

For the barrel turns:
pretend you are holding a pole, like your kirchen broom behind your back and out it goes to your arms and hands. You can't move your arms past the pole, try it at home with the broom. It's like doing airplane arms when you were a child! Keep those arms the whole time left goes down right up (I'm picturing a turn to the right). When you turn lean (if right turn) your upper body down and to the corner on the left. Every time you come around front lean into it. (would never do this with a barrel turn without wings but it works with wings to get the wings moving in a circle). Feel like that left arm it heavy and dropping you down, then swoop back up as you turn.
REALLY hard to explain in writting but I hope this helps! Can't stress enough how perfectly straight and held tight your arms need to be, it's a workout!

Originally Posted by Athenaserpent

where to aim my barrel-spins(is that what you call them?)

Hi Athenaserpent,

I can't help you with the Isis wings posture, but here's a bit of poi theory that may help for aiming your wings (I think... Feel free to dismiss if it's not the case*g*).

Imagine yourself in a cubic shaped box. The two planes at your left and right sides are the wheel planes. (Like the wheels on a car.) The two planes in front and behind you are the wall planes. In order to obtain a perfect or near perfect circle with your wings, you need to keep your aim as parallel as possible to the wall plane behind you with your arm swooping up. At the same time, you need to keep your left arm as parallel as possible to the wall plane behind you swooping down. (Your arms must be parallel to one another at all times.) The trick is, you must "bend" the plane a little bit bc humans don't have shoulder joints that go 360 degrees, but it must be as parallel as possible to the wall planes.

So... Take two lightweight sticks, one in each hand. Stand near a wall, with your feet 1-2 feet (farther if your shoulder joint needs you to) from the base of the wall. Hold your arms out in the airplane position and start your spin. Bring one arm up, making sure that your stick doesn't touch the wall. Keep spinning, then swoop the other arm up, still not touching the wall, and at the same time bring the arm that you moved first down, still not touching the wall.

If viewing your spin from the wheel plane, your ideal turn would have the wings trajectory bend a little bit to the diagonal only when a- at the bottom of the spin, when one of your arms is passing in front of your legs, to accomodate the space occupied by your body) and at the top of the spin, when your arm is going up because a shoulder joint rotates only so much. In both cases, as soon as the bending point is passed, the arms return to an equi-distant and parallel to the wall planes trajectory. ETA: if you're bending forward though, you may no need to bend the trajectory at all.

Picture drawing two perfect flat, concentric circles, one with each of your arms. (It may help to tie a piece of ribbon to the ends of your sticks, so you can see your trajectory without risking damage to your wings.)

HTH, at least a bit.

Kem.

You know what tip I'd love to hear? Most graceful way to remove the wings quickly if you were just using them for the malfouf entrance of an Oriental...

Also, have you ever noticed Egyptian dancers use the wings without the sticks - like as a cape?

are you sure they're wings and not an actual cape? aunt rocky was famous for entering with those, doing barrel turns, cuz mme. abla did ALOT of capes with her fab costumes in the 80's(with armholes).....in fact, i have a vintage abla that i bought off a bhuzzer last year that has a cape that i've been playing with :p.................

I've been thinking about the removal part as well. I don't like the stop that often happens while opening the neck-band.
I saw Asmahan wear the band as a headband. Then she did some turn with the arm over the head and pulled the band out of her hair. I really couldn't tell that she did it and had to go back and watch the video several times to see. I think she then waved the wings around a bit like a flag before handing them to her slave boys (of course, it's Asmahan!). I might be mixing two vidoes up, but I'm sure about the headband vs neckband thing.

ETA:yay I can't believe I found the clip I was thinking about. At 1.07 she removes the band ina spin and just keeps spinning. I think it is very smart and classy done and doesn't interrupt with the dancing.

But... no slave boys in this one...

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Edo6AKyXt0U"]YouTube - Asmahan[/ame]

Originally Posted by Nepenthe

You know what tip I'd love to hear? Most graceful way to remove the wings quickly if you were just using them for the malfouf entrance of an Oriental...

Yea, I'd like more on this also. I have a routine where I have about 2 beats to drop them. I just back upstage, pull the velcro and let 'em fall. They end up in an undignified heap at the rear...

Good find, Gisela! She gets them off so smoothly, and I like the way she uses them afterward.

Thank's :). Yeah it's very smooth so I'm thinking that if you need to get them off fast you could remove them a little bit in advance and then keep dancing until you "throw them away". However when using Asmahan as an example, she was very specific in a workshop , that she did NOT like when dancers threw the veil on the floor. She said something like" this is your friend, your lover, you caress it, dance with it, you go mmmm, you go aaaah, and then throw it on the floor??? NOOOO!" She said to put it gently and with some nice move and make sure it was out of the way to not distract the audience. Dunno if the same applies to wings but I doubt she would just throw it.

i agree with andrea2, that was the smoothest wings removal I've ever seen

Ruta, im thinking of getting Ayshe's DVD, because im not so sure that imaginary cubic boxes and broomsticks will guarantee me perfect technique. unfortunately my teacher hasnt studied wings, so i guess that the DVD is the best i could get
xx

Wing removal, sometimes I nail it, sometimes I fumble, but I always have zills on too, so that makes it a little tougher.

I have a velcro closure on the neck of the wings, right side on top. I start turning CCW and grab the right side of the neck closure with my right hand. Then I start turning CW and bring my right arm with the neck closure over my head and twirl the wings around in front of me, releasing the left stick. Then they are in my right hand and I just drop them whereever I need to.

I think that's what I do, anyway.

edited...I just watched that video-how did she do that? Where the wings around her neck, I couldn't tell. Wow.

I didn't like the band being around my neck so I put on a band a somewhat strechy fabric. I just let the band fall behind my shoulders. When a remove them they are simple because they are not attached.

Originally Posted by SandraDances

edited...I just watched that video-how did she do that? Where the wings around her neck, I couldn't tell. Wow.

She was wearing the strap as a headband, not around her neck. Brilliant, really!

Originally Posted by laura 2

She was wearing the strap as a headband, not around her neck. Brilliant, really!

Ok, so I can see how she took them off, but I can't imagine how she wears them. Pictures, or description? I'd love to know!

I'm not sure I understand what it is you don't understand. If you see in the video, at the beginning she's wearing a band around her head. That's the strap for the wings. The wings attach to the strap in her neck under her hair. She might have some customized wings with a strap that suits this better than the ordinary velcro strap. Is it still unclear?

See the headband she's wearing in this pic? That's the strap.