Raqs Nerd: it's simple, and it's not

This week you get a quick(ish) message from me, in between frantically packing to teach at the "Shimmy Up North" dance residential this weekend, and getting everything ready for my Summer term classes starting next week...

Quick-ish, with one idea, that seems simple on the surface - but maybe isn't.

Which is that really really good bellydance / raqs sharqi seems simple on the surface, but it really isn't.

In the same way that this image looks fairly simple, at a first glance.

I mean, it's basically 4 or 5 vaguely circular blobs, with some little twiddly bits around the edges... Right?

Like how probably my favourite Egyptian dancer of all time, Fifi Abdou, could get through a whole show only using maybe 4 or 5 different moves. It's just a few hip drops, circles, and shimmies... Right?

Except, if you zoom in on the edges of that shape, the twiddly bits at the edges keep getting twiddlier. And they keep morphing and changing.

Zoom in a few hundred times, or a few thousand, or a few hundred thousand, and you'll feel like you are exploring some kind of alien world of ever-shifting patterns, similar yet different. That shape, the Mandelbrot set, is in fact one of the surprising miracles of the universe - infinite complexity, bursting into existence from one little mathematical equation.

A brilliant dancer in Egyptian raqs sharqi doesn't need a hundred different moves. Because the genius of this art isn't in large-scale complexity; things that look obviously complicated from a distance. It is in the details. The unique nuances. The million-and-one ways to subtly shift a single hip drop to be just perfect for that precise moment. The tiny modulations of energy and focus. The feeling, that is never exactly the same twice.

Look at the big picture, and the performance looks like "just" a few moves. Or a song sounds like "just" a simple traditional melody, a few verses and choruses.

Zoom in on the details, and there's a dizzying world of artistry within it - sometimes conscious, and sometimes operating below the level of consciousness for both performer and audience.

Nature is full of this - from a distance, a summer meadow may look like "just" a green field; look closely and it's teeming with shapes, textures and colours, and humming with life. A patch of sky may look like "just" a few faint stars, but zoom in and it's full of unfathomable numbers of galaxies - not just stars, but galaxies, each as huge and perhaps full of life as our own. A drop of water that looks like nothing much, under a microscope, reveals a whole menagerie of tiny creatures.

I suppose it may just be an idiosyncratic part of my own personality that I'm drawn to details, to fractal structures, to always looking closer and going deeper and exploring what profound and suprising things may be hiding behind the "simple" big picture.

But it's also inherent to how this particular dance form works (and that's probably why I've ended up here, rather than in some other performing art...).

This isn't a dance of complicated stories and big conceptual productions.

It's a dance that someone who fundamentally doesn't get it might dismiss as simple, or "just entertainment", for that reason.

It is abstract, and intimate.

It's a dance where the closer you look, the more you see.

Where the more attuned you become, the more its secrets open up to you, and the more powerfully it can affect you.

Where there are always new worlds of wonder and fascination to experience, within the same few movements.

A circle, a wave, an infinity loop.

How many ways can you draw a figure 8 on a piece of paper? There is no limit, it is infinite. Every shape drawn, from a human hand which never moves exactly the same way twice, is unique.

How many ways can you dance one figure 8 with your hips? It's an even bigger infinity - infinities upon infinities - because your body moves in three dimensions; because there are so many things that could change, beyond the move itself - so many shifts in how you carry yourself, your breath, your emotions. This one movement, contains multitudes.

And so does every other, in this dance.

There's not a single perfect "right way" to do it - there are just ways in, to the universe of possibilities within that move, which is yours to explore.

If you're a newer dancer, I realise this all might sound daunting. But it's actually the opposite in my opinion - it means that you don't need a huge repertoire of moves, to begin to do something sublime with the ones you have.

And if you're been at this a while, it's very important - it is one of the keys to keeping your love of the dance alive for the long term, of keeping your practice fresh, your dance journey full of excitement, even years or decades in.

I often tell my students they can learn most of the basics in a year or two, if they are motivated... But that after that, they will spend the rest of their lives learning everything else.

Because every part of this art is filled with a wealth of detail, in so many ways - and the more you learn and embody, the more new detail comes into focus. I love that about it.

I will leave you with two videos that really exemplify this, for me:

The first, an iconic performance that I love to come back to every so often: Fifi Abdou dancing to a "simple" oud arrangement of the classic song Lessa Faker. For the first few minutes she's "just" shimmying, only one move... Right? ;)

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And, the second, another goddess in my personal pantheon of dancers: Dandash, dancing the most breathtaking interpretation of Alf Leila w Leila I have ever seen - if you have the eyes to see it; if you can look past the big picture and into the incredible subtlety she commands...

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Do you love these performances as much as I do?

Can you see the details unfolding, the infinite number of ways to do something?

With Love,

PS - all of my Summer term dance courses start next week! With a full range of in-person classes here in Manchester on Mondays and Thursdays, and, an online option available for the course born of my current obsession, "Classic sha'abi: the songs of Ahmed Adaweya" - Join us!

PPS - every part of this newsletter is written by me, a flesh and blood human being, using my own thoughts, feelings, opinions, and writing style - now and always. This is a generative AI free zone 🚫🤖