​​Quintessentially British Dance by Tatiana Woolley

 

 

Nottingham Dance Collective (NDC) is proudly hosting the first performance of ‘Quintessentially British Bellydance’. It is directed by Siouxsie Cooper, BEDA, in conjunction with local belly dance artists, Janet Rose, Director of Bellydance World, Clair McGregor, co-organiser of Shisha Lounge, Pauline Qu, co-director of British Tribal Style (BTS), and myself, Director of ABC Dance School.

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After a year of hard work, consisting of long hours of research, observation, practice and written assignments, the show will have its first performance at the NDC Black and Gold Christmas Hafla, on the 13 December, in Nottingham.

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Janet Rose and myself, co-directors of NDC, are very excited about this project and when I asked Janet for her thoughts, she said: “I’m delighted that NDC is showcasing Quintessentially British Bellydance. NDC is about challenge, exploration, passion, with a view to developing dance to a wider audience.”

 

Siouxsie Cooper, explains the show: “Quintessentially British Belly Dance is a fun and an intelligent declaration and display of British Belly Dance past and present traditions. Many people do not realise that Belly Dance has been in the UK for over half a century in various forms. This show reveals that unique contribution by past dancers and the new future directions artists are taking.”

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Taking part in this project has brought a lot of ups and downs in our identities as dancers and performers. I started to questioned where I wanted to be as a (belly) dancer and a dance teacher and which part of me was the most integral to my work which could be developed and left behind as my legacy (which hopefully will be in a long time to come yet!). The experience has also had a significant impact on the other participants.

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Pauline said: “Being part of Quintessentially British Bellydance has helped me to find my integrity as a dancer. Learning the performance and choreographic techniques has challenged me and turned my comfort blanket totally inside out. It has also instilled in me a deep respect for those dancers who have developed the British bellydance scene.”

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Clair added: “Quintessentially British Bellydance has made me consider my own dance influences and where they may originate from. This course has been the most amazing dance journey for me. I have been dancing for 13 years and have not had a regular dance teacher for a few years now. The benefit of having critique, mentoring and guidance from Siouxsie has been invaluable.”

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The feelings of many in the group were expressed by Janet, who said: “Joining this group has ignited my dance fire, I had reached a plateau and was considering giving up. I was attending workshops but this was not enough for me, I needed to have a regular teacher, some consistency, someone to challenge me and kick my butt. I found this in Siouxsie but does she kick hard, just what I needed.”

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As for me, I’m glad I’m ‘getting my mojo back’. This has definitely made me open my eyes to the wider possibilities of performances and has helped me reaffirm my passion for creativity. I never liked to fit in a box, so I am glad to know that my skills in other dances like contemporary and Latin dances can be used and experimented in my passion for bellydance. It brought back all the excitement I had lost through by the worry about staying true to the ‘Egyptian’ style.

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We were all approached to do the BEDA course because we were all looking for more and a bit lost in our direction. We needed someone highly capable in the field, with a solid background in the dance, and not afraid to give out constructive criticism, which has possibly been one of the most useful parts of this course. Receiving honest and sometimes not what you want to hear but what you need to hear was hard, but has made all of us grow as performers. “By only attending workshops I never got in-depth training in any of these areas and now realise that I was in a dance rut,” Clair said.

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Explaining the course, Siouxsie said: “Each artist on the BEDA course has brought different interests, dance talents and possible new directions into their work. During the course, specific areas of development in each dancer's repertoire revealed itself. As their tutor I decided on past British Bellydance traditions to anchor each student's practice in the specific challenges these old traditions presented. The dance style stretches their definition of themselves and improves areas of performance that require attention.

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“For Pauline the need to build drama and gravitas in performance is an important quality she seeks and can cultivate with her choices. Similarly, Janet's interest in upper Egyptian dance and the uniquely soloist baladi dance with its emphasis on improvisation assists her search for more soulfulness and technical improvement. Contrasting Clair's Sha'abi dance abilities with the Classical Sharqi repertoire presents completely different and challenging technique and performance to deepen her practice and expand her repertoire. And Tati's contemporary dance abilities are applicable to the Hilal folkloric style alongside the emotional display that can be injected into a Meleya Lef joyful dance.”

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We have all been challenged and have reached the ‘point of no return’ where we know too much to go back to our old ways. Pauline commented that: “The biggest challenges were to discover where I sit in that scene. Working through this course has made me strip away everything that I thought was my dance identity in order to rebuild using techniques both familiar and totally unfamiliar. This has been downright scary but also really exciting. As we approach the end of this year of study I feel like a totally different dancer, more creative, more informed and more rounded. I also am aware that I knew much less than I thought I knew and that I have a long way to go before I know as much as I thought I did,” Pauline said.

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Janet says: “I know that my reputation is that I dance to pop songs, I am seen as a funky dancer. There is more to my dance then that but doing this course has allowed to explore these elements and put them into execution. The Christmas party will be a rites of passage for us.”

Clair adds: “The course makes you evaluate your whole dance persona, and in so doing you lay yourself almost bare, which is very uncertain territory… Siouxsie did warn us that we would feel like this, it is only now that stuff is falling into place and my confidence in dancing in new/innovative ways is emerging.”

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For me what has been of most value was the group work and how we grew to learn to be very honest and not afraid to help each other improve in our performances. We get together regularly and we practice and feedback. And this is amazing! We are all completely different dancers in our own right, with distinctive backgrounds and interests.

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“Having Tati, Pauline and Clair in the group has been extraordinary; the support and encouragement I have had and the challenges we have gone through together and separately have bonded us at a deep level,” Janet says.

 

Clair adds: “Just having a small group of dancers on the course was brilliant as we developed a strong support network which has been fantastic.”

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Pauline finishes: “All of us have changed dramatically and I really hope that we can go on to do other projects together. It's been a proper journey together!”

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So there you are, if you are not at the NDC hafla on the 14 December in Nottingham, then you will never know what we are talking about. You have to witness this to see how far we have come. Join us!