Raqs Nerd: oral tradition 💬 and why our moves don't always have names

Every so often, I have this conversation in my beginners' classes:

Me: "Does anybody have questions about what we've just done?"

Dancer: "Yes! What is the name of that move we just did?"

Me: "Well, actually it's complicated..." (explanation ensues, whilst my students wonder what can of worms they've accidentally opened...)

WHY is it so complicated?

In short, because the movement of raqs sharqi isn't codified, within its original cutural settings. It never has been. It isn't, and never has been, a dance that's taught in a top-down formal system like ballet, with a set repertoire of named and categorised movements and steps that everybody learns and recognises.

Instead, it is part of an oral tradition - a tradition that is passed down through the generations organically. Where dancers develop through imitating and learning from older dancers, from friends, from family (and more recently also from films and TV)... The traditional teaching and learning method is to watch and feel and follow along, not to break down and name and categorise. And there's no central authority, no top-down control. Just people, dancing, and sharing their dance.

This means for most of the history of this dance, nothing was standardised - not the movements, and not their names either.

(and for an interesting non-dance illustration of how wildly names for the exact same thing can differ in oral traditions, even over quite a small geographic area, check out this map of traditional names for woodlice in England and Wales...)

Everything in this dance is filled with individual variation and personality, and with variation depending on who you learned from, and where you learned, and when, as well as your own body and your own preferences...

But here in the West, many people expect that a dance form should be codified - that the moves should have universally-recognised names, and there should be a "correct" way of doing each move, and that one dancer should be able to perfectly replicate another dancer's choreography.

In this kind of worldview, the lack of one "correct" way, the lack of one recognised name, becomes a problem to be solved - with categorising and naming and standardising the moves often tied up with efforts to "elevate" the dance and make it more "respectable".

But, we can actively choose to see the absence of codification in another way too: to take a phrase from my old life in the software industry, as a feature, not a bug

Over the years, I have come to see the unruly variability, the individual quirks, the subtle complexity that cannot be compressed down into a set of codified and perfectly-replicable shapes, as one of the most beautiful things about this art

Where does this leave me as a teacher?

Obviously it's hard to teach raqs sharqi in a Western class setting without ever naming anything at all!

But what I do aim for, is not to impose arbitrary names onto the movements, that aren't recognised within the culture - and, not to name in a way that might become rigid or prescriptive.

Therefore my own preference is for...

• Arabic names and terms that are widely used and recognised by Egyptian dancers and teachers, where such terms exist (for example "hagallah", "batta") - with an explanation of what the name means and what it refers to
• Simple, descriptive terms that reference the shape and direction of the movement (for example "hip lift", "tilting chest circle")
• Names that reference source dancers - with a discussion of who they are named in honour of, and why (for example "Soheir Zaki step")
• And to be honest... Onomatopoeic sound effects 🎵 to connect movement with music

I also personally tend to use terms quite fluidly, to describe what we're doing within the context of any given class, rather than having any particular desire to give every step and movement a single, unchanging name - reflecting the rather organic and fluid nature of the movements themselves...

And where does this leave ALL of us, as lifelong dance learners?

I think for many of us, seeing the dance as it is rather than as we think it should be, means letting go of a certain level of control - which might sometimes feel somewhat uncomfortable, vulnerable, or overwhelming.

We may want to be able to categorise everything analytically, and to make lists, and to methodically name and number everything. But eventually if we keep going long enough, we reach a point where we have to face up to the reality that the dance is bigger than that.

And, that it was never meant to be learned in that way, or to exist in that way.

At a basic level, yes, we can distil it down to movement families, and foundational shapes (circle, figure of 8, twist, slide, and so on). But those are just ways in. Jumping-off points. A carefully chosen set of simple lines and curves that prepare the body and mind for the infinite variation of three-dimensional curves and waves and spirals that exist out there in the real dance, in real life.

This is really a dance that lives in the body, in the full complexity of human movement, not in abstract description and names and lists - and it travels between bodies through watching, mirroring, feeling; through feeling together.

And ultimately, this is a long and fancy way for me to say to my students - I am a little sorry that I have to make this complicated instead of just giving you a quick easy answer... But I do have my reasons 😉

With Love,

PS - All of my September classes are now open for booking! Including my ONLINE course on Egyptian Ashra Baladi technique, cultural context, and musicality... and, in-person classes in Manchester UK, from beginner to intermediate level.

​Find out more here, and get 10% off any course with the code AUTUMNEARLYBIRD if you book before the end of July 😊

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 🚫🤖