Raqs Nerd: what's your dance built on? - more notes from the studio

Last week I wrote to you about the pelvic anatomy that's been on my mind during my daily dance practice recently...

And this week I am back with more thoughts inspired by my daily practice ritual (imagine me with a little butterfly net, trying to catch the thoughts that wander through my head while I dance, so that I can write them down for you!)

For most of this year, my personal practice has been very focused on "classic" sha'abi dance of the 1970s-1980s - and its close cousin, baladi improvisation...

And in the previous year before that, I spent a lot of time studying the dances of the awalim and ghawazee, Egypt's traditional professional dancers - which are also very closely related to baladi and sha'abi styles (this culminated in taking my awalim-inspired Raqs Shamadan act to events around the UK!)

So that's close to two years of being in a big baladi/sha'abi rabbit hole in my practice!

Now, of course that's not the only thing I've been practicing in this time - I have to be a well-balanced performer for my classes and shows! But it has been my personal project, whenever I have time put aside to work on things for my own satisfaction.

Whenever I have had time to just enjoy my own dance, I've been putting on either sha'abi music (OK, mostly Ahmed Adaweya, but with honourable mentions to Abdelbaset Hamouda and Hassan al-Asmar), or traditional instrumental baladi music (my favourite thing recently has been this 1983 album recorded by Khamis Henkesh)

And the movements I've been exploring in my practice have been deeply inspired by all the time I've spent studying the dance of the awalim, as well as by Egyptian raqs sharqi dancers of the late 20th century, whose dancing was more rooted in baladi, and less influenced by theatrical folklore dance, than most of today's big-name Egyptian performers.

Now, this might SEEM as if I've gone off on a tangent - like I've been immersing myself in one niche, and ignoring everything else

But for me, it has all been an exercise in strengthening my foundations.

Because these aspects of Egyptian dance I've been deliberately marinating myself in, are the ones everything else grew from. They are the roots of the "belly dance" tree, the performance styles that are most intimately related to ordinary people's folk and social dances.

And after this long project of dancing mainly baladi, whenever I come back to the styles that have grown and branched out of it - whether that's "classical raqs sharqi", or mahraganat - I really feel the difference my baladi immersion has made. In feeling, in groundedness, in core connection, and in musicality. I feel that the core of my dance is stronger and more alive now, and then the details and genre-specific styling can easily flow from it, guided by the music.

And I've come to think that a lot of the time in the bellydance world, we get this backwards. Most of the time, the more glamorous, stage-oriented, creatively-hybridised, version of raqs sharqi gets treated as the default version of "bellydance" because it is the most visible in professional settings - and then baladi and sha'abi dance is just seen as a little sub-style within that, a kind of afterthought. Something you get to by adding "styling" to your "default bellydance" technique...

But in my view, it serves us much better to see baladi as the default version.

As the dance that gives us the strongest, most rooted, and most versatile foundation - as the great river that other "bellydance" styles flow from.

Not just in technique, where the deeply embodied, core-driven movements of baladi styles form the basis of all the hipwork that is the very essence of raqs sharqi in all its diverse forms...

But also in musicality, in how we learn to navigate rhythmic shifts, traditional phrasing patterns, improvisational playing, interplay between instruments, changes in mood and emotion, and more, with ease - it teaches us to hear, and to play freely with, all of the core elements of Egyptian music for bellydance - from timeless classic songs, to taqasim, to drum solos, to modern pop songs, and even mahraganat...!

So studying baladi, in my view, is always valuable - for what it will bring to your whole artistic and musical expression, across all of your dancing.

And this is why I am offering a six-week course on Egyptian Ashra Baladi this September-October!

It's something I strongly feel every dancer benefits from spending quality time with - and it's also a topic I feel I have something specific to contribute, based on my own deep study, and the opportunities I'm blessed to have had over the years to learn directly from Egyptian teachers and from traditional baladi musicians.

​Join us here :)

With Love,

PS - there are now just 9 places remaining for the Raqs Roots Intensive: Ishas el-Musiqa with Nisaa and Reda Henkesh! And our early bird offer (with interest-free payment plan option) is available only until the end of this month - find the full event information here​

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 🚫🤖

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