Thread: Egyptian/Lebanese/Turkish...what differentiates the styles?

Originally Posted by bdaddiction

Is this the squat thing that people say you should not do in the "Moves You Should Not Do" thread?

Here is my reply in this particular thread:

Uhm... I couldnt say. What I can say is that teachers utilize many "weird" exercises to strengthen the body awareness in their dancers, this may be one of those.

I have my students dance in a bent kneed, hip tucked back, low center posture with a wide stance (folk posture) until they get the concepts I need to implement before I bring them up to a more "erect" posture (sharki posture) for even more complex work. I find it to be a very effective way of creating awareness in Egyptian technique and stylization. I dont require my dancers to do this on stage, but I do require it in order to get a better feel for the concepts, muscles and body alignment involved.

And don't forget that we're not talking just geograhical differences but huge time and political waves. For instance: 9/8 was actually fairly popular across the Middle East-but not anymore. It reminds people of the Ottomans. So, dance has changed since that before and after. And that's just one small example of how things change. And another-the influence of the Rom on Turkish dance while the Rom were expelled from the cities several centuries ago so city dancing in Egypt evolved quite differently.

Re: the shoe/low class thing. It actually is a paraphrase of Tahiya Carioca who commented that of course she wore shoes-she wasn't a peasant, she could AFFORD shoes.

My personal take: if you have learned one style, you have the basic underpinning of the other two. Or however you want to to count them: in just Egyptian styles we've go Saidi, Shaabi, Nightclub, Khaleegi........

I suspect the difference between the dancers of one country may frequently be greater than the differences between the entire style. It's like porn: I may not be able to define it, but I can see it!