Sometimes It Happens Like This

Shot.

You work a piece with your dancers for two years, polishing, editing, crafting, training.

You take it to a belly dance festival in Seattle. They kill it.

You submit the video to a local collaborative arts event. They like it. But you are a late application, they are out of individual time slots. Would you be willing to dance with the headliners instead? Medium Troy?

Yes. Of course.

Oh, and they will ask RJD2 if he's into having dancers for a song.

Okay.

You have two weeks. You reset the piece to Medium Troys Balkan Ballers. You do not know if you will dance with RJD2 and if you do, you will find out at the last minute.

That's fine, you say. We are tribal belly dancers. We do synchronized group improvisation. We are trained to be flexible, you say. We can dance to anything.

You remind your dancers they can dance to anything. You make them practice to random RJD2 songs. You tell them not to stress, to work the dance and their technique. It may not even happen. Focus on Medium Troy. You stress for them.

Day of show. Hours go by. Still no word. It was a long shot anyway you tell yourself. The show starts, Medium Troy is about to take the stage, they should have other things on their minds. But Jojo, the mastermind of this huge event, taps you on the should. He has been in make it happen mode all day.

Ruby, this is Ramble John. This is Ruby and her belly dancers. He shakes my hand and leans around me to peer at my dancers who all stand up straighter behind me, in full costume. Looks us over for a minute. Yeah, okay, he says, let me think about the set. He is taking a huge chance on us.

Twenty minutes later, he is playing his set through in his head next to me while I wait to go onstage with Medium Troy. He says, okay, you know The Horror? Not by name I say. But we have 40 minutes and its on my ipod, we will by then. There will be no song breaks, and I know that live, RJD2 sounds totally different than in recording, everything is more complex, looser, and woven into the thing next to it.

We dance. The moment we leave the stage we run backstage, beg a speaker off a group of b-boys getting ready to hit the stage, and huddle around, listening. We gather, dance it once, dance it twice. Call it ready. This is an improvisational form, I tell them. Expect the unexpected. This is what we do.

Half an hour later we are onstage with RJD2. He is in the tail end of an amazing set. At some point we turn to face him. He smiles at us.

This is what we do.

Medium Troy's Balkan Ballers
 https://soundcloud.com/mediumtroy/balkan-ballers

RJD2's The Horror
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abeUTN9OB8I&feature=kp

Red Moon Rising:
www.rubygonewild.com

Shake It Baby

Cues.

Every spring Seattle hosts a three day belly dance festival called Cues and Tattoos. What makes this event special is it's emphasis on the role of improvisation in the belly dance form. There are many branches of American belly dance, each with an emphasis on a particular movement style or regional music and movements, but improvisation is a fundamental part of nearly every kind of belly dance being practiced in the United States. That being so, in recent years there has been a marked shift way from improvisation and towards set choreography. Not so at Cues and Tattoos. One of the requirements for participating in their performance showcase is that at least 50 percent of the performance be improvised, which is especially challenging for any group that wants to present something other than the well-known and easily recognized movements of American Tribal or International Tribal styles.

My solution,  to play with "weaving" choreography and improvisation, unconventional formations, and a little bit of impish playfulness. What I have to show for it is a deeply textured and seamless piece that is, in fact, different every time. Time to put it on the stage.

Photograph:
www.rubygonewild.com

The Dancing Truth

Work.

If you are a working, full-time, professional dancer these things will be true about your life. You will wake up sore. You will dance all day. You will go to bed sore. You will work seven days a week. You will take class, teach class, and be up to your elbows in projects. You will never stop having to take class. You will take on projects that go well. You will take on projects that go terribly awry. You will always worry that there will not be another project to take on. You will worry about your weight. You will memorize everything you do. You will get on stage and forget some of what you memorized. You will keep dancing anyway. You will never get sick enough to have to stay in bed. When you do get sick enough to not get out of bed, you will get out of bed. You will be alternately told that you are talented and gifted and that you have no talents or gifts. You will invest enormous amounts of time and money to train in what you do. You will get paid for little of what you do. People will tell you that it is okay that you do not get paid because you love what you do. People will also tell you that you are not really working because you love what you do. You will love what you do. You will still be working.

And Now The Dancing Boys

Uru.

Tribal Fest 13 will stand in history as the year of the men.  Paige Lawrence and Frank Farinaro's (among many others) Uru Tribe became the first all-male belly dance troupe to perform at Tribal Fest, and they brought down the house.  This was not a one-off, and the performance was not ground breaking just because of the novelty of gender.  What Frank and all the other men of Tribal Fest are doing is defining a new and decidedly male aesthetic in an art form that has been centered around feminine beauty standards for over a hundred years.  That men are capable of the same isolation and fluidity of movement as their female counterparts is obvious, but what they brought to this years event was a masculine fierceness true to many tribal dance forms.  And it has been a long time coming.  The enthusiasm and support for these ground breaking dancers is a testament to the tribal belly dance community's commitment to embracing movers of all kinds and the concept of dance as a living, evolving form.  

In their own words:

 "Sisters, this is all your fault.  We are here because you have shown us the kindness, acceptance and encouragement we need to pursue this dance as a life path.  You are the ones who made us feel welcome, who taught us to find our own unique voices and we are here today sisters because we stand on your shoulders."

To Watch the Uru Tribe:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnGY2qe8MdY

Like what you are reading?  Then support the Kickstarter for my book Girl Gone Wild- On Being a Woman in the Wilderness.  Thanks!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1731666363/girl-gone-wild-a-guide-to-being-a-woman-outside?ref=city

Photograph Courtesy of:

Jeffe Weil

Tribal Fest is a registered trademark.

Show Me Your Belly

Tattoo.

One of the most amazing things about the annual belly dance festival Tribal Fest is the body art.  The dancers at this event, if you were to line them up, would constitute one of the most amazing living works of art in the world.  It certainly stands as the most epic display of body art, tattoos, piercings, henna, and adornments that I have ever seen.  I think that this speaks to the role of individuation, personal expression, and the body as art in belly dance culture.  That everyone is accepted and celebrated at this event is part of what makes it special.  Dancers that may seem unusual or outside the norm in their daily lives are suddenly a part of the flock at Tribal Fest.  And this is important.  Having a place to authentically be oneself is a rare and precious thing in the modern western world, it promotes positive self esteem and empowerment, and provides dancers with a sense of acceptance and legitimacy that they can carry with them into the rest of their lives.

Dance on my inked boys and girls, dance on. 

Photograph Courtesy of:

http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/belly%20tattoo

Rinse and Repeat

Timing.

Some dances are their own beasts.  They stay somehow just barely out of reach or shift so as to make you lose the grasp of one phrase just as you master some other.  This is especially true if they push against tempo or cycle rather than repeat.  Sometimes even a dance that you yourself have created can elude you in its particulars of timing and execution.  

And sometimes you find it.  Sometimes you simply set yourself comfortably into the movement, listen, wait, and find the timing.  

Donna Mejia, Midnight in the Studio:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gr5FHDWVKw

Photograph Courtesy of:

http://www.artsbird.com/en/en_8/enwtyc_8/endance_8/