The Secret to Learning to Dance a Style Accurately

If you want to dance a specific style accurately, learn the culture.

Dancing a particular style isn't entirely about where your choice of steps comes from, nor is it entirely in the music. (Although, the music is a major influence in producing a style with your body.)

The real key lies in being able to learn and empathize with the lives of the people performing the dance in the culture where it came from.

The reality of that culture... and not what you would like it to be in your fantasies or what you would like to be yourself... but in reality...

Are dancers in that culture accepted? Are they shamed? Is the dance performed for tourists for money? Which tourists? For celebrations? For a reason? For money from men? For parties with their friends? For self-expression?

Why are they dancing, and how do they feel about it?

Everything within a culture influences how a person moves and what movements they choose. It also influences what movements they do not choose, and how they interact with their audience.

To successfully perform a style well, you need to be able to understand and reproduce or act the underlying situations of the performers.

So yeah.... you need to know the real situations of the people in a country to understand why an artist performs a movement with a reserve or a sense of brashness... and that both types of movement may come from the same country but not belong on the same dancer in one dance.

It just doesn't work to think all people living in one culture full of biases respond the same way. But if you can understand the culture and understand how it affects its people, then you will be much closer to reproducing that culture's dance style accurately.

Whew.

Please do think about this one (if you don't already). It is very important... and your mileage won't vary if your goal is accurately presenting a certain dance style. However, if your goal is belly dancing modified in the style of your own country, you are already doing that automatically.

• How to Get the Most Out of Practice Time. By Saqra. Tips for organizing practice time for best results.
• Belly Dance Commentary: Flash vs Soul. Saqra offers thoughts on different performance styles - high-energy as opposed to lyrica

• Preparing Performance Music. By Saqra. Tips for editing music for performances.

Saqra (Seattle, Washington, USA) is a powerful dance artist and a master instructor. Her fluidity, grace, and technical skill is highlighted by her friendly demeanor and clear joy of the dance. She did not inherit the diva gene.

Saqra won titles in Belly Dance USA (Oregon), Belly Dancer of the Year (California), Belly Dancer of the Universe (California), Wiggles of the West (Nevada), and many other competitions. She was voted "Best Kept Secret of 2005" and "Instructor of the Year 2008" by readers of Zaghareet Magazine.

Saqra's journey in this dance form began in 1977 and has led her to study with many of the best dancers in the world, including in America, Canada, Turkey and Egypt. Saqra continues to travel and study both in the USA and abroad and prides herself on proper research for anything she teaches. Folklore, fakelore, and stage creativity: all three are valuable, and Saqra clearly presents for each what they actually are. Saqra is constantly expanding her expertise in the traditional ethnic forms of the dance, the modern stage variants, and the continuing evolving fusion techniques, all these areas combined keep her material fresh and current.

Saqra is widely known as an event promoter, musician, music and instructional video producer, and a registered hypnotherapist in the state of Washington. That is enough stuff to start explaining what she has been doing in belly dance since 1977. Visit her at www.saqra.net

PHOTO CREDIT: Photo by Michael Baxter, Santa Clara, California. In the photo, Saqra is holding her Teacher of the Year 2008 Award from Zaghareet Magazine.