Thread: Melaya dreams

I have never had a class or workshop in melaya leff and never tried dancing it. But I do have a lovely melaya in my costume closet. It sits there waiting for me.

Anyway, in a week and a half I'll be at Oasis Dance Camp with Cassandra and Sahra Saeed. I had a dream that Sahra was going to teach melaya leff. Of course I have no idea if that is true or not, but I got the melaya out and played with it the other day.

Then I had a dream about a melaya choreography that involved a cell phone. I saw the whole thing in my head, the ringing cell phone, talking on the phone. Getting disgusted with the caller. Wrong numbers, etc., etc. And I have to do this. But I have no idea what I am doing with melaya leff.

Any suggestions? No one within several hundred miles of me does melaya. Any video suggestions? I do have some of the Raqia Hassan videos on VHS and I think she does melaya on some of them.

Has anyone taken one of Dr. Mo's or Aida Nour's melaya workshops that would be on one of the LittleEgypt videos?

Hey Souzan! I saw a melaya with Roxanne(Ca). She used her shades and cell phone,too. It's on Bellydance-o-Rama 2. ,r:;

Faten Salama from DC does melaya, although I dunno if she has a dvd of it

Raqia Hassan 7 has a meleya section on it. It's more the modern Carine style, rather than the Reda/Alexandrian one.

I took Aida Nour's meleya workshop in the summer of 2007 and it was excellent, although she did expect that the participants would already be comfortable with using the meleya as a prop. Most were not and she got kind of pissed about it.

I think one of the best thing you can do when putting together a meleya (if one on one instruction is not possible) is to watch as many performance clips as you can, since it seems like there are a lot of different interpretations to play with.

Mohamed Shahin also has a workshop dvd of a meleya leff choreo he taught. It's similar to a Little Egypt vid in terms of clarity and quality (but a tad better, and a tad cheaper). He does spend some time showing how to wrap the melaya. I don't know if it's Alexandrian or Cairo-style, though.

I like Raqia approach to milaya as it is heavy on the sass. But I also like Denise Enan's approach. Aida's is my least favourite style.

Here's some of my notes on it - including extremely short clips -
Milaya Lef

Kashmir, I'm all for sass! Thanks for the link.

Taj, maybe Sahra actually WILL be teaching melaya and I am clairvoyant.

Souzan

Here are my girls doing milaya at Rakkasah East. The diva chick who runs in late often does this while talking on her cell phone, but didn't this time.

YouTube - bintbeled's Channel


Souzan, you would be great with milaya because it has to have that "bint al-beled" quality -- earthy and cheeky. ..g.:

Latifa, I have always wanted to do it. And I think being an old broad. . .oops, I mean a bint beled of a certain age. . .I can pull it off just fine. Think I could get a lot of mileage out of a pulling a cell phone out of my bra! Afterall, it is God's pocketbook!

Friday night on the way to our show I thought I had lost my cell phone, and it was in my bra the whole time! ..l;,

My favorite dancer dancing a meleya on YouTube is Mona Amar. I'm planning on dancing a meleya next Saturday and it'll be my first time! I'm very excited!

Just performed a Meleya at a local hafla tonight. Everyone loved it. It's all about the attitude. Confidence and play with the audience. It's a blast!! Oh, and don't get stuck in your meleya (only happened in rehearsal lol )

Originally Posted by bintbeled

Friday night on the way to our show I thought I had lost my cell phone, and it was in my bra the whole time! ..l;,

LOL! I do that all the time!

Melaya dreams came to life for me this past weekend at Oasis Dance Camp. Sahra performed a folkloric show including melaya. Wonderful, cheeky, happy.

Hi, Souzan,

Nice to hear Sahra performed her melaya leff. Her performance of the Melaya Leff on the IAMED DVD is just great. When I went to one of her workshops in Ft. Worth/ Dallas area, she taught some of her Melaya Leff stuff. Unfortunately, I didn't get the notes to it. Isis was going to hand out the notes to the workshop attendents at a later date. since the melaya leff was not scheduled to be taught that day.

Faten Salama does have an instructional Melaya Leff DVD out. It is very informative. It is listed on her site.
FATEN SALAMA -- Native Egyptian Master Instructor of Danse Oriental 2009

I also second the Raqia Hassan DVD on vol. 7.

Tammy

Originally Posted by kina

Faten Salama from DC does melaya, although I dunno if she has a dvd of it