Ok, I think I was the second person to pay up and reserve my Suhaila Workshops in Brighton this year. A friend e-mailed me at work the day tickets went on sale, and since I had no internet at my house, after work I literally ran home, picked up my debit card, came all the way back to work and paid for it.
We almost have a Suhaila war chant in my house, the boys have listened to me rabbiting on about her so much. I hope I am expressing to you how excited I was about training with Suhaila. Let's give you a blow by blow of the workshops. Three days. Day one was Jamila Salimpour format, in which we learnt Jamila's original moves used in her Bal Anat troupe (Jamila being the mother of tribal, and of course of ATS) and spent five hours zilling (after so long thinking that I can't zill as it destroys my wrists, I was taught safe zill practice and managed to zill, very inexpertly, for five hours) and dammit I am bringing the Zills back to ATS in Cambridge. And I need to get some big noisy sexy ones as well. Day 2 was Suhaila level 1 format. I could handle the warm up ok, which was a good start. Then came the maths, oh my. Suhaila's mission was to package bellydance into an intense training system equal to other dance forms, like Ballet and Jazz. Part of this was creating a terminology for moves, timing, and instead of saying "mya while walking" it would be "walking half time downbeat on the right with vertical eights up to down full time." My brain does not process anything vaguely related to maths, so this was super challenging to me. I had my Face Of Trouble on and my Concentration Tounge out through that lecture. Day three, Suhaila level two, with LAYERING. My brain, my brain, my brain. I think all of us were concentrating so hard that if we tried to pay attention to anything other than counting and where the downbeat was we would have exploded. These workshops really made me realise that I have SO FAR TO GO to be the dancer I want to be. All we did were drills, drills on different foot patterns, drills layering other drills on top of drills, drills changing tempo. There was no dancing, no opportunity for me to hide my slim technical knowledge with all the pizazzy bits or to judge who was the dancer I'd like to see perform most. And my god were we sweating. And I LOVED IT. I'd like to live in Suhaila's STUDIO CUPBOARD I loved it so much. In addition to five hours of drilling and learning dance stuff every day, Suhaila did a LOT of talking, about how her Mum became a dance teacher, about how she came up with the format, about the history of the dance in America, what is safe dance practice - she's got a brain full of stuff. Chockablock. Did I say chockablock? I meant chockamockablock. I was horribly worried that I wouldn't be able to do anything in these workshops, as an old knee injury had popped up again a week and a half before Suhaila time, and I was freaking out a bit, cos I know I'd give it my all in workshop then be a hobbly cripple afterwards. Suhaila asked if we had any injuries, and I said my knee and explained what it was, and she told me I needed to ROLL IT OUT and asked someone to bring in a roller on day 2. When we were doing warm up, Suhaila came up to me and dug her fingers into my thigh, from mid thigh to practically my groin, and dude it HURT. Maybe stabbed her fingers would be better. But, after that, honestly, the pain in my leg, which had been so crap that previous week that I couldn't even lead my dance class or sit down for long periods of time, was 98% gone. For real. I shall say that again - gone, for real. She got me on a roller the next day, and even though it was blasphemously painful, I bought one when I got home for future fixing and regular painful use. I'm gonna get my boys on it too. Suhaila was incredible - anyone who has read my blog before will know that I am a leeeetle bit gay for her, but know my god do I know why. I love how her system is structured, the emphasis on muscle control and safety and conditioning so we have strong dancers bodies. I loved the drills, I loved the music, I loved how much she knew, I loved holding her ass while she did her butt vibration shimmy and I loved how much I couldn't do it. Aggggghhh Suhaila! If anyone else wants to bring her to the UK, I have money here for you. If not, well, it'll be Belgium next year for Level One and America in 2013 for future progress!!!!
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Woah mama. We all knew these ladies were amazing, but combine partner choreographies, lead switching and JAZZ MUSIC and baby, I'm yours. Check out how FABULOUS this video is. Once upon a time, I was solely a caberet dancer. I got Ariellah's DVD as it looked like it covered a lot of stuff, and it had yoga in it as well. Then I saw a video of Rachel Brice. I think there must be a whole sisterhood of dancers who are where they are today because they saw Rachel Brice.
I went to Majma for the first time just over three years ago, knowing nothing much about fusion or ATS or anything. I'd done bellydance classes for years, but I hadn't come out of the regular bellydance bubble. I did workshops with Isadora Bushkovski and Anne White and saw Carolena Nericcio dance and I thought - hot damn, this is what I want to do, I want to be a belly dancer. I came back home, did my fusion research as that's what I liked best, and learnt that tribal fusion dancers draw heavily from ATS. So I looked around for an ATS teacher and found Nicola Atkin, and I started Saturday lessons with her. I loved it. I loved the dance, the movements, the lead and follow, alls of it. I really loved most of all the fact that it was a dance class where you had to interact with other students. I would meet all kinds of lovely peeps from completely different spheres of life to my fresh out of university unemployed universe, and I would dance with them and laugh with them and get to know them better. In Nicola's classes, we would get introduced to dancing together and cuing right away, learning moves both from Nicola's teaching and from each other. I think it was awesome, as since everyone had to lead and follow at some point right from the off, we all go more comfortable leading, an since whenever we were at the front we had the support of all the lovely people we'd all gotten to know so well in class, it wasn't scary. Well, it was when your mind went blank and you could only remember the Arabic. Otherwise, it was fine. Nine months later, I ran out of money (pesky post graduate unemployment) and decided I could no longer afford to go to dance class. You know it was dire when that's the action. When I got a job, I couldn't make the classes. By the time I got a better job, Nicola had stopped teaching. Sad face. But dude, we missed it. A group of us would meet up in parks to do some ATS, or rent a hall for some practice. A few months ago, a lovely lovely lady who used to be a student with me at Nicola's ATS decided to set up weekly ATS sessions where we would all get together and practice and get better, sharing moves with each other and encouraging each other onwards. Man have I missed ATS. And man is it awesome to be back with the ATS sisterhood, learning away, getting sore shoulders and listening to awesome tracks. I am determined more than ever to seek out Carolena Nericcio and complete my General Skills. Teach me sensei. Hooray for ATS! I Love this. This is our favourite song at ATS practice!!! I drool over this. I love this. I think this woman is a genius, and I wish I lived in Texas to learn from her bad-ass choreography skills. It don't have to be belly dance to be awesome. Beginner's Tribal Fusion has officially come to Cambridge!
The classes started yesterday, and I had a great time meeting my new students. I hope everyone's bum muscles are not too sore today! But if they are, it just means they are getting stronger ;) Currently my favourite youtube video - Manca Pavli being superheroically awesome in San Fransico. This woman reminds me why I dance! Last weekend I attended an AMAZING event run by Alexis Southall in Wolverhampton - 12 hours of workshops with Samantha Emanuel and Manca Pavli. We all know Sam is pretty damn awesome, but I had never met or learnt from Manca before, and I have left so crazy motivated and excited about being a Tribal Fusion Dancer.
Manca is not only crazy talented, but she's thumping in a theme I am finding in my adventures at the moment - everything has to be FUN, otherwise you just won't do it. I won't draw if it's not fun, I won't dance if it's not fun. I tend to think that you won't get anywhere unless you work hard, and work hard = not fun. But as I am slowly learning with Art (ie only do fun art, duh) I have to do fun Dance, or else I will lose my love of it! Other than completely refreshing my approach to dance (let's go!!!) I learnt loads of awesome moves and theories that I have already started appropriating into my own dances. Zing! Manca better come back soon, otherwise it's off to Slovenia for me. |
Demelza Fox
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