Last Call for Registrations: "Precision Hipwork" on March 31

If you have not yet confirmed your spot, please pre-pay or RSVP before noon on Thursday 3/29.

Precision Hipwork is the first of a five-part workshop series, Oriental Dance Deconstructed. 

This week we'll examine leg-driven movements that give you the greatest degree of isolation in the lower body.  This is the vocabulary you need for balancing, for the greatest range of layering options, and for poised, elegant, "crystal-clean" hipwork for theatrical Oriental dance.  We will dissect:

• Side-to-Side Tilts, Double Side-to-Side Tilts, and Lifted-Heel Side-to-Side Tilts
• Walking and Turning with Side-to-Side Tilts
• Push and Pull Travel Steps for Side-to-Side Tilts
• Soft-knee Shimmy  (A useful counterpart to the straight-leg Egyptian shimmy, which we'll cover May 12.) 
• Unweighted Hip Drops, "n"s, "m"s, and Traveling "n"s.
• Basic Double Drop
• Two Types of Triplet ("3/4") Shimmy
• Upward-Tilting Small Hip Circle

I'll be presenting this material twice:  Foundations from 2:00-3:00 for continuing beginners, and a Master Class from 3:00-5:00 for more advanced students.   For this Saturday only, the cost is $18 for the Foundations hour, or $25 for the Master Class.  Pay in advance for all five workshops at a discounted rate of $75 (Foundations) or $125 (Master Classes).

For Your Next, uh, "Fusion" Dance

Here is a very unusual prop!  Via Laughing Squid.

What You Learned (or Missed) at Melissa's March 24 "Effortless Expression" Workshop

Not even your toughest questions stump Melissa V.

Thanks to Melissa Voodoo for an enlightening afternoon of somatically-informed dance inspiration at 440 Studios.  We started the workshop with matwork, moving through mobility and coordination sequences to connect to our shoulders, hips, and core, then melted away remaining blockages with an intensive session of self-care trigger-point myofascial release using pinkie balls.

Fluid, open, and energized, we moved on to a series of poetic visualization exercises, exploring a part of the "core" that's rarely discussed in dance class -- the internal organs.  While I routinely connect to the physical (and emotional) sensations of belly dance movements rippling through the general visceral area of the "belly," the idea of integrating awareness of specific organs was brand new to me.  Focusing on the liver, spleen, and reproductive organs, Melissa led a short passage of dance movement to massage these areas, then opened the floor to experimentation with the highly metaphoric idea of organ-initiated movement.  I loved the feeling of leading with my liver!  I was surprised, too, at the range and ease of movement I uncovered in my spine and abdomen.  I've never felt constricted in my waist (I am naturally flexible, and one of my early training challenges was actually to make my movements smaller), but I was amazed to see my undulations—which I've long considered to be "done," and as perfect as I can make them—become even more deeply articulated.

Intentionality, language, and the poetic aspect of belly dance have always informed my dancing and teaching, so I really appreciated Melissa's use of imagery and her more esoteric appreciation of movement and sensation.  Her teaching, however, was balanced by plenty of straight-up anatomy, so that even those dancers who aren't instinctively wired to "go deep" could use her techniques to unlock freer and more precise dance articulation.  I came away from the workshop feeling tall, tranquil, and excited about using and sharing Melissa's material.  Thank you Melissa V!

Natural Beauty

Two photo essays:

10 Incredibly Hot Women Who Are Larger Than A Size 12
(Glamour photos with tasteful nudity and lingerie--click through at your discretion).

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To find less cheesecakey images, click through the "link" link under each picture in the post.   Here are some pictures from the website of listee Natalie Laughlin.

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At the other end of the spectrum: Forever 21 Hates Women's Kneecaps
(Contains numerous images of women's kneecaps airbrushed away - click through at your discretion.)

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Actual Face of Actual 42 Year-Old Actress Appears on Magazine Cover

An unretouched photo of Cate Blanchett graces the cover of the current "Intelligent Life" magazine.

One wonders if the same decision would have been made for an actress without Cate's perfectly even skin and dramatic bone structure, but it's still refreshing to see a woman in her 40s be allowed to look like a woman in her 40s.

Nomads are Busting Out All Over!

Two current New York City exhibitions may be of interest to readers of this blog:

At the Flushing Town Hall through April 29 is "Interwoven Worlds: Exploring Domestic Nomadic Life in Turkey."

"Interwoven Worlds" highlights hand-made carpets and textiles for which the Turks are celebrated. Beautifully crafted pieces are presented within two recreated dwellings – a nomadic tent and an Ottoman-style home– to weave together the rich traditions of Turkic peoples across space and time. The textiles are complemented by ancient ceramics, glassware and metal-ware.

On the one hand, depending on where you live, it may be quite a slog out there, but on the other hand you can make it a complete fun day out with a visit to Xi'an Famous Foods or any of the other zillions of tasty Flushing restaurants.

In Manhattan, at NYU's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, is "Nomads and Networks, the Ancient Art and Culture of Kazakhstan," through June 3.

Nomads and Networks is the first U.S. exhibition to provide a comprehensive overview of the fascinating nomadic culture of the peoples of eastern Kazakhstan’s Altai and Tianshan regions from roughly the eighth to first centuries bce. With over 250 objects on loan from Kazakhstan’s four national museums, the exhibition provides a compelling portrait that challenges the traditional view of these nomadic societies as less developed than sedentary ones. Artifacts on view in the exhibition range from bronze openwork offering stands, superbly decorated with animal and human figures; to petroglyphs that marked important places in the landscape; to dazzling gold adornments that signaled the social status of those who wore them.

Read more about this exhibit from the New York Times.

I have no idea about Upper East Side restaurants, but I'm planning to combine my trip to the ISAW with a visit to the Central Park Conservatory Garden.  (East side of the park,  entrance at 105th St.)

The Fairy Tales of Franz Xaver von Schönwerth

Scenic Burg Falkenberg, Bavaria

Scenic Pilgrim’s Church of the Holy Trinity, Bavaria

Last year, a 19th-century collection of fairy tales collected in Bavaria's Upper Palatinate were uncovered in an archive in Regensburg, Germany, and a few were published (in German).  English translations are apparently underway, and a translation of one story appeared earlier this month in The Guardian.  Read "The Turnip Princess."

The Guardian reported that many of these stories were "rediscovered," but Harvard folklorist Maria Tatar amends this account in a recent post on New Yorker Magazine's "Book Bench" blog, reporting that the stories were not not so much lost but languishing.  Von Schönwerth is on the shelf at some American academic libraries, but many of the stories he collected are in manuscript form (untranslated from German), and, unlike those collected by his contemporaries, were not polished into smooth narratives.  Tatar writes for the New Yorker:

Schönwerth’s tales have a compositional fierceness and energy rarely seen in stories gathered by the Brothers Grimm or Charles Perrault, collectors who gave us relatively tame versions of “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Snow White,” “Cinderella,” and “Rapunzel.” Schönwerth gives us a harsher dose of reality than most collections. His Cinderella is a woodcutter’s daughter who uses golden slippers to recover her beloved from beyond the moon and the sun. His miller’s daughter wields an ax and uses it to disenchant a prince by chopping off the tail of a gigantic black cat. The stories remain untouched by literary sensibilities. No throat-clearing for Schönwerth, who begins in medias res, with “A princess was ill” or “A prince was lost in the woods,” rather than “Once upon a time…”

Read the full post.  Writing on her own blog, Maria Tatar promises "Next week, I’ll add my translation from one of the tales in Prinz Rosszwifl." I am looking forward to it!

In a tenuously-related but interesting parallel, when one googles "Bavarian Turnip," the top hit is an abstract from a journal article: "Notes on neglected and underutilized crops —The ‘Bavarian Turnip’ — a rediscovered local vegetable variety of Brassica rapa L. em. Metzg. var.rapa"

The 'Bavarian Turnip,' ('Bayerische Rübe,' Brassica rapa L. em. Metzg. var. rapa) is a nearly lost crop today. Until 1900, this local variety was commonly grown in Bavaria for human consumption. The special and very distinct characters of this variety in comparison with recent breeds are preferred by the farmers' families and assured the persistence and survival of this turnip in situ (on farm). In the region of Dachau and Freising, located north of Munich, only four farms are known, where this old crop is still grown and maintained. Urgent measures have to be taken to safe this cultural relict for future generations.

Scenic Horse in Scenic Turnip Field

Foxy!

Creative and foxy lips!

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More at andrussi.deviantart.com

What You Learned (or Missed) This Winter

This is a cameraphone clip of "Halcyon," (the choreography I taught as "Dryad Dance") earlier this year.  The music is "Keridwen and Gwion" from the German ensemble Faun.

Cute Anatomy

I am a sucker for cute.  Knowing that this propensity is not shared by all, I try not to push too much cute on the public at large, but hopefully these whimsical depictions of our internal workings can be appreciated by all.  Much much more at ilovedoodle.tumblr.com

Artistic Movement in Film

Two short films that interestingly portray bodies in motion.


Forms (Excerpt) from Nexus Productions on Vimeo.

(Athletics start at :34)

"Forms" (excerpted above) is currently on display at Bradford, England's National Media Museum:

Forms is a digital artwork that responds to the human body in motion. It focuses exclusively on the mechanics of movement, using footage of world-class athletes to illustrate human movement at the extremes of perfection.

Videos of athletes were processed through custom software to create evolving abstract forms that explore the relationships between the human body and its movements through time and space.

Divers (Short Animation) from Paris M. on Vimeo.

From DiversAnimation.com:

"Divers" is an experimental animation that was inspired by Busby Berkeley, mass gymnastics and experimental cinema from the 20s and 30s. I created it while pursuing my MFA in Digital Arts at Pratt Institute. As part of the project, I also developed a choreography-based animation toolset which I subsequently used during the animation process. 

Join NBBD's Meetup Group

If you'd like to hear about class offerings via Meetup.com, here's the link to join Natural Beauty Belly Dance's Meetup group:

http://www.meetup.com/NaturalBeautyBellyDanceNYC/

"Like" Natural Beauty Belly Dance

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http://www.facebook.com/pages/Natural-Beauty-Belly-Dance/301380243251361

Charming Dance from China

All I know about this dance is what Google's translator tells me:  "Sixth CCTV Dance Competition Awards "Small Town Rainy"



(Stating the obvious, but to avoid confusion: this is not belly dance.)

Fluid Fabric

What belly dancers call "veil dancing," was quaintly called "manipulation of draperies" by turn-of-the-century modern dancers.   Here's a lovely use of fabric in contemporary modern dance.

Mastering the Shimmy: an Unusual Source of Inspiration

Teaching the bent-knee shimmy in last Thursday's class, I was trying to explain the relaxed loose flop of the movement's reverberation.  Searching for parallels, I suggested, "you know, like those funny internet pictures of running basset hounds," but was met with blank stares.  While not exactly the type of inspirational images I had hoped to be sharing on this blog, I promised to post pictures, so, here they are:

 A palette cleanser:

Photograph by Mirka Adamsky Rackova, via NationalGeographic.com

Olé!