Arab Dance Seminar, second day

Day two of the Arab Dance Seminar contained still more fabulousness and energy and warmth.  We started right off with an hour and a half dabke class taught by Karim, which was so, so helpful.  My shins ached by the time we finished, but I think I have a decent handle on some basic steps now.  I couldn't always get the quick hoppy heel-toe accents that make dabke so distinctive, but at least I could mostly put my feet down in the right order at the right time, often without even looking at them ;-)  After dabke came a great Saidi class with Cassandra.  We started without canes, since as Cassandra said the Saidi people don't grab a cane every time they want to dance.  It was great to really focus on the quality of the movements without also focusing on cane technique.  As with her raqs sharqi class the day before, the movements weren't new to me, but some of her explanations and layering of detail were new, so it was quite valuable.  I've done enough cane that I found this class very relaxing after all the intense concentration of the dabke.  There was some horsey hoppy stuff that my feet were just not going to do after all they'd been through already, but at least I've seen it and had it explained to me.

After the break, we did Bedouin dance with Kay Hardy Campbell, sort of the folklore/folkloric version of the Khaleegi dance we'd done the day before.  Again, I loved wearing my thobe--I feel like the Queen of Sheba in it.  Once we'd learned some movements, we formed a big crescent and Kay danced around the line, pulling dancers out to do little solos--solo feels like the wrong word, but I'm not sure what is.  Individual celebration in front of the group to reflect the feelings of the entire group.  There must be some long German word for that.  Anyway, that's what we all did in turn.

Then came the trance dance portion of the seminar, a profound and powerful way to close the event.  ( this gets long )

All in all, I feel that the seminar provided me with not only technique and movement vocabulary but more importantly, a real feeling for what these dances mean to the people who practice them as part of their regular lives, not playing dress up and putting on a show but expressing thoughts and feelings about themselves and their communities.  And the weekend also gave me a deeper appreciation for musical structure and understanding of how music and rhythm relates to the dances.  One of the most excellent points about the seminar was that there were live drums being played all the time.  Even if the live drummer was just accompanying recorded music, having a live drum in the room meant that we could *feel* the rhythm vibrating through the air, adding tremendous energy to the room.  The instructors were all warm, patient and kind, and I would take anything any of them taught again in a heartbeat.  My body is beyond exhausted--it was genuinely hard to get out of bed this morning, nothing in particular hurt but everything felt like lead--but if I heard of a class any of them offered this very evening, I'd be there.