Thread: Fan Belly Dance - have you ever seen?

We all know belly dance with veil, sagats, stick.

Lately I've seen a beautiful fan dance performed by a dancer called YANA and her dance ensemble 'Oriental'. They use white fans which look like Spanish flamenco fans. Just see how the fans become white butterflies in some moment of the dance!..

Here's the video:
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymNQ12cx1lU]YouTube - Fan Dance, YANA and her Oriental Dance Ensemble[/ame]

In fact, this isn't classical belly dance, is it? I believe it's something of a more modern style. Anyway, I like it. It's touching and emotional. A sad love story indeed.

What do you think?

They really are pretty - and quite an arm workout!

They are pretty but the nicest fan dancing I ever saw was a Japanese fan dance.

Originally Posted by Fotia

...and quite an arm workout!

That's it! I've worked with the fan already. It only seems to be simple! Your arm hurts after 5 minutes of training!

As to this choreography, I suppose it's a masterpiece of fan dance. I truly admire everything YANA does but this is by all means one of her best choreographies!

By the way, I think you've seen the Magic Wings dance by YANA's ensemble 'Oriental' (well, it seems to be off-topic somehow,r:;, I'll put it in another thread)

They do use fans in andulusian styles of dance.

Although it’s quite pretty, I don’t much care for that fan dance because the fans are so attention-grabbing that it makes the belly dance almost incidental. Which isn’t to make a value judgement about the dance—it showed both technique and taste--it just isn’t going to be one of my favorites.

I have seen Leila Gamal do a dance that involved a fan-veil, and I found the dance captivating. But then, I always find Leila Gamal captivating. She draped the tail over her head like a scarf for the first part, and fluttered the fan a bit, but mostly treated it like a veil with a handle. And, like all my favorite prop dances, the prop occasionally embellished the dance rather than the prop becoming the dance.