For the next two weeks I’ll be offline as we’ll be out in the desert for the Burning Man Festival. I will see you on the other-side!
Post Artown, I’ve been busy busy with preps and the reconstruction of my Vardo – sort of a glorified wagon for carting out our camps’ bikes & sundry gear… We are collectively known as the Reno Housewives, and this year we number 18, so between all of our gear, we needed a trailer just to cart out our bikes for the lot of us. Look for us at 9:00 and G streets!
Here are a few snaps – still under construction – of “Nata” Vardo 2.0. She needed a lot of re-build after last year’s adventures:
Still have a lot more to do, but the roof is back on and I’m feeling excited, so I thought I’d share while I still have some energy.
Andrea Deagon, Ph.D., has written a thought provoking article posted in the July Gilded Serpent , entitled “Belly Dance in Patriarchy: Escaping the Switzerland of the Soul“. The title derives from a quote by Orson Welles via a character in a 1949 film classic, which distilled, boils down to: that through strife and upheaval art flourishes, and that in relative complacency it stagnates.
In her article, Deagon offers a lens/mirror onto the many common cultural assumptions, archetypes, and myths that our community promotes and has long held dear. I found it an interesting beginning for a much needed discussion.
To quote a bit from Jennifer’s post at the ORIENTALiSH :: :: who pointed me towards the piece: “The use of goddess imagery is questioned, the uncomfortable conundrum between being drawn to belly dance for its acceptance of body types and learning quickly that what sells is typical slender good looks that meet a stereotype, the “dumbing down” of belly dance as it becomes more popular, and the belly dance scene’s commodity driven belittling of Arab culture.”
Deagon concludes her piece with a bit of a challenge about the direction of the art: “Ultimately, our artistry depends on honesty: honest acknowledgement of the ways in which gender affects and inhibits our modes of expression – honesty about how we value youth, beauty, and erotic display, and honesty about whether what we are doing is really feminine, or something more challenging and complicated” … “Nothing truthful can emerge from self-deception and if there is one thing the best dancers of Middle Eastern patriarchies have shown us, it is that the core of belly dance resides in the lived, felt, courageous truths it can tell.”
Read it for yourself, as I’d be very interested in your own thoughts.
The Knitting Factory is proud to host the official Burning Man Film Festival/Playa Launch Party on Thursday, August 19th from 4 -10pm. Proceeds Benefit The Installation of DUEL Nature By Black Rock Arts Foundation (BRAF), And Burning Man’s Regional Tribe.
Originating from Western Sahara in Algeria, growing up in a multi-cultural environment, Soha blends a variety of styles in her work. Mixing musical traditions from around the world, the prominent Cuban, Latin, jazz and soul influences, Soha gives an appealing vivacity to her sound. The soulful beats and warm equatorial flavours of “Tourbillon (Serre-Moi Fort Si Tu M’aimes)” contain a seductive quality, while “C’est Bien Mieux Comme Ça” creates a festive yet relaxed pace.
OMG, she has a Billie Holiday quality to her beautiful voice!
“On June 20th 2009, during a demonstration in Tehran against what many felt was a fraudulent election result, a young woman called Neda Agha-Soltan was targeted and shot to death by a sniper. An innocent bystander, and some distance away from the protest, her dying moments were filmed and seen by millions around the world. In Persian, her name means “voice”, “calling” and “divine message”, and she has become a powerful and iconic symbol for those who struggle against brutality and repression, seeking only freedom and truth. Neda, this song is for you.”
~ Saansafir
Chris de Burgh pays his respect to the memory of Neda on the day of her death.
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s exiting Artistic Director, Artist alvinailey.org
“We can go on talking about racism and who treated whom badly, but what are you going to do about it? Are you going to wallow in that or are you going to create your own agenda? People come to see beauty, and I dance to give it to them. Dance is bigger than the physical body. When you extend your arm, it doesn’t stop at the end of your fingers, because you’re dancing bigger than that; you’re dancing spirit.”
Wikipedia has a good biography:
Jose Arcadio Limon was born January 12 in Culiacan, Mexicon. He was the first-born child with eleven siblings to follow. By 1915, the family moved to the United States; first to Tucson, Arizona, then to Los Angeles, California. After Graduating from Lincoln High School, Limon entered the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) as an art major. He moved to New York city in 1928 to study at the New York School of Design, still not a dancer. It was the following year when Limon saw a dance performance that inspired him. Harold Kreutzberg and Yvonne Gerogi’s performance was the epiphany that led Limon to dance. He said, “Suddenly, onto the stage, borne on the impetus of the heroic rhapsody, bounded an ineffable creature and his partner. Instantly and irrevocably, I was transformed. I knew with shocking suddenness that until then I had not been alive or, rather, that I had yet been unborn…now I did not want to remain on this earth unless I learned to do what this man was doing.”
Kolbasti is a popular Turkish dance. It was originally created in the 1930s in the seaport of Trabzon on the Black Sea coast of north-eastern Turkey. Loosely translated, ‘kolbast?’ means ‘caught red-handed by the police.’ According to legend, the name comes from nightly police patrols of the city to round up drunks, who made up a song with the lyrics: ‘They came, they caught us, they beat us’ (in Turkish: ‘Geldiler, bastilar, vurdular’).
In the past few years this dance has grown very popular and is spreading in popularity outside the region. These days this dance is mostly used for weddings or by youngsters who like to show off and attract girls.
The origin of the dances are swinging and energetic or hyperactive movements (this is why this dance is really exciting). Once it’s started most people will get dragged into the dance and will start dancing until the music ends. Because the beats and the movements are fast and steady not all of them will know how to perform the dance properly unless they have had a lot of practice and maybe born or lived in Trabzon.
Comments (1)
Aug 27 2010
:: who pointed me towards the piece: “The use of goddess imagery is questioned, the uncomfortable conundrum between being drawn to belly dance for its acceptance of body types and learning quickly that what sells is typical slender good looks that meet a stereotype, the “dumbing down” of belly dance as it becomes more popular, and the belly dance scene’s commodity driven belittling of Arab culture.”
