Raqs Nerd: language of dance

I'm feeling a deep sense of relief and an unusual level of hope for the future as I write to you this week, after waking up this morning to a historic win for the UK Green party over the forces of fascism in my local area

This comes to me as a much-needed reminder - that even in dark times like these, when people come together as a community as we have just done here in south Manchester, we can still make a difference. We have the power to change the narratives of fear and division which often seem to dominate public life, into solidarity with our neighbours and fellow human beings 💚

And now, onto my planned topic for this week...

This one is fresh in my mind at the moment after a (wonderful!) weekend of workshops with the Egyptian star Kamelia Mourad at London's Fantasia festival (shout out to Kay and everyone at Bellydance Now for making it happen 😊) - but it has been on my mind, on and off, for quite a few years now:

Isn't it kind of weird that while we study a dance that's mainly (though not entirely) from Arabic-speaking parts of the world - we hardly ever hear spoken Arabic in the bellydance community?

This is brought home to me these days whenever I take a workshop with an Egyptian teacher - because the automatic assumption, so automatic that we may not even think about it let alone question it, is always that they will teach their classes in English.

Even if they are a long way from being comfortably conversational in English, and even if they are clearly finding it difficult to express what they want to be able to explain to us. English is still the unquestioned default.

And a few things have shifted my perspective on this radically, over the last few years:

Firstly, the events I have produced (and continue to produce... save the date for November 20-22!) with Nisaa / Heather D Ward and Reda Henkesh.

Because, Reda does not really speak English beyond the "polite traveller basics", but also it was always the whole point of the event that he'd be actively teaching and sharing his knowledge alongside Nisaa, and NOT just accompanying the workshops as a musician.

And, in the run up to our first weekend intensive back in 2024, I have to admit I was actually quite nervous about how the classes were going to work in two languages with translation, and whether dancers would be happy with this kind of tuition (as well as being personally a bit nervous about whether I was going to be up to the task of being a good host to an Arabic-speaking guest, when my own Arabic level at that time could be summed up as "completed Arabic Duolingo"...).

It was a leap into the unknown, having previously only hosted English-speaking teachers.

But during that first intensive weekend, I quickly realised that I actually wouldn't want it to be any other way. That there was actually something very powerful and important about hearing how Reda described his own life, work and philosophy in his own words and in his own language - even if we did need Nisaa's translation. And that in fact it felt completely right to me that we should be hearing about traditional Egyptian music and dance in Egyptian Arabic, the language of all of the artists we were studying, and of their audiences.

More generally, something clicked for me that weekend, that we'd (kind of unintentionally) turned the tables on the usual situation in the bellydance community - especially because a lot of our attendees were also students of the Arabic language. That for a couple of days, we English-speaking dancers had become visibly the "foreigners", and Egyptian Arabic the natural and obvious language in which to talk about the art.

After that first event, I immediately resolved to properly study Egyptian Arabic myself - it suddenly felt not like an "oh I'd love to do that one day when I have more time and money" kind of ambition, but an urgent necessity. I've been taking lessons every week since (shout out to my amazing teacher Eva!).

It also has become more and more clear to me that we exclude a lot of really important voices from our learning when we only learn from English-speakers - because so many people in the world of Egyptian arts don't speak English, or necessarily have access to language learning, even if they wanted to. Not just traditional musicians like Reda Henkesh, but also the vast majority of working professional Egyptian dancers, especially outside of the folklore/festival bubble.

The second thing that really shifted my perspective has been an ongoing dialogue with my friend Yasmine Latkowski. Yasmine is a dancer, musician and composer of dual British-Yemeni heritage, and she currently lives in North Wales.

The living in Wales part is important here, because in Wales, everything that involves government organisations, has to be bilingual in English and Welsh, by law. It is completely normal in Wales for arts events to be advertised in two languages, and to take place in two languages - with professional Welsh-English interpreters when needed. And as a professional musician working at events with government arts funding, Yasmine has seen how this works first hand.

Talking this over together, has led us both to the inevitable question - if cultural events in Wales can routinely be bilingual, and include translators and interpreters as standard so that native speakers of Welsh and English are both able to fully participate... What is actually stopping us from doing something similar at dance events?

Since having that thought, I have not been able to un-think it. I look back on all the workshops I've taken with Egyptian teachers over many years, and think about how very different each experience might have been for both teacher and students if the teacher had been able to express themself freely and fully in Arabic, with a good interpreter, instead of being expected to get by in English no matter what.

And on a bigger scale, I also can't stop imagining how different the dance community could look, if hearing spoken Arabic (and other SWANA languages) alongside English was totally normal and expected at our events.

It would be a constant reminder for us foreigners of where the dance comes from, and that we aren't the centre of this world, but fortunate to get to be guests in it - and a meaningful message to dancers from the source cultures, that they belong here, at the centre of discussions of their own culture's arts and traditions.

I am putting this out there into the world because I would really love to see this kind of change happening, as a grassroots movement. I hope that event organisers reading this, might be inspired to imagine doing things differently and perhaps moving towards a bilingual model - even if it's in small ways to begin with, like having one discussion Q&A session with an interpreter as part of a bigger workshop weekend, or including an Arabic-language welcome in the introduction to your show...

And that English-speaking dancers may be inspired to learn a little Arabic (if you aren't already - I know a lot of my subscribers are!), and to not be nervous of attending things where English isn't the default.

It all goes some way to rebalance the scales - to help bring the Egyptian and SWANA artists who created the dance and music we love, back to the heart of the global community that has grown around their work.

And of course, I don't have all the answers here - I still feel like I'm just fumbling around trying to think of better ways to do things, or ways that I'd feel better about. And I probably always will. But I think it's very important to have the discussion, to bring this into our awareness, and to start the work of generating new and better approaches together.

I would love to hear your thoughts too!

With Love,

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PS - 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 🚫🤖