Workshops
lentigogirl
Posts: 299 Member
What workshops have you taken? Which would you recommend?
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Last weekend I took a Samba/bellydance workshop -- my first fusion effort -- with S'adayya that was just terrific -- a complex choreography in 3 hours. She was very generous in taking and giving cues so that we can perform it at an upcoming show. It was a weekend residency; She also gave workshops on makeup, costuming, and flow that I heard were equally terrific.0
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I usually choose topics I'm interested in, although sometimes I just choose a workshop because a certain teacher is taking it and I know it will be good to do and useful in the long run. I'm a sucker for saidi workshops, I just love swinging a cane around, especially if it's got a particularly folkloric slant on it (the workshop, not the cane). I've enjoyed a bit of sha'abi and some bollywood fusion. I usually take a lot of workshops when I go to Gothla UK each year, although maybe this year I'll ease it off as I did too many last year. I really want to take some more trance workshops like zar or guedra, but it's a question of finding the teachers.0
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Oooh, where to start! I've only really started taking a lot of workshops in the past 2 years (... I've only been bellydancing for three, so that's probably why) but I've already had a lot of good ones! My top three:
1. Alexis Southall's drill/technique workshops are killer - I'm not a fusion dancer at all but I took away a lot of things about *how* to practice that have been super useful
2. Lorna of Cairo's modern Cairo style - SO hard, but I really love the modern Egyptian aesthetic and Lorna's a really engaging teacher
3. Razia Star's arms & hands workshop - occasionally torturously painful, but it was good to have such in-depth teaching on something that tends to get a bit neglected...
Last year at summer school, I got the chance to do a lot of different styles in a very short period of time - Bollywood (not fusion, just straight up Bollywood choreo), saiidi with stick, and shaabi were my favorites. I really wanted to take some of the workshops at Fantasia this year - the Persian bandari one looked awesome! (Also I'd really like to learn khaleeji at some point... but one thing at a time!)0 -
I had two choreography workshops just two weeks ago! Very different numbers! One was taught by Yasmina of Michigan, and it is a Tunisian number, including balancing a pot on your head!! The steps weren't hard, just different than what I'm used to, but it was a great workshop. Yasmina is an awesome teacher. We learned all about the costuming, too, and one of my troupes will be performing it at A World A'fair, a huge cultural festival in Ohio.
The other workshop was taught by the director of my other troupe. It was a number she learned from Cassandra Shore at Oasis Dance Camp. It's a classic, oriental/cab number. Very graceful and super cute.
I've also very much enjoyed workshops focusing on stage presence and presentation. Ariellah taught a particularly good one last year. I highly recommend her, though, as Miss Daisy will surely agree, you may not want to end with one of her workshops on a long day or weekend, as they can be super intense and fast-paced.
One of my troupes has focused a lot on folkloric numbers lately, so I've enjoyed workshops on Ghawazee, Hagallah, and classical Persian as well.
I think it's important to take a variety of workshops from different instructors. It makes for a well-rounded dancer. I've enjoyed most of the workshops I've attended, with the exception of a few.... I have to tell you, there was one workshop at an intensive weekend, where the woman made us dance to Kid Rock, and point our fingers like guns.... "Love guns" she called them... it was awful... You can't win 'em all!0 -
Oh yes, bad workshops are out there, too - the worst I've ever had the misfortune of attending promised "flamenco fusion". Now, I started dancing flamenco when I was 15, have taken years of classes and a couple of intensive workshops, and spent a year at a flamenco school in Granada. So I like to think I know a bit about it.
(The only reason I *don't* take flamenco anymore, and the reason I started bellydancing in the first place, is that the teacher where I live is... not that great, and also one class with her is something like £20/hour.)
Anyway, this workshop... I'm not sure that the women teaching it had ever taken a flamenco class. Or possibly ever seen a real flamenco dancer. Skirt-swishing in Turkish Roman style (which is not something flamenco dancers do more than a few times!), really strange "dramatic" poses that I've only seen in 1950s kitsch images of flamenco dancers, and random clapping and stomping that would make every single one of my teachers cry from how not-anywhere-near-the-beat it was. It was, in fact, the first (and only! in over a decade of dancing!) class I've ever just walked out of because it was so bad.0 -
I attended some excellent workshops over the weekend. I took classes with Dud Murmand from Denmark and Sabrina Hart from San Diego, and enjoyed both of them thoroughly.
Dud's class was looking at "dark gypsy fusion", and looked at how to use the skirt as an extension of your dance, not just as a prop. We learned some really cute skirt moves, and picked up some good tips on how to listen to the music to make it work for you.
Sabrina's classes were excellent. The first one was "seismic shimmies" and introduced me properly to straight leg shimmies, which I do find quite difficult as my default setting is hip shimmies. It was a ton of fun. The second was a gahwazee piece, and a lot of the moves were really big and "nasty" as Sabrina kept saying - not very lady like (because the gahwazee ladies were "entertainers of men" and that's how they made their money) and really shaking the boobs and the booty around a lot.
If you ever get a chance to take classes with either teacher - do!0
