Reflecting on the sword

Sword is one of my favourite props. It's not a particularly culturally authentic prop, which is to say that while some Middle Eastern and North African dances do involve swords (or in some of the updated versions, rifles) the way that bellydancers use the sword in the west is not recognisable within the frame of MENA dance.

However, it is a very popular prop, it's flash and impressive, balance feats involving swords have a frisson of danger about them and audiences love that. There is also the advantage, when not attempting to create an accurate representation of a cultural dance, that we have the freedom to play, experiment and express our art however we wish.

Some dancers use weapons to create martial arts based pieces, Morgana is a great example of a dancer who blends her martial arts background with dance on stage.

I have also heard people criticise dancers for not doing this, for not "wielding" the sword "correctly" in their dance for instance. I think this criticism comes from a lack of consideration of what the dancer is trying to say with their dance (or perhaps what the teacher they learned from was trying to say), and I wanted to write a little about how we use weapons in dance, not to represent violence, but to subvert it.

I have martial arts training. I fought competitive, full contact Tae Kwon Do and I've trained in Western swordplay. When I dance with a sword, I'm not a fighter, I am a dancer. I don't hold my sword like a weapon, firstly, because it's not balanced like one, it's balanced to sit on my head, but also because part of the purpose of my dance is to take the sword as a classic symbol of violence, death and brutality, and subvert it as something delicate, graceful, even sensual.

Tech rehearsal for Juno's show in 2009

I've heard reports more recently, mostly from dancers in the USA, that they are being asked not to dance with a sword when booked for a performance, the reason being that it might remind people of the atrocities committed by Dae'sh extremists in the Middle East.

It makes me intensely sad that anyone would connect a beautiful performance with such things and moreso to see another way that terrorism creeps into our everyday lives.

As a counter to this I would suggest that artistic expression, dance, music and particularly the freedom of women to openly participate in the same, are all anathema to these extremists' ideals. Perhaps we are reaching a point where a woman, dancing, in public and subverting the symbol of the scimitar is becoming an act of defiance and ridicule against the perpetrators of violence.

Sneaky fusion - The subtle influences that bleed into our dance.

I've been thinking a lot about fusion lately.

There is a whole spectrum of thought in the bellydance community about fusing Middle Eastern dance, both on a technical and artistic level. While some dancers believe that the dances should remain "unpolluted" for reasons of preservation or appropriation, others are more willing to mix it up. But this isn't the place for that debate, I haven't got long enough to even cover the tip of that iceberg today!!

Usually fusion, well, good fusion, means a dancer who has a solid training and understanding of 2 or more dance forms, blends them together into a performance that uses elements of both, where the origins are clear. Hopefully this is done tastefully and sympathetically, but not always, which is why people sometimes get twitchy about it.

Some kinds of fusion, like Tribal Fusion, have gained a life of their own and are now taught independently of the parent styles.

But that's still not what I want to talk about today. What I have been thinking about lately is incidental fusion. Where movement, posture, gesture, bearing or stylisation bleeds into bellydance, without really being acknowledged, maybe not even by the dancer herself.

This is a metaphor. A delicious metaphor.

Whether we like it or not, "bellydance" has been subject to fusion from the outset. Many of the "folkloric" styles taught for performance have been tweaked for that purpose generations ago and are no longer strictly authentic. Most infamously Mahmoud Reda took dances from all over Egypt and adapted them for stage and screen. He was heavily influenced by Western musical theatre and film. He even created new dances for regions that did not have a suitable local dance.

Tahia Carioca took her stage name from the Brazillian dance steps she incorporated into her shows.

Samia Gamal notoriously took ballet training which is evident in her arm carriage and graceful movement. I have never studied ballet, but I know that it has an influence on my Oriental style because Gamal's performances, along with several other ballet-influenced Oriental dancers, are inspirational to me.

Cross training in dance styles is not new in Raqs Sharqui, and allowing an "accent" to show through from this training has, in some cases, become important in a dancer's uniqueness.

I recently did a workshop with Ava Fleming entitled "Ballroom for Bellydancers" where I learned that her trademark fluid travelling technique has a strong Latin ballroom influence. 

I also noticed during these workshops, that when I walk slowly in dance, I trail my back toe, partly for balance, partly for ooze. It took me a while to realise that I learned this habit taking Argentinian Tango lessons.

Then more recently I have been working on a short choreography by Collena Shakti. There's no Arabic element in this dance at all, but I chose it specifically because I wanted to cross train in terms of arm pathways, hand awareness (crucial in the Classical Indian elements of this dance) and eyeline. The impact this has had on my Raqs Sharqui was immediate and unconscious. Which was the point. I can drill bellydance arms (and ballet arms, thanks Aziza) forever, but getting out of my comfort zone and learning something new heightened my awareness and forced the learning curve.

While teaching this choreography, Collena explains the influences. The Persian in there is very subtle, it's about posture and bodylines. I wouldn't have seen it if she hadn't mentioned it, but it makes an impact on the presentation that is unmistakable.

In short, the more you delve into it, the more apparent it is that there is more fusion in our dance than we might at first assume.

This got me thinking about how easily our dancing can be influenced. I've written before about how witnessing dance without learning or practicing it can affect our brains and our muscle memory. I wondered how many of the hundreds of performances of various dance styles I have witnessed have left a subtle impression somewhere on my dance. A little gesture here, a subtle element of musicality there.

And it isn't just dancing either. I know that I use poses, gestures, expressions etc from a variety of sources, images and non-dance performance when I create a new piece; every day all of us are exposed to a myriad of sources of inspiration, that are all adding their tiny flavour somewhere. Maybe it will come out, maybe it won't.

I try to be mindful of inauthentic elements creeping into my performance. If they are there I want to know they are there and why. But I also find it fascinating how each of us is building our unique dance fingerprint; created and continuously adjusted by how we practice and what we witness every day.