Thread: Tunisian/Fezzani

I'm getting ready to choreograph my first group Tunisian for my performing students.

I've had two workshops with Amel Tafsout, studied Aisha Ali's video and worked with the rhythms, and sought out all the youtube clips I could find -- particularly those shot in Tunisia, but also Zahra Zuhair and others.

In other words, I'm flying by the seat of my pants with minimal education!

My idea at the moment is to do this as a tableau. Start with one woman seated, miming the 'makeup and mirror' gestures. She gets up, adjusts her clothing, and picks up a jug. Soon she meets up with some other village women who are also on their way to get water. They all check out each other's clothing and do some greeting movements, then travel together.

At the stream, they put down their jugs, dance together a bit more (music is speeding up, there's gradually a LOT more hip movement at this point) then they fill their jugs, put them on their heads, and dance back to town.

All this will be more DANCED than ACTED, if you know what I mean.

Experienced/educated Tunisian style dancers:

- Does the tableau idea sound like good staging for folk? Or is it wrong on some level I don't know about?

- What are the pitfalls I should watch out for? Common mistakes in staging Tunisian, or group Tunisian? Costuming booboos you've seen?

- Any advice about staying on those rhythms? Yikes!

- Any other favorite resources/clips/etc that I may have missed?

Thanks for your help!

Sounds good to me. But my sole source of Tunisian info is Hadia instructional dvd, Habibas Tunisian classes at Oasis Dance Class, watching Habibas videos of folkloric dancers in Tunisia. Have you seen Hadia's video? She does the makeup thing. Go for it!

Souzan

I'm not *terribly* experienced/educated in Tunisian, although I know enough to be dangerous...heh....we did a Tunisian piece with Youssef Constantino at Amir Thaleb's school, and in fact he did something very similar....dancing to the river with a group of girls, jugs on heads, then splashing about in the water, putting on makeup, then dancing together, jugs back on heads and dance home. (we didn't actually use jugs tho, we mimed the shape with our hands...quite effective when done well and far less dangerous for someone like me with poor balancing skills.)

I have to add, that for a man with very short hair, Youssef's hair-flinging/tossing is better than any female dancer I've ever seen!

YAY! I'm doing it!

Habiba has some good costuming articles for Tunisian on her website. The different styles use different costuming. Instead of jugs you can use scarves, twirling them in a fig. 8 movement in front of you.