American Hero, Roy A. Cui

In the embedded video, career image retoucher Roy A. Cui explains the moral imperative behind his decision to endanger his livelihood, and no longer accept jobs digitally altering images of female bodies in advertising and entertainment. Roy is a softspoken guy, and this is a relatively long video: if your head is in quick-clicking instant-gratification web browsing mode right now, come back and watch the video later when you have 9 minutes to dedicate to listening to this courageous and inspiring story.


 

(Or, if you're REALLY impatient, here's a transcript you can read: http://royacui.com/2012/06/28/i-dont-know-what-happens-next/).

Commentary: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jennifer-danielle-crumpton/authenticity_b_1641905.html

More info on the film that inspired this decision: http://www.missrepresentation.org/

Thank you Roy!

"Fusion" Costuming?

Not belly dance.  Not for ladies.  But definitely worth checking out for anyone who is interested in costume.  New menswear from designer Marcos Paulo Piccoli:

Article and many more pictures at:  http://www.thecreatorsproject.com/blog/marcos-paulo-piccoli-is-pushing-menswear-to-new-geometric-limits.

"Vagina (The Dance!)," posted in Honor of Lisa Brown

I'm more than a few news cycles behind on getting this posted here, but, as a result of reading about the controversy surrounding Michigan State Representative Lisa Brown's use of the word "vagina," I came across a lovely piece of dance from Boston's Snappy Dance Theater.  Delicate souls, rest easy: there is no nudity in the video.

Embedding is Disabled:  Click on this video still to open YouTube in a new window.

For those as behind on the news as I am, or who are reading this post in the future, read up on the backstory here:  www.cnn.com/2012/06/21/opinion/brown-kicked-out-for-saying-vagina/index.html.

Authentic Egyptian Dancing

I like the dancing in this video, but what I really like is the way it contradicts everything we "know" about Egyptian Oriental dance. (In fairness, that's because it's not really an Oriental piece. It would be most appropriate to call this an early theatrical, fusion, or nontraditional dance. But I doubt anyone would question the credibility, authenticity, legitimacy, or “Egyptianness” of the dancer, Egyptian great Naima Akef.) If you are impatient, dancing begins at 1:32.




 
So many "mistakes!"...

1:32 “Real” belly dance costumes would never have just shalwar. They are underwear! See-through “Harem pants” costumes are just a silly idea that came from I Dream of Jeannie. 

1:35 Egyptian dancers don't really do anything with their arms except frame their hips, flow through simple pathways (lift up to overhead, push down, repeat..), or maybe some shoulder rolls. They don't use arm movements to mark melodic passages.

1:42 Egyptian dancers don't play finger cymbals. [Okay, a lot of us know that in the old days they did. But this seems to be often forgotten...]

1:46 Egyptian dancers don't run around and use a lot of travel steps. They just stay in one spot and dance with torso isolations.

1:51 Fast turns aren't part of Egyptian vocabulary. Those are only for dancers doing Turkish or Turkic styles.

1:58 There is no use of turnout in Egyptian dance.

2:17 Egyptians consider floorwork to be vulgar. There is no floorwork in Egyptian dance.

2:26 Why do you Americans insist on doing gymnastics in belly dance? Egyptians dancers never use athletic, over-the-top, show-off moves. Egyptian dance is all about subtlety.

3:03 Tight choreography wasn't used by classic dancers.

3:34 There's no use of chainé turns in Egyptian dance. Well, okay, maybe there are some, but only because of Reda influence. But there certainly weren't any pre-Reda.

3:49 Here are more of those travel steps Egyptian dancers never use. They're really more representative of American Vintage vocabulary, adapted from Turkish style.

4:05 Hitting every nuance of the music is “trying too hard.” That's what American dancers do. Not Egyptians.

5:03 Egyptian dancers never mark accents with footwork.

5:35 Travel? Chainé turns? Hops!? Haven't you been paying attention? Absolutely not!

5:52 It's only correct to mark rhythm with hip or shoulder movements.

6:08 No one wants to see you do a lot of footwork. Kicks are okay for Turkish dancers, but if you do them in Egyptian dance every one will think you are too American or just plain unladylike.

6:35 Egyptian dance should always be very relaxed. Very grounded.

6:48 Don't put a barrel turn in your Egyptian dance! Especially don't use a series of fast barrel turns. They're not Egyptian at all and everyone will think you don't know what you're doing!

7:04 A Middle-Eastern audience is totally not going to get your wacky “fusion” dance that you just made up without paying attention to the correct way things are supposed to be done. Maybe random Americans will think that's okay, but you need to be more conservative if you want to be taken seriously by discriminating educated audiences.

I encourage new dancers to learn about the conventions that define traditional styles of belly dance, and obviously it's totally possible to create beautiful, complete, artistic dances within accepted conventions, so there's no reason to flout rules just for the sake of flouting them. But I also think authenticity and adherence to stylistic conventions aren't measures of artistic merit. (Honestly, it's MUCH harder to create a successful dance when you aren't constrained by the conventions of a traditional style.) So my point is: if you like dances created by “rules,” and want to dance within them, do it! You're likely to create a good performance piece. If you don't want to follow “rules,” don't! It will be harder to create a beautiful dance, but, as this video shows, it can be done. And, hopefully, this unimpeachable Egyptian dancer's having done it makes you feel that you have permission to do it too.


Thank you to Baltimore dancer Shems who uploaded this video to YouTube.

News Roundup: Brains, Noses, and Thai Food

In an interview, provocatively titled "The Wondrous World of Three Pounds of Meat" (in reference to the brain), author Jonah Lehrer discusses Imagine, his new book about the roots of creativity.  Highlight:

When it comes to creative problems, if you've got a feeling of knowing then you should keep on paying attention. You should drink that triple espresso, you should chain yourself to the desk. But in any creative process, at some point you hit a wall—you get stuck. At that point, you should go and take a long walk, let yourself daydream. Then a fresh insight is more likely to occur to you. You might even want to have a beer. A study came out showing that undergraduates who were too drunk to drive solved 30% more creative puzzles than those who were sober.

Link to story.

Elsewhere, the Daily Mail reports that nose jobs are on the decline among young Jewish women.  I'm happy for anyone who has a nose they feel good about, whether it's the nose they were born with or a nose they purchased from a surgeon, but I think this is a good sign that more people are accepting a wider definition of beauty.  The Mail suggests:

Today's stars and taste-makers are ethnically diverse and women are encouraged to value the features that make them stand out from the pack.

Finally, the New York Times reports on non-native chefs of ethnic cuisine.  While completely non-dance related, there are still some parallels to the experiences of native and non-native ethnic dancers that may be of interest to readers. 

Distance may allow a chef to explore traditions without the baggage of having to follow Mom’s recipes to the letter, even if the goal is to stay true to the original dishes. “My greatest gift is that I don’t have a Mexican grandmother,” Mr. Bayless said, “so I can look at all Mexican grandmothers as equal. If you grew up with this food, you’ll defend to the death the way your family makes a dish. So sometimes, with lots of experience, you can speak with a bit of a broader perspective.

Full Article:  Cuisines Mastered as Acquired Tastes.

Written from a different perspective, the author of the NYT piece (Francis Lam) follows up in a discussion with a Chinese-American colleague, offering equal, uh, "food for thought."

Francis: Well…would you prefer Stupak to say: "I'm doing food that's not really Mexican, it's a mashup of that and what's in my own head"?

Eddie: This is totally unfair of me to tell someone what to say. But, you asked me a question and I’ll answer it. If I could write his press release, I'd say, “I'm making modern New American food that borrows ingredients and techniques from a Mexican pantry.” Or, make fun of it like Danny Bowien [of Mission Chinese Food] does and basically say, “I love Chinese food. I don't know what I'm doing, but I respect this, that and the other Szechuan restaurant. Please don't consider me a master, I'm just a dude with a tea pot full of dirty girl drinks.” Danny Bowien is a guy who NAILS it in terms of messaging. He does funky hybrid party Chinese food that I think we're all honored to be the inspiration for. Danny hit me on twitter today wanting to put my Hainan Lobster Rice on the menu, do it! I love that people like Danny and Kareem Abdul Jabbar are interested in our culture in an inquisitive and honest way. I think Stupak is the same. His wife is Mexican and there’s a genuine passion, plus who am I to judge. I’m just saying, we need accurate messaging because it’s offensive to the diaspora. The culture needs to consider the villagers.

Link: Is it Fair for Chefs to Cook Other Cultures’ Foods?  Two immigrant sons hash out what it’s like to have your food shunned and celebrated in America by Francis Lam and Eddie Huang

Joyful Practice

This inspirational post gives excellent advice on overcoming discouraging inner thoughts. While written from the perspective of a musician, the author's ideas can easily be applied to dance.

Over the years there has been something within myself that has been detrimental and negative to my playing music- the persistent feeling that I am not playing as well as others, and even worse that I’m not playing as well as I think I should be playing. These thoughts never fail to make me feel unhappy and inadequate. So why do I keep allowing myself to think this way if it only makes me unhappy?

The answer is that such thoughts become a habit. Habits, even negative habits, are within our comfort zone. It is comfortable to fall into habitual thinking because new thinking means going out on a limb and being uncertain and vulnerable.

Full post here.

Veil Dance

Kinetic Sculpture from David Wurtzel

Creativity in a "Post-Authentic" World

More inspiration from unlikely places...  The Daily News and Bruce Springsteen.  While obviously a discussion of music, readers of this blog and creators of nontraditional belly dance are likely to appreciate to the articles' observations about genre, creativity, self-expression, and creative constraints.

“We live in a post-authentic world,” Bruce announced to the young musical hopefuls. “The elements of what you’re using don’t matter. Purity of human experience and expression is not confined to guitars, to tubes, to turntables, to microchips. There is no right way, no pure way of doing. There is just doing.” 

[...]

Pronouncements like Bruce’s would seem eye-rollingly obvious to all those who’ve long felt there’s equal artistic expression in (still) often maligned art forms like rap, electronic music, teen pop or whatever unnameable new style arises to assault the conventions of song form and rhythm.

But for an old-school, hard-line rocker like Bruce to challenge musical divisions and hierarchies at this point says something key about where we are now and, perhaps, about where we might be heading.

Why Authenticity Is Hard; Why It's Essential

From the blogs at Forbes Magazine online:

Authenticity is hard because other people may seize on our weaknesses as proof of our unworthiness, rather than our humanity.

Authenticity is hard because we think what makes us human is our uniqueness, but it’s really our commonalities.

Authenticity is hard because we can lose track of our essence in daily compromises, accommodations, and dealings.

 Full post.

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!

source

More at andrussi.deviantart.com

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

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.

Natural Beauty

The everyday beauty of the woman pictured below is debatable (her slender build, even skin, and dazzling teeth are exceptional), and, while unprocessed hair and non-white skin are "natural" buzzwords, the obvious thought and effort and the fantasy inspiration that shape this look are the opposite of how "natural" is usually used in the cosmetics industry.  But, I think this photo exemplifies natural beauty:  her radiance comes neither from "flawless" nor "natural" features but from her smile and the individuality of her look.  The amazing hair and makeup in this shot seem custom-made to celebrate the woman showing them.  Bravo!

Photo via Going-Natural.com

Click through to Going-Natural.com, a site full of inspiration and resources for "Going Natural: How to Fall in Love with Nappy Hair."

Human Canvases

From the Daily Mail:

Flamingo by Gesine Marwedel, Via the Daily Mail

The photo essay from which this image was taken features several other artistically painted bodies.  The painted bodies are (tastefully) nude, so click through at your discretion.

From Thursday Night's Class

"If you take my joy away from me, you destroy the beauty of yourself."

The Human Element

Dave Grohl's grammy acceptance: 

To me this award means a lot because it shows that the human element of making music is what's most important.  Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument and learning to do your craft, that's the most important thing for people to do.  It's not about being perfect, it's not about sounding absolutely correct, it's not about what goes on in a computer.  It's about what goes on in here [heart] and it's about what goes on in here [intellect].

Photo via Buzzfeed

Magic Moments

From the "Emotional Sobriety" blog at the website of Psychology Today magazine: 

Can you remember a distinct, personal and private moment from your past? One where you felt connected to yourself, your purpose, or your essential nature? [...] I encourage you to remember those moments in your life, to be on the lookout for them now, and know that there is magic contained in those spiritual spaces in time where the unique individual that you are is vibrating at a perfect pitch.

Read the full post.

Evading Regret

In an article on February 1, the Guardian reported on a group of common regrets frequently shared by those at the end of life, as recorded by Bronnie Ware,an Australian nurse who spent several years working in palliative care.

From the article:

She recorded their dying epiphanies in a blog called Inspiration and Chai, which gathered so much attention that she put her observations into a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying.

1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

2. I wish I hadn't worked so hard.

3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

Read the full article here.