Thread: Bellydance elitism?

Originally Posted by tantzyebatb

Is it ever ok for artists to blatantly criticize other art forms in order to advance their own? Ballet has been taking quite a hit from the world of egyptian dance elitists. Recently, Gilded Serpent posted an editorial in which the author just blasted ballet as being unfeminine (amongst other perceived atrocities) then the author admitted she didn't know much about ballet personally.

Knowing that I am about to step into a swirling sea . . .

I found it interesting that when I went to go read the article that spawned this, I found another article by the same author, who then attributes N'eema Akef with grace, in part due to her ballet influences. Same author, similar topic, softer tone. Hold that thought for a moment . . .

Then, looking around this thread, I think I see the answer to your original question. Some artists will malign other forms of dance in the interest of advancing their own.

Originally Posted by tantzyebatb

Art is a personal experience. Art is also a cultural experience. Ballet is cultural. Would we dare slam other dances of other cultures? Or is it open season on ballet simply because it's not "foreign" to us?

And there's the thing: Art is personal, and our tastes in Art can define us as people. Just as much as our career choices (especially when our career is our Art), our family relationships, our faith, and our politics can define us. Therefore, when in that position of defending what we hold most dear, we can make arguments that "defend by difference" -- arguments that go along the lines of [my choice] is right and [that choice] is wrong, and [my way] is threatened because [that way] is increasing in prevalence.

Speaking for myself, I find bashing other art forms for the sake of protecting my own distasteful, and, honestly, crude. Replace "art form" with "race," "political persuasion," "faith," or "sexual persuasion" and you will see similar behaviors. Now, there is a BIG difference between the politics of fear regarding Art and the politics of fear for those other things; but, the behavior is coming from the perspective of trying to defend, with an ugly result either way.

Now, pick up the thought from before. Same author, different point to the second article, and different behavior. Here, she is motivating the reader to appreciate, not to fear. The impetus for the second article is different. The goal, the second time around, is to inspire.

So, I leave you with this: How could that first article have sounded differently if IT were to inspire, instead of distance?

Just one comment about the lack of scholarly articles easily available to students:

Let us not forget The Best of Habibi, where Shareen has digital editions of some of the scholarly articles from her Habibi Magazine. For free.

The Best of Habibi

Originally Posted by aziyade

Just one comment about the lack of scholarly articles easily available to students:

Let us not forget The Best of Habibi, where Shareen has digital editions of some of the scholarly articles from her Habibi Magazine. For free.

The Best of Habibi

Thanks for posting this -- this is a great resource!

But... I started blathering too long, so I'm starting a new thread instead of hijacking this one further.

This is almost a dead thread and I probably should leave it alone, but I wanted to mention that the word "cross-training" is being used in two different ways.

As I understand it, the word comes from the fitness industry (or was at least popularized there.) The point of cross-training is to utilize muscles and motor skills that are NOT used in your primary fitness activity, in order to promote greater fitness and better performance in the primary activity. In other words, playing basketball is a great workout for some muscle groups, but neglects others. So in order to achieve a more "rounded" workout, or to focus on motor skills that are not addressed by basketball drills, the player might cross-train in soccer or some other sport or activity with a different primary focus than that of basketball.

This is a completely different experience than the example of the musician who "cross-trains" on another instrument, and that example really isn't a correct analogy. A clarinet player is not looking for a full-face workout, so she wouldn't take up trumpet playing to correct the imbalance in facial muscles which results from clarinet playing.

A more apt analogy might be the classical clarinetist who "cross trains" in klezmer clarinet music. With this example, the musician's physical technique isn't being "balanced," but rather his CREATIVITY is being "stretched," so to speak. This analogy is closer to the belly dancer who cross-trains in ballet.

This kind of "cross-training" doesn't exist to correct muscular imbalances, or to address motor skills not utilized in the primary activity. It's used to expand the artist's intellectual and artistic skills. This kind of cross-training is what most dancers I know look for, whether they are ballet dancers who cross-train in tap, or belly dancers who cross-train in ballet. Their goal is to be a more well-rounded dancer, or to get inspiration from a different art form -- or maybe even to achieve a flexibility or motor skill not absolutely necessary for belly dance, but still kind of impressive, like being able to do full splits or deep backbends or multiple spins.

(Ultimately I think the reason most belly dancers cross-train in ballet is what was mentioned above -- that they want more than one or two dance classes a week, and usually ballet class is a convenient option.)

At the risk of triggering a whole new firestorm, I've just posted a new article on my web site that shows some of the many differences between ballet and belly dance, and also takes a closer look at what influence, exactly, ballet actually did have on belly dance in early 20th century Egypt.

Of Ballet and Belly Dance

For purposes of this article, I intentionally excluded Reda Troupe. That's because Reda Troupe's dance style is NOT belly dancing, it's an entirely different dance form. Mahmoud Reda himself agrees that his dance style is not the same thing as belly dance.

Thanks Shira!

However I don't think the ballet side is necessarily entirely correct, though much of it is good. The arms are not held in codified positions but pass through them and, depending on the dancer and the training background they have (there are different "schools" of ballet) can be *very* fluid. They don't hold their arms immobile. Similarly the torso is not necessarily held straight at all times, there are certain schools, again, that emphasise epaulement, and that creates a twist.

I personally can ripple and circle my hands with a "ballet" hand position and I can belly dance with a degree of turnout as well, because that is how my legs are attached to my body.

Originally Posted by Zumarrad

However I don't think the ballet side is necessarily entirely correct, though much of it is good. The arms are not held in codified positions but pass through them and, depending on the dancer and the training background they have (there are different "schools" of ballet) can be *very* fluid. They don't hold their arms immobile. Similarly the torso is not necessarily held straight at all times, there are certain schools, again, that emphasise epaulement, and that creates a twist.

Thanks, Zum! In rereading it, I realized that wasn't quite exactly what I wanted to express, so I've modified it.

Originally Posted by Zumarrad

I personally can ripple and circle my hands with a "ballet" hand position and I can belly dance with a degree of turnout as well, because that is how my legs are attached to my body.

I think with sufficient practice, a person CAN indeed do belly dance hand technique with ballet hand position. I can too. But ballet hand positioning can create an obstacle for people who are new to belly dance, so it's a useful point to consider when teaching students. And if you have natural turnout due to being how your legs are attached to your body, that doesn't exactly count the same as doing full-on ballet turnout.

Shira, I definitely think your article is a useful clarification of the differences between the two forms, though I can't comment on the accuracy of the ballet bits! Thanks for sharing

I just finished reading Morocco's book, and she mentions that ballroom dance would have had more stylistic influence on Oriental dance in the early 20th century than ballet, as this was the fashionable Western social dance at the time, and was being performed in the same venues as Oriental dance (though as Shira's article points out, the dancers did have ballet training). She also stresses that Mahmoud Reda was primarily influenced by the dance scenes in American musicals, rather than classical Western theatre dance. Based on this, it seems like many oriental dancers overestimate the direct influence that ballet has had on our dance form...

Based on this, it seems like many oriental dancers overestimate the direct influence that ballet has had on our dance form...

Actual ballets might not have had as much influence, but the effects on the body of ballet training probably have had some. Training is the key - a ballet trained body is actually altered to a greater or lesser degree, depending on how much training you have had, how early you started and how long you trained. So if you have done a lot of ballet the way you habitually move is changed. You probably don't even think about it half the time.

I don't know how much ballet training Samia and her ilk had - probably not the kind that makes a ballet dancer, and certainly not from childhood. But then you can look at dancers like Denise Enan, who studied ballet from the age of four, and it's not unthinkable that other dancers of her class and age group would similarly have had ballet classes as children.

Some degree of ballet has been "the" dance training for people in the western world for a good century or more, and it feels like it has always been fashionable for "elite" groups to send their daughters to ballet for "poise". So it's not, I believe, so much that ballet infested oriental dance with its pirouettes and arabesques, as that the posture and arms and technical focus came into play either by copying dancers who were ballet trained, as seen in movies, or through a bit of ballet training.

That is really blathery. But take Gene Kelly: butchest of the butch, but also ballet trained and it shows.

Look at the fictional world of Ballet Shoes, which is I believe fairly realistic in terms of theatre kid training in the 30s - ballet, tap, voice. It's the standard grounding for a person planning to work as an all round performer.

Originally Posted by Zumarrad

Similarly the torso is not necessarily held straight at all times, there are certain schools, again, that emphasise epaulement, and that creates a twist.

Epaulement is a certain body position, but maybe my understanding of it is different from yours. I personally don't see epaulement as being the same thing as the mobile hip work of Oriental dance with infinity loops, hip drops, shimmies, etc. When I think of the mobility that belly dance requires of the hips (plus, in Turkish Oryantal, the rib cage), well, epaulement is still fairly rigid in comparison. Or are you saying there's a school of ballet that's much more mobile than what I'm accustomed to seeing? Something that truly does have the full torso mobility that Oriental dance does? If so, could you provide a youtube clip or two showing examples?

Originally Posted by Zumarrad

I can belly dance with a degree of turnout as well, because that is how my legs are attached to my body.

I can't resist asking.... you say your legs are attached to your body with turnout - are you insinuating that your normal daily-life stance is the same as ballet 1st or 5th position? If so, I must say that you compensated quite well for it when I met you in Toronto at the last IBCC, because I never noticed!

I don't stand in 90 degree turnout but I can achieve it without too much difficulty - I and everybody I'm related to stands and walks in something like 45 degree turnout. I stand in third a lot. Standing with my feet parallel feels pigeontoed to me. I feel as if I am turned in, though I am not.

Re epaulement: it is an example of how the body in ballet can twist, so the shoulders move ahead of the rest of the torso. Obviously ballet dancers do not do figure eights etc. But nor do they leave their torsoes in one rigid unmoving position, as your description has implied.

This isn't perhaps the best example but you can see watching these young women in class that while the torso is certainly not as mobile as ours is, it's not rock-rigid either - it can't be. They are quite fluid, especially in the ribcage. I've become really aware of that in the classes I have been taking, which have really reinforced the differences between the dance styles for me. The feeling of torsion in, say, a pirouette is really strong even if it doesn't look like that when you watch a dancer perform one.

In general, humans have a degree of turn out. Most do not stand with their feet parallel. Turn out in ballet is exaggerated. Although due to some injuries, I danced for a while with less than 180 turn out and it was considered to be fine, as long as the knees went over the toes when I was doing plies.

Yes, ballet is more rigid than belly dance. But I found the posture of belly dance not that much different, simply able to move upper and lower Egypt, er, torso, separately. Once a ballet dancer goes beyond counting her steps, she does learn how to balance while being bendy and twisty, simply not in the way that ballet is. I used to do a grande arabesque, back leg 100 degrees to the floor with my torso vertical to the floor. This is obviously not rigid. By the same token, I would do this move pounche, which means that my torso was in direct alignment with my free leg, or below my waist. And there was many times a gentle twist on the downstage side inorder for the audience to be able to see what I was doing. (arm on the side of the extended leg paralleled the leg, creating the illusion of longer lines and openness.)

The whole hand thing is another bit if misinformation, or at least, not completely clear. yes, the middle finger is dropped. Marginally. Much like if I had zills on. But the hands changes shapes, wrists move, etc. One of my favorite moves was to releve with my hands in low second (ie, at the hip joints,) and as I lift, I would crack my wrists and bring them together in front, into high first and then out, with the hands trailing behind just smidge. As if they were training through water. and then into high second.

As Zum said, ballet is incredibly fluid. The learning of the 5 positions, etc, are the starting blocks, not the final product, much like and part of belly dance is not the final product. there are many things within your chart I agree with as generalities, but it's like so much, there is so much more.

But,maybe I am nit picky. . .

{{{HUGS}}}

Originally Posted by tahiradancer

In general, humans have a degree of turn out. Most do not stand with their feet parallel. Turn out in ballet is exaggerated.

I was taught in Safe Dance classes that the aim was 45 degrees turn out and turn in at the hip. The exact amount is neither here nor there - but there needed to be equal ROM in both directions.

With a balanced ROM and balanced muscles people would stand in parallel - but that is not always the case. The hip joint is complicated by the physical arrangement - position of teh joint, depth of the indentation, length and angle of the neck of the femur which sets some people's limits.

In addition, apparent turnout (ie from the foot, knee or lower back) can be due to a number of misalignments.

My upper body became much less "rigid" since I began cross-training in ballet. It's not that I had an issue with torso isolations, nor would I expect ballet to help with that if I did. But epaulement really helps you get used to angling your chest, shoulders, arms, and head in ways that are interesting and dynamic to the audience. I don't think there is anything rigid about it.

I also don't think it's fair not to include Mahmoud Reda's influence in an article about the influence of ballet in belly dance. Mahmoud Reda may not consider what he does belly dance, but his troupe sure did produce a few of the most influential belly dance performers and teachers in Egypt today and you can bet their Reda training had a huge influence on their style. Modern Egyptian style includes a lot of footwork and fast weight changes which, I think, came from Reda's influence. Without him and the success of his troupe I don't believe modern belly dance would look very much like it does, so it's very relevant to examine his influences and the way he trained his dancers.

I'm noticing that a lot of people have trouble accepting the influence of ballet in belly dance and one big reason is the fact that these two dances are aesthetically so different. Well, of course they are different. They are two different dances with different backgrounds and at different points in their development. Nobody is arguing that belly dance is ballet. Nobody is arguing that it looks the same or even similar. The arguments at hand are that:

1. Ballet is a pretty universal, fairly codified dance form that is considered by professional dancers in almost all dance forms (and even other activities, like sports and acting) to be great cross-training. This isn't unique to belly dance.

2. Egyptians themselves took concepts and influences from ballet in order to "stagify" their social dance. I'm sure it wasn't *just* ballet, and I'd love to hear more about the ballroom influences suggested above, as well.

I find it interesting that this constant argument over the validity of ballet cross-training is almost always coming from dancers in the West. We're always bickering about how awful it is that we now "have to" take ballet to be considered good belly dancers, or about how awful it is that some teachers use ballet terminology in their class. Then I look at what Egyptians are doing and have been doing for decades and see how much they've used ballet to their advantage. I take workshops with Egyptian teachers and see just how much ballet terminology they use.

As I've said before many pages ago there is certainly an argument to be had about whether or not dancers in certain Western countries today are using too much ballet in their dance. I see this a lot with dancers in certain countries and it's not a direction I'd be happy to see belly dance heading into. But I'm not going to argue with what Egyptians are doing.

Originally Posted by yameyameyame

I also don't think it's fair not to include Mahmoud Reda's influence in an article about the influence of ballet in belly dance.

My article focused on TRADITIONAL belly dance, which was already well established when Mahmoud Reda was a very young child.

Originally Posted by yameyameyame

Mahmoud Reda may not consider what he does belly dance, but his troupe sure did produce a few of the most influential belly dance performers and teachers in Egypt today and you can bet their Reda training had a huge influence on their style. Modern Egyptian style includes a lot of footwork and fast weight changes which, I think, came from Reda's influence. Without him and the success of his troupe I don't believe modern belly dance would look very much like it does, so it's very relevant to examine his influences and the way he trained his dancers.

I agree that some Reda-trained dancers did cross over to belly dance, and therefore brought the influence of their background with them.

However....

If you talk with Mahmoud Reda, you'll quickly learn that he wasn't using ballet as his ARTISTIC influence. He was using musical theater, particularly Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. His older brother Ali was a competition-worthy ballroom dancer.

Mahmoud picked a few ideas from the Russian folk troupe movement, such as Moiseyev's notion of "character portrayal". But this influence was mostly "concept around which a choreography could be based".

Mahmoud took some ballet classes, and he did bring in Russian ballet instructors during the early days of Reda Troupe. Why? Because he was trying to take a collection of people who had no prior dance training and turn them into dancers. The men of the original Reda Troupe were gymnast friends of Mahmoud's, and had no dance background. So the role of the Russian ballet instruction was to serve the purpose of developing a methodology for teaching non-dancers to dance. He was looking for pedagogy, and NOT for "steps".

While it's true that Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly both had ballet in their training foundation, the influence of their ballet training on Mahmoud Reda's artistic vision was indirect.

Ballet training brought Mahmoud a structure he could use for dance pedagogy. The ideas of drilling movement into muscle memory, training the brain to learn choreography quickly, doing conditioning to build the muscles needed to do the dance - that's what he sought from ballet pedagogy. And that's what the Russian instructors were there to provide.

And how do I know all of this? Because Mahmoud Reda himself told me.

When I watch Reda Troupe perform, I see a LOT more influence from musical theater than I do from ballet with respect to the nature of the choreography. For example, this clip:

Originally Posted by yameyameyame

1. Ballet is a pretty universal, fairly codified dance form that is considered by professional dancers in almost all dance forms (and even other activities, like sports and acting) to be great cross-training. This isn't unique to belly dance.

I agree that ballet cross-training can be beneficial for people in other dance forms, including belly dance. I don't think it's "essential", but it can be beneficial. Just as yoga can be useful, weight lifting, gymnastic training, etc. All of these can give dancers interesting new sources of input for both body and mind.

Originally Posted by yameyameyame

2. Egyptians themselves took concepts and influences from ballet in order to "stagify" their social dance. I'm sure it wasn't *just* ballet, and I'd love to hear more about the ballroom influences suggested above, as well.

You may find this interview with Mahmoud Reda useful: Morocco interviews Mahmoud Reda for the Gilded Serpent

My point with my article is that belly dance does not contain "a lot of ballet" the way some people say it does. Nor did Samia Gamal "fuse" ballet with belly dance, nor did Mahmoud Reda "fuse" ballet into what Reda Troupe does. Ballet may have played a role in training non-dancers to develop dance skills, but that's a very different statement from claiming that belly dance contains "a lot of ballet".

I've read that interview before.

I don't think anyone is arguing that ballet was fused into belly dance or that there is a lot of ballet in belly dance. I've seen people say that but I think anybody who has ever taken ballet and belly dance just knows that isn't the case. The influences ballet has had on belly dance aren't obvious and these dances remain aesthetic opposites in many respects despite these influences. But this doesn't mean that they aren't there.

You mentioned previously that the reason you did not include Mahmoud Reda in your article was because he does not consider what he does to be belly dance. This is what I was responding to when I said that isn't enough reason to exclude him. If you excluded Reda because you were focusing on pre-Reda belly dance that is fine but that's a very different reason and if we're excluding modern Egyptian style from the discussion then that changes the whole discussion.

In a different direction, I'd like to suggest a bit of a rewrite on the "Usually tells a story"/"Usually abstract, no storytelling" dichotomy. As I understand it, in its original form, ballet was "just dancing to music" and it evolved into the larger spectacle of long-form interpreted narrative. While raqs sharqi has maintained more of its "just dancing to music" roots, I don't think it is entirely accurate to say it has no storytelling to it, when the theatrical solo is often about emoting the meaning of the song. In that sense, it has as much story to it as the song does, and as much storytelling as the dancer chooses (or has the ability) to convey. If we buy into the "she sings with her body..." quote as a model of good dancing, then the assertion that Souheir Zaki or Taheya Carioka (pick your version of the quote) wasn't telling a story through dance must, by logical implication, mean Umm Kalthoum wasn't telling a story through song either--and that position isn't likely to garner much support. Speaking of Carioka, dance with meaning appears in the Mohamed Amin al-Alem quote transcribed on your page about the documentary "Onscreen" Special About "Carioca", so there is some native support for this representation.

There's also the whole aspect of raqs sharqi in film. A dance scene might be inserted into the story as "Here's a dancer in a nightclub" with no obvious narrative function to the choreography, or it might be something like Naima Akef in "Ahebek Ya Hassan," where her dancing is used to express character development and advance the plot. I doubt many dancers would say the "Lamma Bada" fantasy scene and "Min Hobi Feek Ya Gaari" (where she goes downstairs and Hassan is playing the piano) are somehow less "storytelling" than ballet.

I think the distinction is that MED (outside of the Reda framework) is not typically presented as a multi-movement theatrical concept using only dance to tell a single story. When belly dance is performed professionally, it might be "just dancing," or it might be a series of "short stories" and vignettes, in opposition to a full ballet, which is more like the equivalent of a novel.

Ballet training brought Mahmoud a structure he could use for dance pedagogy. The ideas of drilling movement into muscle memory, training the brain to learn choreography quickly, doing conditioning to build the muscles needed to do the dance - that's what he sought from ballet pedagogy. And that's what the Russian instructors were there to provide.

Yes, and that training will teach you to move in certain ways that are not, dare I say, "like" belly dance. A focus on being elevated. Techniques for leaping and spinning that require thinking upwards not down into the ground. Opening up the body. Barre for argument's sake is all about opening up the body, increasing range of motion and strength. When I do a choreo by Reda principal Mohamed Kazafy I find I have to think up in the spins, almost jump to get round fast enough, *because* his dance is very light and quick; apart from the parallel legs, very balletic.

The balletic influence is not ABOUT pas de bourrees or developes or pique or STEPS, though we all know what a pas de bouree is if we call it a grapevine. It is about posture and feeling and weight. Now, I think the way BDers often turn these days, offcentred and pushing hard into the ground and using different parts of the body for ballast (think Tito's wild spins) is not very balletic at all. But I suspect the training has informed the way that momentum is being used.

I think, and this is my opinion, that the body created by Reda, which might comprise some ballet ways of doing things and some gymnastics ways of doing things, and some other ways of doing things, is dancing baladi. The Reda body thinks, if bodies think, that dancing requires footwork patterns and so footwork patterns emerge. (It's like, when I go to ballet my teacher will often exhort the class to "really dance" something he has taught, which means leaping all over the studio and covering maximum ground and making everything huge. Because he is a ballet dancer and that's what dancing IS to him. I of course totally lose any form I had at that point - because I have so much background in a dance form that admires "dancing on a single tile" and love to see how small I can make a movement. It would be hard for my teacher to dance little as it is hard for me to dance big, because it is not how we experience dance.)

It's really hard to disentangle ballet from other Western dance forms. Gene Kelly brought tons of modern ballet into his choreographies for movies. That is steps, but also technique.

As I understand it, in its original form, ballet was "just dancing to music" and it evolved into the larger spectacle of long-form interpreted narrative.

And back again; there are lots of more abstract ballets. Les Sylphides is abstract. (La Sylphide is narrative!) And the neoclassical ballet movement (ie Balanchine and others) is all abut technique rather than narrative.

Originally Posted by yameyameyame

You mentioned previously that the reason you did not include Mahmoud Reda in your article was because he does not consider what he does to be belly dance. This is what I was responding to when I said that isn't enough reason to exclude him. If you excluded Reda because you were focusing on pre-Reda belly dance that is fine but that's a very different reason and if we're excluding modern Egyptian style from the discussion then that changes the whole discussion.

Well, I had a lot of reasons for focusing on pre-Reda in my article, but I didn't want to write a big long off-the-topic-of-ballet message itemizing them all. Maybe someday I'll write an article about the influence Reda Troupe had on belly dance, but it's an entirely separate topic from the topic of how ballet and belly dance differ from each other.

Originally Posted by Tourbeau

There's also the whole aspect of raqs sharqi in film. A dance scene might be inserted into the story as "Here's a dancer in a nightclub" with no obvious narrative function to the choreography, or it might be something like Naima Akef in "Ahebek Ya Hassan," where her dancing is used to express character development and advance the plot. I doubt many dancers would say the "Lamma Bada" fantasy scene and "Min Hobi Feek Ya Gaari" (where she goes downstairs and Hassan is playing the piano) are somehow less "storytelling" than ballet.

By this logic, if a movie uses a scene of a farmer plowing his field as a device for character development or advancing the plot, then suddenly that confers upon every farmer who ever plowed a field the motive of storytelling.

Just because Oriental dance was sometimes incorporated into the storytelling of a movie doesn't change the underlying nature of Oriental dance any more than the underlying nature of field-plowing changes if a movie uses field-plowing as part of the plot.

Originally Posted by *Shira*

By this logic, if a movie uses a scene of a farmer plowing his field as a device for character development or advancing the plot, then suddenly that confers upon every farmer who ever plowed a field the motive of storytelling.

Just because Oriental dance was sometimes incorporated into the storytelling of a movie doesn't change the underlying nature of Oriental dance any more than the underlying nature of field-plowing changes if a movie uses field-plowing as part of the plot.

Farming on a movie set and farming in a field because you're planting crops are two different activities. One is a theatrical recreation and one is a pragmatic, real-world activity. If we were comparing a Reda dance with prop water jugs to people actually transporting jugs of water from the river to their houses, the analogy would be a better fit, but what does it mean to be "pragmatic, real-world" dance in contrast to "theatrical" dance? Even when dance is not presented as formal entertainment (i.e., done socially), the dancer may still choose to infuse the movements with meaning, probably in the form of pantomiming the song lyrics. Ultimately, we are examining what it means to "tell a story." Is the Lilac Fairy's solo in "Sleeping Beauty" a "story," or is it disconnected and meaningless without the rest of the ballet around it? Is an aria still a functioning narrative when it's not part of an opera? How much plot does a work need to qualify as a "story"? All I'm saying is that this dance isn't "no storytelling." It can often have a storytelling component to it, just not usually an extended, encompassing narrative.

Originally Posted by Tourbeau

How much plot does a work need to qualify as a "story"? All I'm saying is that this dance isn't "no storytelling." It can often have a storytelling component to it, just not usually an extended, encompassing narrative.

Funny this subject be raised as I was thinking about this recently.

There are various ways dancers appraoch this.

A song may tell a story, so, do we ignore that or play to it?

Dancers are going to lengths to really understand the meaning of a song but how is this translating through our dance?

My husband is is not a massive dance fan, but has learned to appreciate it along the way.
He made a comment to me recently which I found really interesting and made me think.
He said in his opinion 'dancers are turning themselves into singers and just stand miming the words and using the arms like they are opera singers', he said it seems to be a set formula used by most dancers. I laughed, then started thinking.. is this how dancers respond to the 'song'? is there any other way of expressing the contect without mouthing/miming the words?

Camelia of Cairo said to me that she always creates a little story in her head when she works on a choreography. It doesnt come across as a story on stage but it is part of her process of creating.

Originally Posted by caroline_afifi

Funny this subject be raised as I was thinking about this recently.

Camelia of Cairo said to me that she always creates a little story in her head when she works on a choreography. It doesnt come across as a story on stage but it is part of her process of creating.

I'm just a student, but I do this too. It helps me "map out" the performance (in terms of floor patterns, intensity, and energy at different points) and it also means I enjoy the whole process more. Knowing the music, song, and lyrics obviously helps too.

Originally Posted by Zumarrad

And back again; there are lots of more abstract ballets. Les Sylphides is abstract. (La Sylphide is narrative!) And the neoclassical ballet movement (ie Balanchine and others) is all abut technique rather than narrative.

Yes. What I would take from this is that ballet CAN tell a story or not tell a story. It's a dance that can be used for multiple purposes. Same thing with Oriental dance, or tap, or krump or.... We can talk about what a certain dance is commonly used for in a common venue, etc., but it's important to realize that constraints placed upon an art are generally artificial.

Nadia Gamal again: dance is limitless because art is limitless. [Loose quote from an interview in Arabesque]

Originally Posted by caroline_afifi

My husband is is not a massive dance fan, but has learned to appreciate it along the way.
He made a comment to me recently which I found really interesting and made me think.
He said in his opinion 'dancers are turning themselves into singers and just stand miming the words and using the arms like they are opera singers', he said it seems to be a set formula used by most dancers.

Just out of curiosity, was this comment motivated by dancers in Egypt or foreign dance students at local events?

I laughed, then started thinking.. is this how dancers respond to the 'song'? is there any other way of expressing the contect without mouthing/miming the words?

Minimally, I think other dancers expect a performer to honor the mood of the song (i.e., not bop around laughing like a simpleton to a tearjerker), but I wonder if miming/singing isn't a more recent phenomenon. We don't have good data on what went on in the nightclubs in the old days, and most of the surviving information is from movies where dancers were performing in varying degrees of character. How much emoting went on when the Golden Age dancers performed live? I don't know, but I think there is a traceable evolution through the more recent dancers. Mona and Nagwa could be pretty emotionally aggressive/unrestrained in comparison to the footage we have of the older dancers, and Dina has clearly influenced people with her exaggerated style of pantomiming big faces and earnest gestures.

Originally Posted by Teophania

Yes. What I would take from this is that ballet CAN tell a story or not tell a story. It's a dance that can be used for multiple purposes. Same thing with Oriental dance, or tap, or krump or.... We can talk about what a certain dance is commonly ]

".......... or krump or .......... " Just a quick, slightly off-topic comment: While watching So You Think You Can Dance, I started to really enjoy some forms of Hip Hop -- it's evolving rapidly and in many directions, incorporating more elements from other dance forms. I found "lyrical hip hop" to be fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable because of the stories the routines convey. The facial expressions are not always exaggerated, there are not always lyrics to tell us what is going on, and yet we "get it". So many of the dance forms on SYTYCD are story-telling. (Think "Hawk" a few seasons ago, the "negotiating table", the unbelievable dance about cancer, stories of abuse ........ in a hurry now, can't think of the others, there were so many.) Just trying to make the point that there are many ways to tell a story through dance without contorting the face or emoting with hand gestures.

I assume this is the cancer piece you were referring to?



This is a very passionate and beautifully danced piece of work...but in all honesty, if they hadn't told you it was about breast cancer, would you have known from looking at it? If the setup told you this was a piece about an interracial relationship during Apartheid in South Africa, wouldn't that have been believable, too? What if you'd been simply told the title of the piece was "Grief"? The costuming is somewhat ambiguous. There are no props and furniture being used. The music was written for a scene in a movie about having a baby. We know it's a performance about cancer because that's what they told us, and we imagined a narrative in our heads on top of these very talented dancers' dramatic performances. In contrast, here's another famous (but not ballet) SYTYCD routine that takes the pantomime approach with no setup necessary.



Sometimes storytelling through dance is acting things out, and other times, the story is told by the audience taking clues from the presentation (what you know about it going into it, the sets, the music, the gestures, etc.) and mentally creating the rest.