Thread: Hurt or Help? Non-Oriental Dance Background

I am having a "tabula rasa" moment, where I, irrationally, wish I did not know any form of dance whatsoever, and wish I could start over.

I am aware that some dancers prefer not to study other dance forms in order to maintain purity in their dance practice, while others insist on learning other dance forms to broaden the knowledge needed to undertake learning Oriental dance.

What are your thoughts about this? Do you have a non-Oriental dance background? If so, do you think it's helped or hindered your undertaking to learn/perform/teach Oriental dance? What do you do to "unlearn"?

I think dancing from an early age helps - any style. Helps get your body moving, gets a feel of the music, transitions etc. More formal dancing will also teach combinations, weight transfer - both useful and more importantly how to train. I've meet too many students who think an hour a week for a couple of weeks and they'll be the cat's whiskers.

Down side is you can learn some movement patterns that you will have to unlearn (for me it was those rigid jazz hands and sharp isolations).

Overall, I'd vote for any dancing over no dancing.

There were a lot of good thoughts on this thread:
http://www.bhuz.com/forum/belly-danc...-me-dance.html

It's a double-edged sword for me. In some ways, I think it's eased my way. I started BD with excellent body awareness, class work ethic and a high comfort level with moving to music. But I had to unlearn so much in regards to posture, stance, energy level, musicality...well, let's just say you're not the only one who wishes for a tabula rasa from time to time.

Anyone who wants to refer to their answer in the thread mentioned by laura, feel free to do so. Sorry for redundancy! I was too lethargic to check previous threads...
OR maybe some of you have had a change of heart (in the past 2 1/2 months!).
;0)

Originally Posted by Azhia

Anyone who wants to refer to their answer in the thread mentioned by laura, feel free to do so. Sorry for redundancy! I was too lethargic to check previous threads...
OR maybe some of you have had a change of heart (in the past 2 1/2 months!).
;0)

Oh, that's okay to bring it up again...I just remembered there were some really great points made in that thread, and it was a fairly lengthy one too.

I agree with Laura that it can be a double edge sword, I don't have previous training in dance, however I was 7 when I started Oriental Dance, so I never felt a need to study anything else. Hell, I'm still working on all the different folkloric dances some 30 years later. I'll keep studying until I die, and I feel that I've been able to develop a fluid style without ballet, etc.

Starting later in life is a whole other story, you have to retrain your body to move a certain way, but I for one hate seeing too much ballet or jazz in oriental dance, when I watch a dancer, I don't want to think "wow, she must have spent years to learn those chaines or pas de bourree". Although it does give you body awareness, so it's a struggle regardless. It took me forever to get a fluid, graceful flow to my dance. Just keep working on it.

Last edited by Azhia : 01-02-2008 at 04:58 AM. Reason: laura2 is smarter than me. ;0) i thought that word sounded funny!

If you mean "tabula rasa", the only reason I knew how to spell it off the top of my head is because it's the name of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode. ..l;,

My parents LOVE dancing, so I've been doing it since I can remember. But my "dance classes" were not at a studio - they were in a living room, and my father didn't give me steps - he just told me to "feel" the music. I took "real" classes as a teenager (mainly afro-caribbean and jazz ("hip hop")), and of course, bellydance. It's been hard for me to (a) stay in one place (it's the years of dancing salsa, merengue and cumbia at my parents' house parties - I love spins and moving my feet); and (b) keep every isolation from turning into a break. I didn't breakdance for long, but I find myself trying to hit every beat in a drum solo with a break instead of, say, a continuous shimmy LOL!.

Aah yesss, hip hop was/is a fabulous struggle for me!

My hip hop teacher's combos were like Yousry Sharif's at times, so much movement in a single 8-count!

I think that's why I liked the house combos better, a little more flowing.

Why do I feel like I'm fighting something...?

I think if you use a dance background for its increased body awareness then it could be good for learning oriental dance.

However if you substitute a non-oriental dance background as the foundation of oriental dance -- in other words, learn a few belly dance moves, incorporate them into the non-oriental dance foundation, and assume you're "belly dancing", then it can be a real hindrance. There is a young woman in my town who has done this: combined a single 10 week beginning belly dance class with her 17 yrs or whatever of ballet/modern/jazz and considers herself not only a performer but teacher of belly dance. Very sad.

Sedonia

My background has definitely helped in the ways Laura mentioned, and while it can be difficult to unlearn some things, other things like posture and body awareness are invaluable to keep

I think it's important when you're first starting MED to study from different teachers to discover who you are in dance. There are many different styles and approaches, and you have to find the one that works for you. But once you know, well... for me, it's been more effective to ensure the teachers I study with compliment one another.

The issue is not inconsistent with other forms of art and dance. I have a friend who studies violin with a regular teacher. There are open violin jams in town, that her teacher has asked her not to go to because he finds it detrimental to his student's playing.

When I was studying highland dance at the competitive level, my teacher would have asked me to leave if I took classes with someone else unless she had precisely recommended them.

Originally Posted by Azhia

Aah yesss, hip hop was/is a fabulous struggle for me!

My hip hop teacher's combos were like Yousry Sharif's at times, so much movement in a single 8-count!

I think that's why I liked the house combos better, a little more flowing.

Why do I feel like I'm fighting something...?

We may be fighting the same thing :) I think that's why I like Yousry's classes - so much movement! Plus I do fairly well with choreographies. Ask me to improv and I either draw a blank or revert to hip drops (or popping ..l;, ).

I agree with you guys about prior dance experience-it helps in a lot of ways! First off, my 15 years of daily classical ballet training has left my body relatively fit and supple, so I have found I have learned moves easier and quicker. I love Cabaret because of it's routines and choreography, and like to challenge my mind in this way. My teacher is always impressed by how sharply and crisply I can perform each movement, and not mish-mush through it.

On the flip side, I do just that. I have had to learn softness. My rigid ballet background and my desire to always "get it right" can make me appear rigid. When I was first starting out, my teacher would always shake me. "relax! relax!" she would say. So I've had to work on NOT being so technical, and loosening my body and mind. Also, the other dancers love my arms, and say their expressive, but not always the choreography. Sometimes I make them too delicate and flowing. I've actually had to make certain moves more heavy and lumbering (maybe not the right word-earthy, less trained), so it's a double-edged sword. Also, I am part of a troupe, where we are all supposed to look alike, so.....I guess I'm saying it's a double edged sword.

All-in-all, though - good thing.Always a good thing to use the body.

Ps.- I don't mean to sound braggy. I still have A LOT to learn, and ballet IS NOT ORIENTAL dance. It's just, that's all I got, kids. I studied ballet 6 days a week for years. I had no friends outside of class, did nothing but dance! So I sometimes talk alot about it, because it's all I know.

I just read an interview with a popular German dancer who said that sometimes she prefers new students straight from the sofa ..l;, Because they don't have to unlearn any movement patterns. And she also mentionned that ballet dancers are very stiff and have a hard time getting the soft movements right (she had the problem herself, coming from gymnastics).

I also think that some people have a harder time to keep dance styles apart than others. My Bharata Natyam never slips into my Raqs sharqi, no mudras, nothing. But it helped me with hand awareness. (But then, I started BN later).

I still am convinced that the best way to learn Oriental dance is to study Oriental dance!

MEISSOUN

Ballet dancers shouldn't be stiff if they were trained correctly.

I have been in dance classes since I was a toddler. Everything BUT ballet. I hated the idea of it as a child....didn't want to do it! Don't know why...my daughter, Sofia, she's 4, has been in ballet for a year and she loves it.

I did take Jazz (from a young age), Modern (as a teenager - didn't like it much), and just about every kind of Latin dance under the sun (I'm Puerto Rican - I swear, it's kind of a requirement on the Island). I took other forms of dance as well - I just like to learn new things! I think the prior training really helped me. I had balance, strength, coordination, understood music, understood patterns and choreography.

I am planning on continuing to expand Sofia's repertoire of dance - that way, she can use it for her future. Whether she becomes a professional belly dancer, like her mama, or not. Although, she is an adorable belly dancer!!! Her pictures are in my website on my gallery. I have to brag cause she so damn cute!!!!

www.shimmythis.com/gallery

Originally Posted by Elianae

Ps.- I don't mean to sound braggy. I still have A LOT to learn, and ballet IS NOT ORIENTAL dance. It's just, that's all I got, kids. I studied ballet 6 days a week for years. I had no friends outside of class, did nothing but dance! So I sometimes talk alot about it, because it's all I know.

Welcome to the club. And welcome to Bhuz! There are a couple of us who are former bun heads here!

{{{HUGS}}}

Right. I think I have softness in my Oriental dancing BECAUSE I had ballet training. I had also studied other dance forms at the same time, so I noticed that for the "only ballet" students, they seemed to have a harder time performing other dance forms like jazz and such, due to such a trained and rigid carriage.

Bharata Natyam and all the other dance forms I studied only come in when I'm doing fusion. However, I feel the "energies" of the other dance forms coming in unnecessarily, as well as certain emphases in these dance forms, i.e., as a West African dance student, early in my Oriental dance life I unwittingly incorporated a LOT of chest and upper body movement.

And I am compensating for my small frame so I think that my movements are too large, too fast, too much. I'm working very hard to slow things down. Currently, the aesthetic of "Cairo style" Oriental dance is very appealing to me. Probably b/c she has a ballet background, Randa Kamel has that energy mixed with her Oriental dance style, in addition to this "powerful" element in her dancing, which include large, sweeping, movements and dramatic upper body "snaps". But then she tempers it with that relaxed softness.

Perhaps it is my resistance to relearning a completely new energy paradigm appropriate for Oriental dance that is the challenge. I think that I have to work harder not so much to "learn" but to "unlearn" at the same time that I'm being exposed to a new style. @$@#%#$....

I've been dancing since I was five, but I've studied a lot of different dance forms so when I started Oriental, I wasn't really stuck in any of them and it was very easy for me to pattern new movement. I started with ballet, moved to modern, then several styles of jazz, and did a variety of folkdancing all along the way from age five into my early 20's. As someone else said, that gave me a good foundation in dance class discipline, patterning movement, and general grace and coordination.

I have had some students who studied one primary dance form most of their lives, and have a tough time letting go of their ingrained movement patterns and transitioning into Oriental. If I compare a heavily trained ballerina with a rigid postural tendency to a newbie off the couch, the newbie is easier to train. But a trained ballerina who is still soft and pliable can be an absolute dream student. It really depends on the individual.

Well, this weekend I went to a Turkish ROM workshop and it made me think of this thread. I always thought previous dance training helped, but in my case it didn't when it comes to Turkish ROM.

I was watching and following along with Hadia... totally preoccupied with what she was doing and keeping up. Then, I started to feel pretty good about what I was doing and looked in the mirror.

HAHAHA!

There's Hadia gettin' down and groovy, and there I am... miss prima donna dainty. I've been working so hard at Oriental, that it definitely showed. And not in a good way.

Not like it's a deterrent, of course... but let's just say I have some SERIOUS practice to do. ;-)

What a wonderful observation, Adi! (Not that you weren't looking good doing Rom dancing, but you know what I mean, seeing yourself compared to Hadia and realizing those particular moves were not quite yet in your physical dance vocab). ;0)

Tough question. I think sometimes a non-oriental dance background hurts and sometimes it helps. For instance, I often feel like I'd have better hands, better spins and turns, greater flexibility and grace, and an easier time in a releve (sp?) if I'd studied ballet or jazz. I take some jazz classes as a kind of catch up on these points. I also feel like learning these forms of dance might have given me more discipline as a dancer. Then again, I don't like too much ballet in oriental, and don't want to muddle styles.

It's the same with studying flamenco or popping and using it in tribal fusion...if you want to fuse them, you have to study these forms, you shouldn't fuse otherwise. But sometimes studying them too much can harm belly dance technique.

I also like a lot of points people have already raised.

Originally Posted by Aradia

Starting later in life is a whole other story, you have to retrain your body to move a certain way.............It took me forever to get a fluid, graceful flow to my dance. Just keep working on it.

oh HELL yeah! the only previous dance experience i had was ethnic folk (lithuanian in my case ..l;, ), which DOES help, with rhythm and some body awareness, but grace and fluidity is STILL a struggle....its gotten smoother over the years, but for the style i'm working on (old school oriental, i.e. samia, tahia, early fifi and negwa), ballet would have helped......thankfully, with the Mahmoud Reda folk coming out to teach, that's a great supplement, and i'm trying to find a decent ballet school here to jump start that a bit......i always thought previous dance experience is helpful.....there IS some unlearning, like, you don't 'turn-out' belly dance (like no cryin' in baseball ..cr.: ), but i for one wish i had it, and ENVY all you lovelies who have it. it shows me what i'm missing.....loooots and looots more to learn

However if you substitute a non-oriental dance background as the foundation of oriental dance -- in other words, learn a few belly dance moves, incorporate them into the non-oriental dance foundation, and assume you're "belly dancing", then it can be a real hindrance. There is a young woman in my town who has done this: combined a single 10 week beginning belly dance class with her 17 yrs or whatever of ballet/modern/jazz and considers herself not only a performer but teacher of belly dance. Very sad.

we had one like that too..........she thought she was the next BDSS cuz she studied with a group of conceptual dancers out of college for a couple months, and had a huge jazz / ballet background..........she'd show up at haflas in a very nice costume, but her 'fusion' was basically a jazz routine to a BDSS song, and sword was posing with arabesques and turns........not a bellydance move in sight, but she would send REALLY snarky emails to other dancers on how she's gonna 'rock the house' with her sword, and take the community by storm......she finally started taking classes with an excellent local teacher, but her inexperience SHOWED at a recital......a shame too, cuz she has ALOT of potential, but hurt her own rep when a 'private' email ended up on a forum cussing out a booking dancer who wouldn't allow her in a venue (that's another story :p), but her 'tude and sense of entitlement was a real downer

Years of ballet only helped me, apart from fighting my eternal turnout and a relevé that's higher than my current teacher and I consider ideal for Oriental. (YMMV, of course.) A lot of the things I get positive feedback for in Oriental come directly from that early training, I think: good carriage, line, arms. I'm repeating what others have said that this point, but ballet and the other styles I've worked in (folk, jazz, etc.) have all contributed to body awareness, movement patterning, musicality, etc. And no bellydance teacher has had to work to persuade me that pointed toes usually look better than floppy ones.

On the flip side, there are some mental and emotional hangovers from classical training that aren't so great: perfectionism, overachiever-ism, ohgodihaveboobsandhips-ism, overdancing.... And I do see people come in from other dance forms (ballet, modern, and often flamenco around here) and refuse to do the foundational work that bellydance requires because they think they know it all already, having studied what they consider to be more advanced and sophisticated disciplines. But I blame ego, not training, for that attitude, and they either figure it out and get working or become frustrated and leave. Works for me.

12 years of ballet, 10 years of tap, 10 years of opera, 12 years method acting=belly dance
i just made it all work for me, twords my dance.