Thursday 20 December 2012

Dance Training is Life Training: Our Responsibilities as Dance Teachers


"People who write about spring training not being necessary have never tried to throw a baseball"- Sandy Koufax

I left off writing this blog until I had some time to process my thoughts. And still they’re not so cohesive, but I felt the need to get this off my chest. Recently a friend posted a status update on Facebook about some workshops that she had taken recently and how much she enjoyed them. The comments below the status piqued my interest for a number of reasons.

One commenter spent the entire thread of comments trying to devalue the necessity of workshops. The commenter in question, who shall remain anonymous, is a teacher of bellydance. However, they do not attend workshops – they’re too expensive, perfecting technique is not deemed as important and mixing styles without consideration of the origin is totally fine. And all this is ok because the troupe are booked all of next summer. Oh and travelling for workshops – no chance. But it’s ok, because the audience loves them, and the audience doesn’t care if it’s technically correct. They just love to dance.

Ok – so don’t for one minute get me wrong here. I know that not every dancer wants to become a professional. I have some students that come to class every week, that most likely don’t practice at home, that are not interested in performing or teaching or doing anything other than coming to class once a week, being social, keeping fit (I imagine that’s a great draw for a Tribal Fusion class) and having fun. And I do not think there is anything wrong with that at all. There’s a place for everyone in bellydance, that’s why we love it so much.

However, the responsibility is completely flipped when we become teachers. It took me a very, very long time to finally become a teacher. I was nagged by various dancers since 2010 – why aren’t you teaching yet? You should be teaching! When are you gonna start teaching? Come on Alexis, it’s 2012, you want to quit dance? Don’t be ridiculous, you should be teaching a class! Get yourself some students, you’ll soon see you don’t really want to quit, you just need a new motivation. But still, it took two years of nagging before I set up my weekly class. Because I wasn’t ready mentally for that. I made the decision to start teaching because I finally felt ready to be doing it. That I’d accumulated enough knowledge through training to be able to teach safely and effectively, and that I’d developed my approach enough to have something to contribute.

There's me at a Sharon Kihara workshop in 2008.
Photo: Polstar Photography
If I were to calculate how much money I had spent on learning to bellydance, it would cost more than my Bachelors, Masters and PhD degrees cost me all totalled together – and that doesn’t even include the cost of travel, accommodation, food… And I’ll never earn that money back. But that’s ok!

Until now, my purpose of going to workshops was not as part of an intended CPD (continuous professional development). I took workshops because I wanted to be a better dancer than I was, for me, not for anyone else. Now it’s a bit different. I don’t just have myself to think about anymore. So now, workshops are, in addition to making me a better dancer, about having some current knowledge from the field. New techniques, what’s outdated, what’s not considered safe anymore. What’s acceptable, what isn’t. What’s fresh, what’s interesting. What can I take home for me to work on, and what will benefit my students? How do they teach – do I like it or not? Why/why not? There are now so many reasons to go to workshops beyond making me a better dancer.

In any profession, you have to attend CPD. How would you like it if you went in for surgery and your doctor was using out of date approaches that were no longer considered safe? How would you like it if your gas fitter botched your repair works because he hadn’t done the recent training? How would you like it if your house fell down because your builder hadn’t bothered to learn how to build a house properly? How would you like it if your dance teacher seriously injured you because she didn’t know what she was doing? It’s all relative isn’t it? If you’re a dance teacher, you should never ever stop also being a student. There is never nothing else to learn, and money is not an excuse. If you’re taking money for teaching dance, you need to find the money to invest in your professional development. I don’t care if you’re not a ‘real’ professional. There’s more to being professional than earning your sole living from dance.

So all of this got me thinking about our responsibilities to our students and to our art form and the way we present it. While it may feel great to be so popular that you’re booked all summer, there’s more to presenting this dance than putting on a pretty costume and dancing. You could be the first bellydancer anyone ever saw. If you do a terrible job, you do a disservice to all of us that are working so hard to change perceptions about our dance, and trying so bad to get our dance respected by other dance professionals and the general public.
   
Tahia Carioca
And what about cultural appropriation? If you’re white (?), Western, insert religious belief here, and you’re teaching bellydance, you need to be respectful and educate yourself. I am a white British agnostic that teaches a Western interpretation of Middle Eastern Dance. Needless to say, I am not Middle Eastern, I am not Muslim, and I am not in any way connected to that part of the world through genetic lineage. I teach Tribal Fusion – that doesn’t mean that I ignore where my dance form came from. It does not mean that I should completely disregard the origins of the dance form I’m performing, and it does not mean that I don’t care about where it comes from and what is going on there. Surely as a fusion dancer, it is even more imperative that I represent my chosen direction with the respect and recognition that bellydance deserves. I was taught dance by (mostly white, not always) Western women and I have a very Western mindset towards learning and teaching dance. I recognise that, just as I recognise that when I collected qualitative data in my day job, my analyses were never totally free of bias… I still feel it’s my responsibility to teach my students to be respectful of where bellydance came from, regardless of my country of birth. I might not dance to Middle Eastern music, but I understand it. I trained in oriental before I became a fusion dancer. I never say that I do ‘insert dance here’-fusion (e.g. Flamenco Fusion, Indian Fusion). I don’t know enough about those dance styles to do that. That’s cultural appropriation right there. I do not want to teach my students a ‘mish-mash’ of styles, and I certainly do not want to present that to an uneducated audience as bellydance (and on the subject of ‘mish-mash’ or fusion… are you an expert in those styles too? If you don’t take workshops, how can you be?). Ignorance is not bliss, it’s just rude. Now I’m not saying that fusion or evolution of a dance is a bad thing – authenticity in bellydance is a difficult one to pin down (just like Tahiya Carioca took on her stage name due to her love of Brazilian dance and incorporation of Latin footwork to her vocabulary, and the Reda troupe incorporated balletic movements into the bellydance vocabulary, thus changing modern Egyptian bellydance forever). But being respectful of the origins costs you nothing.

I want my students to have fun and enjoy dance and coming to class. I want to provide an environment where they get fit, they socialise, they feel comfortable, and they get educated. And to do that I need to be educated too.

Opportunities for training even exist
in our own homes these days
Workshops are an investment. Taking yourself away from that arena and continuing to teach is, in my humble opinion, irresponsible. There is always so much to learn. I hope to be an eternal student. I hope I never get so complacent that I feel I don’t need to do it anymore. I hope that money never gets so tight that I stop learning. If that happens then hell, I’ll go out and get a 9-5 job so I can pay for it. Dance is my passion and for those that look up to me in a classroom as an expert, I need to make myself as much of an expert as I can be. All that is done through constant learning, study and dedication. And with online classes these days, at really affordable prices, there is no need to be uneducated and out of date.

Being a teacher is about so much more than just showing up each week and teaching a routine. I learned that from my first teacher, Karen – whenever we were learning a new sub-genre of bellydance in her classes, she gave us handouts with information on the style and where we could learn more. I feel she put me in good stead to go out into the world and be a good teacher the way she was to me, and each regular teacher I’ve had since has been to me.

Knowledge is the most important thing in the world. As educators, we need to consider our roles and responsibilities to ourselves, our students and to the wider community.

Donna Mejia
For more on cultural appropriation in bellydance, I highly recommend studying with Donna Mejia – the first person to hold a full-time appointment as a tribal fusion bellydancer at the collegiate level. She teaches a fascinating lecture on the subject that really gets you thinking about our responsibilities as fusion dancers.   







Links:

Online training: www.daturaonline.com   |   www.powhow.com

Free educational resources: www.gildedserpent.com   |   www.suhailainternational.com/resources

Tuesday 11 December 2012

2012 - Thank You & Goodnight!


During winter time, as the year begins to take its final breaths and give life to the next, I come to reflect on the 12 months that has passed. And 2012 sure has been a rollercoaster of emotions… good and bad. But mostly good!

As I left 2011, I wasn’t feeling entirely positive about dance. I’d been having a period of self-doubt, a crisis of confidence – about everything. My performances, my ability, my teaching… everything. I’d been to shows, performed and smiled, resented myself, felt like the worst dancer in the room and put way too much pressure on myself. Basically, I burned out – I was performing a lot and I kept pushing myself to produce new work when I was completely lacking in inspiration, and then hating myself for being unable to produce anything; observing the tendency of workshop participants for wanting to be ‘broken’ and knowing that my approach to teaching was not going to fulfill that desire made me feel like I wasn’t good enough to be a teacher of Tribal Fusion.  At the end of 2011, I really was *this* close to throwing it all away. After a year plagued with injury and self-doubt, I was sorely tempted to quit. As I began 2012 I had only Tribal Massive on my calendar (and the event I was hosting with Hilde), and I was asking myself the question – why are you still doing this – why are you persevering with something that is making you so unhappy?

The answer is – I love dance. I can’t imagine my life without dance. When I was told by my physio last summer that the only solution to my knee problem was to quit dance, I cried my eyes out... and then resolved to ignore her advice (and I’m so glad that I did)! And I think some of what I was experiencing was fear. I wanted to start making dance more than just my obsession, yet kept making excuses as to why I couldn’t teach a weekly class, and why I couldn’t commit to dance more (And I still experience this, being months away from submitting a PhD thesis – striking this balance has been a major challenge in my life!).


In January, I had a pep talk from one of my teachers that set me back on a positive path. I set up my weekly classes, I made a dance about the things that were breaking my spirit (with the help of a new inspirational tool – the Dance Spinner – thanks Sam!), and I headed out to Vegas where I came back so much in love with dance again. So inspired to practice, to be better, to work hard and to share everything I had with others, through performance and instruction. Of course, I still battle with demons, but Massive changed me in a way no other dance experience ever has (Amy Sigil and Zoe Jakes had a LOT to do with that!). Being supported throughout the year by the people I respect, little comments that have meant the world and knowing I’m not alone, have helped me push through the self-doubt.


After Vegas I got married to my sweetheart, a very very happy day! And after that, the dance calendar exploded! For someone who wasn’t looking much past March, the year soon filled up! I can’t say that I abandoned all of my insecurities in Vegas. But at least I managed to somehow work through most of them, if not there then over the course of 2012.

It’s funny how different choices that you make throughout your life lead you down different paths. And for me, the funniest thing about this year is making real things that I never even imagined could or would happen to me. When I met Jaana Hansmann in 2010, I never dreamed that we would ever make a dance together, let alone perform it together at several events around the world. Likewise, I never imagined after a fleeting meeting at Raqs Britannia in 2007, that I would call Martina Crowe-Hewett a friend, let alone share stages with her. I will never forget Dan, having nothing else to do, as Raqs B was in Blackpool back then, filmed the dances of performers  on the open stage that he thought I’d like while I spent hours each day in workshops – one of those dancers was Martina. It’s a funny old world isn’t it?


I’ve realised this year, more than any other year, how much community in this dance means to me. In a year when people who I thought were my true friends have walked out of my life, I’ve been incredibly thankful for the friends I have made through dance. I have a great circle of dance friends that I’m close to in the UK, but also dear friends living all over the world. It has amused me to see the surprise at how close our European community is to ‘outsiders’. I see love, respect and inspiration everywhere I go, and I love this so much. It’s such a reassurance to know that, wherever I go, if there’s a bellydancer there then I already have one friend. Sending huge hugs and love to my friends around the world <3


It’s also been a year of change and development – joining Ambrosia after a stint this summer as a guest dancer is amazing! Taking on the added challenge of joining the Gothla UK committee and also the expansion of Infusion Emporium has been both terrifying and rewarding in equal measure! 

Despite being made redundant from my day job, I managed to maintain regular access to dance training that I’m so grateful for. I passed the SSBD Level 1 certification in December. The new inspiration and challenges for my body have been really fun. A thank you to 2012’s teachers – Samantha. Zoe, Amy, Kami, Donna, Olivia, Bozenka, Colleena, Rachel, Mardi, Heather, Morgana, Ozgen, Tjarda, Martina, Mira, Hilde, Anasma, Dawn, Deb, Illan, Giuliana, Carolena and Suhaila.

Exciting things are ahead for 2013. Teaching my weekly class has made me realize just how much I enjoy teaching dance – seeing the development of my students week to week, and the massive changes in their bodies and movement abilities is so rewarding. It’s challenging, of course, to teach when people learn in different ways – but it’s a challenge I’m enjoying so much. And I’m so happy that this renewed passion for teaching has pushed me into new realms – teaching workshops around the UK and abroad on a more regular basis. In 2013, I’m especially looking forward to being a part of the teaching faculty for Tribal Umrah in Marseille. Seriously, when I entered my first bellydance class almost 7 years ago, I never imagined I would ever perform bellydance outside of that class, let alone teach it… to be featured on a line-up of teachers that have helped me to grow as a dancer (Amy Sigil, Sharon Kihara, April Rose…) is just about the biggest honour I could receive. Really, I’m a very lucky girl!

I’m excited to be travelling more next year, meeting new people, visiting new places and hopefully inspiring others and being inspired by others in equal measure. The next Infusion Emporium events that we have planned are going to be great, and I’m excited about teaching new material in my workshops and the planning of new dance performances and collaborations that are coming up. I’ve got some real treasured memories from 2012… it’s been a really amazing year, no doubt about that! 2013 can only be bigger and better!


Below is my calendar for 2013 so far (new stuff is being added all the time, so be sure to check my website!) – I hope to see you out on the road next year - thanks to anyone that came out to a workshop or performance in 2012, your support is so much appreciated! If you are interested in me performing or teaching at your event, please drop me an email – I’d love to come out and dance with you!

Hope to see you in the New Year!

A x



Calendar 

20 January - Special Topic Workshop Series, Wolverhampton - Fluid & Strong

16 March - Performance at April Rose Showcase, Wolverhampton

24 March - Milton Keynes workshop

30 March - Dublin workshop

27 April - Wrexham workshop

5-6 May - Dark CPH Weekend, Copenhagen, Denmark

1 June - Reading workshops

14-16 June -The Tribal Gathering, York

22-28 July -Tribal Umrah Festival, Marseille, France




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Rome - Tribal Fusion Express Show 

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