By Devi Mamak
Tribal Happenings
and Tribal in Taiwan.
Well like most of you I
have had a busy few months. As I type this article I have been
enjoying a few quiet weekends for the first time since February in
which I have been catching up with my family and close friends.
After all it is our family and friends that support the crazy life
style of us bellydancers so it is important to reconnect with them
when ever we can!
In early March I received
an email from Carolena asking if I would consider performing and co-
teaching the General Skills Certificate with her in Taiwan at the
end of March as Megha was not well and couldn’t attend. Of course I
said yes and spent six days in Taiwan with Carolena and Lucie [who
dances with Carolena in San Francisco]. Lucie also did a fantastic
job as our interpreter and performance buddy.
I arrived late on Thursday,
so bright and early on Friday morning Carolena, Lucie and I had a
one hour rehearsal for three sets. Initially, when I saw the
itinerary of our schedule, I was horrified. One hour rehearsal for a
half hour show with two people I have never danced with before, and
one of them is Carolena! However, it was soon clear that this was
going to work. We had all discussed the music choices and had
listened carefully before hand so it was really just a matter of
practicing together and feeling it out as a threesome. Of course it
was all using improvisational choreography and it all worked
beautifully. Ahhh, the beauty of ATS!
The show that night which
was presented by our host Sherry Chen, was a huge extravaganza which
included two hours of a variety of different bellydance styles. It
amazes me how the teachers in Taiwan are expected to be proficient
in Oriental styles as well as ATS, Gypsy Caravan and Tribal Fusions
styles. There are some that also teach other styles of dance such as
ballet and tap. Needless to say those gals are BUSY!
For the next three days
after that Carolena and I presented the General Skills certificate.
I had, of course, been as prepared as possible but what I wasn’t
expecting was the head space that I needed to be in for my role as
assistant teacher. I am so used to being THE teacher and am more
than happy being a student but the role of assistant teacher is a
different role again and falls somewhere between teacher and
student. Once I had that role sorted in my own head everything
seemed a lot easier. The girls in Taiwan were enthusiastic and so
adorable in all black cholis and all tissue skirts in a variety of
colours. I lovingly called them ‘The tribal wiggles’!
The general skills went
swimmingly well and all participants seemed happy and exhausted as
were Carolena, Lucie and I so it was off for a massage. After some
celebratory drinks we managed to squeeze in a quick shop at the
night markets and LOTS of eating [food in Taiwan is to die for!]. It
was a fabulous trip. Hard work but fun as well and will definately
go down as one of the highlights of my dancing career.
In March I finally managed
to get to Melbourne after my trip was postponed last year due to me
being ill. I hooked up with Melusina of Underbelly studios which was
lovely. [Underbelly has since closed its doors, although I believe
all teachers will still be teaching in studios elsewhere].
Underbelly had asked me to teach a Tribal/Oriental/Indian
choreography which is obviously not my usual ATS workshop. I felt
that some participants were still expecting an ATS workshop because
it was me teaching, [even though they received the blurb giving the
workshop content]. ATS is what I am passionate about and have
studied closely for over a decade, but I also have experience in
classical Egyptian, Odissi, Flamenco and Ballet. On occasion I am
asked to teach one of these workshops and I love presenting them in
a choreography type of presentation. For my ATS workshops I like to
present them as Carolena has intended…as pure ATS. I really believe
that you need to understand the style, inside out before you start
to change it and make it your own. Of course there comes a time with
many dancers, when they like to venture out and try something new.
It is for this reason I recently started what I call, ‘The Pot Luck
Specialty Class’. In this class we explore different combos or
choreographies drawing from my other dance experience. For those
that come to that class they must already have an ATS background as,
for me, it is still the base from which I draw my posture and
movement.
O.K. so I’m diverting from
the topic, morale of the story…read your workshop flyers!
In Melbourne I also had the
privilege of performing at Club Rakkash, hosted by the lovely
Pamela. This is something that Pamela organises several times a year
and is a great afternoon and evening of shopping and performances by
local acts as well as special guests. I was the special guest in
March. So exciting! There were many fantastic acts including Patsy
from Nomadic Passions and one of her girls who had made the three
hour drive from Ararat to perform. I felt very proud as I watched
them perform several of Ghawazi Caravan’s ATS moves! If you want to
find out about the next Club Rakkash you can contact Pamela.
party@clubrakkasha.com.
In April and only days
after returning from Taiwan I was off to Newcastle to teach a series
of workshops hosted by Susan Gleeson of Black Diamond. Sonya
Manzalini was gracious enough to hold the workshops in her studio,
which I have to say was one of the loveliest studios I had ever
seen. It was big and open with plenty of mirrors, shop downstairs,
change room, bathroom, kitchen and shower! For these workshops I
mainly focused on new combos and moves that I and Ghawazi Caravan
have developed. I had recently taught this workshop in February in
The Blue Mountains. Many of the Newcastle girls had come along for
that and were so adamant on drilling and perfecting the moves
correctly that they wanted an exact repeat in April in Newcastle.
There is an old Chinese saying that goes something like this, “A
good teacher is hard to find. A good student is even harder to
find.” It was nice to see a great bunch of gals dedicating
themselves to their own personal best.
A couple of weeks later I
was off to Adelaide. This visit was sponsored by Achusla. The
gorgeous dancer and director of Sacred Tribal Bellydance. I had a
wonderful time with her and her girls who are all obviously
extremely dedicated to perfecting their art.
May of course was The
Sydney Middle Eastern Dance Festival. This was the 20th
anniversary! Can you believe it? At the Saturday night concert
Ghawazi Caravan presented two numbers and we were joined by special
guest Hilary Cinis for our performance. We had only one rehearsal
which once again shows how ATS really works when you dance with
people that speak the same ‘dance’ language. Hilary and I also co
taught a workshop entitled ‘interactive duets’. We had a lot of fun
putting the workshop together then presenting it. We had a lot of
great feedback from it as well, which was wonderful. Melusinas
workshop entitled Indian Spices was also hugely popular. I also
managed to get to the Bazaar day which is always an opportunity to
catch up with people you haven’t seen for a while. The performances
on the Sunday were a mix of Oriental styles, Tribal styles and even
a Gothic fusion performance by Dani’s troupe from Newcastle. I was
very proud of my little Ghawazi Girls [ages 10 to 13]. They rocked
the house! I also enjoyed Roothie’s [from Aurora tribe] pirate
Tribal number…very entertaining. I really thought it suited her
which is always nice to see.
At the end of May it was
the Western Australian Middle Eastern Dance Festival. I was really
busy teaching four workshops, performing and giving interviews. I
even forgot to eat on the Saturday and that has NEVER happened to me
before! My workshops were quite full which was great.
The Saturday night concert
was quite a production with international guest Khaled and Artemis
Mourat. Both were amazing in their own right. There wasn’t much in
the way of Tribal but the Tribal Spirit girls did a really
interesting piece with their Balinese finger nails. I also loved
watching Ma’isah with her Gothic number and especially her Pseudo
skirt project. Ma’isah and I were the interstate guests for the
festival and she came up with the idea of teaching a choreography
before the festival online then following it up with a workshop at
the festival before performing at the festival on the Saturday
night. I don’t know how many ladies were on stage but it was a lot
and they looked AMAZING in their sepia coloured costumes which
Ma’isah had also given on line instructions for. It really looked
seamless and so much fun!
Sunday night was named Café
Ashra and was a small informal get together with talks by Khaled and
Artemis, myself and Ma’isah. I talked about the history of ATS,
Tribal and a little about fusion. Ma’isah talked about her own
experience with Gothic Fusion. It was an informative night for many
people as there are so many beautiful variations not only to Middle
Eastern Dance but also within Tribal styles. We even had a couple
demos of Gothic and Tribal fusion by the lovely Fee from Canberra
and Vicky from W.A. [Two of my favourite dancers so that was a treat
for me!].
The weekend after that saw
me in Ararat, Victoria hosted by the lovely Patsy from Nomadic
Passions. I had a lovely time there with gals that had come from all
over for the workshops.
It doesn’t actually stop
there. Soon after visiting Patsy we had our big show, Intertwine,
but I am going to have to leave it there and tell you all about that
one later. What I will say is, it was the most exciting performance
I have ever done. I am SO excited about it but for now you are going
to have to wait until next issue, but
if you can’t wait please
check out our website for all the latest on what we are up to as
well as The Intertwine Project.
www.ghawazicaravan.com.
For now enjoy this article
on Tribal belly dance in Taiwan by Lisa Chen
Tribal Belly dance in
Taiwan - A Short History and Current Scenes
By Lisa Chen
Introduction
When bellydance was first
introduced to Taiwan a few years ago, it was a mixture of cabaret
bellydance and Middle Eastern dance. These styles remain the most
well known to local audiences and the bellydance community, in
addition to fusion styles and bollywood.
Bellydance in general
became almost immediately popular and rapidly widespread as a new
exercise choice and a pressure-relief hobby. Visual presentation,
like performance or instructional DVDs is probably the most ideal
and accessible way for local audiences and dancers since it doesn’t
create a linguistic barrier for learning and understanding.
Among those bellydance
performance DVDs first available to us was the Belly dance
Superstars. These DVD’s have become one of the most influential in
our development of the dance. Dancers such as Ansuya, Suhaila
Salimpour, Amar of Bellyqueen, Tamalyn, Jillina, Sonia and Rachel
Brice have become so well known that they are invited to give
workshops and performance accordingly. Besides cabaret bellydancers
or oriental dancers, Rachel Brice [in her dark-tone gothic-flavoured
costume and snake-like movements] is quite different and very
impressive to the Taiwanese audience. This is probably the first
time local audiences and dancers encountered tribal bellydance and
it remains the mainstream as well as stereotype impression about
what tribal bellydance is like in Taiwan.
At first, not many local
dancers and students were interested in learning tribal bellydance
because it was not what they thought of as the stereotyped beautiful
and seductively sexy bellydancer. During the early stages of
bellydance experiences here, choreographies and props in cabaret
style or oriental dance styles were the major focus and a few people
tried tribal style costuming for a different look. Due to a serious
shortage of information and knowledge on MED art and bellydance,
many regarded tribal as merely another sub-gender. People were not
very serious about the core concepts and accurate presentation about
tribal bellydance.
Indeed, tribal bellydance
is one of those sub-genders under the large bellydance umbrella.
During this period of time, around 2005 to 2006, another DVD, the
Art of Bellydancing by Carolena Nericcio, founder of ATS and
director of Fat Chance Belly Dance was also brought back to Taiwan.
People began to be curious about this ‘new’ style, where dancers are
more covered up, play finger cymbals and always dance in a group.
Real Encounter with ATS
and Tribal Fest
In 2006, a few Taiwanese
dancers and instructors went to San Francisco to attend Tribal Fest
and this is one of the first formal encounters of Taiwanese
bellydancers with tribal bellydance and its origin, ATS. It was a
very wonderful experience to meet with so many tribal dancers, have
classes and watch performances at Tribal Fest, which truly provided
us a more clear and comprehensive vision of this dance style. Among
those who went to Tribal Fest, Sherry Shen and I went to learn with
Carolena Nericcio at FCBD Studio and brought back what we learned
about ATS to Taiwanese students. Sherry began to teach ATS at her
studio and I started to do further research on ATS and tribal
bellydance and wrote articles to promote this dance style which we
both had a feeling for.
Ariellah and Sabine from
Triballation came in 2007. Local dancers and students, for the first
time experienced the Rachel Brice-like bellydance and some other
tribal bellydance forms.
Also in 2007, the first
General Skill Intensive Certification workshop of ATS was held in
Taipei. Carolena and Megha Gavin were here for the three day
workshops and officially the first generation of ATS dancers were
thus granted with their GS knowledge and skills of ATS by Carolena.
Afterwards, Sherry held another GS certification workshop in March
2009 in which Devi Mamak of Ghawazi Caravan co-taught with Carolena
and performed together for local audience. This was the first time
local dancers and audiences had seen the real ATS dance by its
founder. In between the two GS workshops, I sponsored Devi Mamak,
who I knew of through Carolena’s referral and personally visited her
at the Blue Mountains in Australia. In 2007 Devi came and taught
workshops for local dancers thus becoming the first Aussie dancer to
teach in Taiwan and her teaching and dancing have impressed the
local dancers of Taiwan.
Meanwhile, other dancers
have also introduced tribal bellydance to the local community with
different formats. Kiki Kuan based at Hsinchu and Taichung held the
first tribal bellydance certification workshop at Taiwan with Sahira
in 2006 and she further invited Kajira Djoumahna to give Black Sheep
Bellydance certification workshops here. Kiki also hosted the
2008
Taiwan Tribal Asia Belly Dance at
Taichung and Hsinchu, which Kajira, Sahira and John Compton of
Habbi’ru as guest instructors.
Fangyun Lu, dancer,
musician and costume designer, introduced the Gypsy Caravan format
to the local dance community. She and her troupe Fang Yun Dance
Theater have regular gigs combining other artistic inspiration
elements with tribal bellydance. She sponsored Paulette Rees Denis,
director of Gypsy Caravan to give her students a certification
workshop in March 2009.
Al Maha Middle Eastern
Dance & Drum Ensemble, the only troupe formed by both musicians and
dancers in the Taiwan bellydance community, take the group
improvisation form of ATS and fuse it with Middle Eastern and Arabic
percussion as well as other types of dance forms such as folk dance
and modern dance. In 2008, Christine Du of Al Maha, also one of the
leading female Arab percussionists here held The Dance, Drum and
Music Festival (DDM) and invited famous Arab percussionist Karim
Nagi as guest instructor and performer. In the DDM Hafla, Al Maha
performed their own version of ATS with a twist of Japanese flavor,
flute and Chi drum. Their dance and costume wowed the audience as
well as the local dance community.
Jamila Salimpour format has
also been introduced into Taiwan. Suhaila Salimpour calls this
“traditional tribal style belly dance.” It is famous for the
complicated finger cymbal patterns and a few Taiwanese dancers
including myself went to San Francisco for the first Jamila
Salimpour certification workshop in September 2008. We were curious
about the inspiration and origin of ATS and the tribal bellydance
today. Jamila Salimpour impressed us with her charming personality,
great techniques and informative resources on bellydance and ME
dance. Currently, Jane Chung teaches Jamila format in addition to
her devotion to promoting Suhaila Salimpour format here. In April
2009, Suhaila came to Taipei for her first overseas level 1
certification workshop and she also taught Jamila’s format for the
local dancers. Many tribal bellydancers came for the class to meet
with the mother of tribal bellydance and they are deeply impressed
by the finger cymbal patterns and movements.
General Scene of ATS and
Tribal Belly dance at Taiwan
Geographically, ATS is
learnt and performed around Taipei metropolitan area while Black
Sheep format spreads wide from Taipei, Taichung to South Taiwan. Due
to the limited accessibility to resources, bellydance performers and
instructors in South Taiwan are mostly taking both oriental dance
and tribal bellydance as the whole package for teaching and
performing. This is also true for dancers in North Taiwan even
though they may have an individual preference toward certain styles.
Perhaps this is because bellydance is so new here and students want
to learn as much as they can and instructors also wish to ensure a
full coverage for their students.
People are very fond of
tribal fusion bellydance, in particular Rachel Brice and the
breaking movement and urban chic style from her early Indigo period.
Many dancers and students dream to dance like Rachel. Some directly
imitate her from outfit to movement while others believe learning
ATS and Suhaila Salimpour technique would eventually be helpful in
developing a closer version to the famous Indigo style. In both
cases, they all want that famous Rachel look. One of the most
outstanding followers of Indigo style in Taiwan, in terms of dance
technique and stage presentation, is Cheer Chang, who did a stunning
tribal fusion solo piece in April 2009, with Suhaila Salimpour
performing at the same show. Furthermore, whenever Rachel and her
group present new performances, her looks and movements will be
referenced by local dancers. Gothic style bellydance is also
popular here as a new gender of tribal bellydance. Somehow, the
concept of group dancing together as a tribe is not that strong in
Taiwan and rather the ‘look’ takes the lead.
As the saying goes, ‘beauty
is only skin deep.’ Somehow the tribal look is often the first
impression and attraction to dancers and students here. Some women
like me, like the ATS costume since it covers up more than the
typical two-piece costume in cabaret bellydance. Others like the
cool look Rachel and other tribal fusion bellydancers have. As it
develops longer, more dancers and students who are serious about
being tribal bellydancers gradually learn and explore the global
tribal community. We realise there is much more to catch up on with
other colleagues globally, develop into a real tribal bellydancer.
We need to know about music and rhythms. We need to learn to fuse
different dance forms properly. Tribal bellydance in a way is like a
gate leading us toward a new world with abundant creation freedom
and inspiration. Somehow we need to have more of an understanding
about bellydance in general so we can better present it with our own
cultural interpretation.
Generally speaking, the
popularity of ATS and Tribal Bellydance is growing relatively slowly
in Taiwan mainly because it requires more fundamental techniques
such as finger cymbals, which is extremely foreign to local dancers
and students. In addition, the idea of group improvisation in a way
discourages many from learning and performing with finger cymbals.
It has partially resulted from cultural gaps where improvisation
seems to be seen as a negative and a challenging concept. As a rule
Taiwanese dancers like to have everything under control by preparing
and knowing everything in advance. Furthermore, since learning
choreographies remains the major method to learn and teach
bellydance, improvisation simply is not what many people expect from
class and stage. Few dancers have experienced joyful experiences of
group improvisation and like me constantly hold on this path and try
to promote this beautiful and exciting dance style for further
awareness and exposure. We look forward to joining with other tribal
sisters worldwide for more fun!
For
comments and questions please contact
lisachen806@hotmail.com
For more
information please check Lisa’s blogs below:
http://atsforeverlisa.blogspot.com (Chinese)
http://lavieenroseetdanse.blogspot.com (English)
Well that’s it for this
issue of Tribal Corner. Don’t forget that we have The Tribal Mosaic
in Wollongong coming up. You can contact Jacqueline via the website
about this exciting and first ever Tribal retreat held in the
beautiful Govinda vallery.
www.tribaljewels.com.au.
Carolena and Megha will
once again be presenting The General Skills certificate and Teacher
Training. Teacher Training is all booked out but there are a few
spaces left for the General Skills certificate. You can contact me
for this one at
devimamak@ghawazicaravan.com
Hope to see some of you at
these exciting events. Till then, over and out! Dxxxx
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