Oriental/Cabaret Workshops for Tribal Belly Dancers?

If you have recently been inducted to the world of bellydance, you may have only now realized the vastness or diversity of the culture of which you are now a part.  When I started dancing ten years ago, I certainly had no idea of the dichotomy that existed between the Hollywood-ized oriental/cabaret style of bellydance, and the emergent Tribal Style Bellydance. My first teacher, Myra Krien, is a master of both syles, and though I wouldn’t realize this for years to come, this is a rarity in the world of bellydance where most dancers define their dance selves in tight little boxes, you might think that they are talking about their ethnicity or religion, rather than the art form they practice.

With the naivety of a tourist in a foreign culture, I started dancing because I was drawn in by the power and beauty of something that seemed, at once, both familiar and completely exotic.  I was seventeen, an athlete, somewhat of a tomboy, had no intentions with my exploration of the dance, other than to do just that, explore.  I was not there because I had ambitions to perform, I would not even display a simple demonstration for my closest friends.  I am sure it seemed strange to my friends and family that I should be so secretive and shy about something that seems so overtly exhibitionist.  The dance, and those whom I danced with became my own private cocoon, a new family, a place where I could explore a new kind of expression and become a part of a sisterhood I had never imagined.  I fell in love with the dance and with feverish infatuation, I began collecting the music, the costuming and the friendships.  Somewhere along the way, I must have also collected the psyche of a Tribal Style Dancer.  I was re-born…and I choose those words deliberately.  I was a part of the church of the Tribal Dancer, sure that I had chosen the right “way” (read: right form of dance).

Over the past ten years, however, what we used to call “American Tribal Style Bellydance” has evolved  into an entirely different (or should I say many different) dance forms: Tribal Fusion, Gothic, Tribaret, Balkan, even Pirate…heck you name it–all manner of styles have been fused with bellydance.  It has been a frenzied attempt to stay cutting edge and unique at a time when bellydance was sweeping the nation at breakneck speed.

It has been an interesting self discovery for me then, that at the same time my dance sisters have been feverishly seeking out the newest, latest and greatest of avant-garde bellydance I have been focusing more and more on the old, or rather, what new is happening with the old. I have admiringly watched from the sidelines as the ever-popular “Tribal-Fusion” has wowed audiences with its varied costuming, cutting-edge music, and evocative movements and chosen (for reasons I cannot even explain to myself) to instead dedicate my studies and weekly classes to strictly ATS.   And, perhaps even more curious is that I have gained a new found appreciation (and, yes, curiosity) for those “other, older” forms of bellydance. And it is not a simple “I wonder what they do” kind of curiosity, but a profound interest in all of it, the posture, the costumes (oh! the sequins, the glitter and the hair), the traditional music–I mean all of it.  It got me to thinking; What actually defines one dance form as different from the other?  Certainly it is much more than just the costumes, the music and the steps.  And, what  value are the concepts of one style to the practitioner of the other?

Armed with these questions, I turned to my teacher Myra Krien to ask her what she thought about these questions. Being an expert in both styles gives her a unique perspective on these questions.  We have opened a discussion about how to create and provide an offering of key concepts of Oriental dance, for Tribal dancers, including: changes in your posture, attitude, use of space and history.  I like to think that I am not the only person out (t)here with these questions and desire to expand my horizon to become a more complete dancer.  I look forward to using Tribal Rendezvous as a forum for this exploration.