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Writer's pictureFanoos Magazine Oriana

Finding the groove together: Our need for the communal events of the cultures

Updated: Sep 22

Walladah With this article I want to invite you to a world of oriental dance that is not

niche and segregated from other dances and dancers but a world based on

communities where there is no monoculture of dance styles.

Don’t take me wrong, I love all dance events of all types, whether it is a typical

hafla or show, or a traditional πανηγύρι [1] somewhere in Greece. I also like

our festivals very much, not only for the chance to admire and learn from

brilliant artists, but also for the camaraderie and the dedication to our dance.

You know that the person who is there is committed to the art of oriental

dance and loves it.


Moreover, I also love the systematic organisation of our dance events. I am

humbled by the hard work the organisers do and their immense efforts to keep

the community together and to allow us to share our love for dance and

become better dancers.

However, the last years that I live consecutively in the UK I observed that our

events and our dance communities are quite far from the communities of the

cultures of the dance. Might be my longing for the Mediterranean, or the

discussion we had at Raks Dünya festival. At the final panel of the event, we

were discussing how community dancers can be equally good or better than

the school-trained ones and that we miss the communal dance as learning

process. While we were discussing with the other teachers and dancers, I

decided that I need to write about community dancing as a learning

environment.

I have previously written about baltering and how just moving together in an

event allows us to become better dancers and have more fun at the same

time.

Yet, we don’t have many chances for this and I cherish the efforts of our sister

dancers in the UK to organise dance parties for this purpose exactly: balter

together, move silly, have fun, groove as a community. Still, there are not

many dancers of the cultures in most events and the more the event is away

from a usual social gathering, the less people of the cultures we see attending.


The consequence is that as dancers of cultural dances we don’t connect with

the dance as it is.

And how is the dance?


If you ever attended an event organised by people from a country of the

origins of the dance, whether it is a private party or an arts festival, you know

that the event is dedicated to a broader spectrum of activities than dance and

to a broader variety of dances than oriental dance. Indeed, for the

communities of the cultures of the dance, oriental dance is one dance among

the many they will dance at a celebration.

When we attend such a festival, or a wedding or a private party, we see that

our dance has many kinesiological commonalities with other dances that we

usually don’t learn in our dance training. Or, they are labelled “folklore” and

are kept distanced from our dance as different dances that one does not need

to know, although oriental dance styles are very much both traditional and folk

like those styles. We don’t see them as such because we learn oriental dance

as separate from the other dances of the same communities who dance

oriental dance. We need more exposure to the comprehensive dance practices

of the communities of the cultures and we need to appreciate those dance

practices in their connections to oriental dance.

Another thing that we see in a celebratory event of a community of the

cultures is that people from the same culture dance the same music

differently. Or, when they replicate movement together, it is done at specific

moments, or dances, or sections of the party. Even then, differences in styles

and personalities are striking.

We don’t see this in choreographies. And, a lineup of oriental solos does not

allow us to perceive the variety and versatility of the dance, which is danced at

the same moment, with the same music.

Therefore, one thing is that we miss variety: variety of kinesiological traditions

that are connected to our dance; and variety of how the people of the cultures

handle, individually and collectively, the movement flows that create the

dances for some centuries now.

Another thing that we don’t get to see and learn if we don’t dance around and

with dancers of the cultures is the social manners that connect us to others

and to the dance, whether we dance or we watch others dancing. Each culture


has its own ways of allowing people to relate to each other, to exclamate

beauty and joy, show appreciation without being offending, or demonstrate

emotions and respect to others without bringing anyone in an awkward

situation.

In the dance school we usually learn the dance movements but not their

appropriate manners and symbolisms within the community. We learn a lot

about what is unacceptable and what might put us in trouble and hence we

must avoid. However, cabaret styles or choreographed folklore routines are

not the same as a social dance at a party or in the wedding of one’s cousin. You

cannot dance all cabaret tricks in that case, not only because you might not

want to dance the style, but also because you prefer to dance in ways that will

underline how much you are part of the group who dances together.

Same in all social settings: in our communities in Greece we dance τσιφτετέλι

[2] among our relatives, in-laws, work colleagues, neighbours, strangers,

people we like and people we dislike. Dance in this setting is not a

performance but a social statement. Even if we dance solo, we are navigating

not only limitations, but also the permissions we have. At the same time, we

strive to fulfil expectations that are not individualistic success stories, but

mostly family, community and culture histories that are bigger than “is my

figure eight good enough?”.

The dance communities who rely too much on dance schooling, miss the deep

embeddedness of the dance to culture with all that might mean: history,

politics, patriarchy, non-patriarchy, gender perceptions, aesthetics, competing

mentalities and categorisations (the “modern”, the “old”, the “provocative”,

the “reserved”, the “secular”, the “ritual”), and mostly inspirations,

ambivalence of meaning, and inner-culture jokes and statements that exist in

the music and often on the outfits produced by dancers of the culture, but not

in the dance of the culturally unaware dancer.

We also miss the spiritual part of the dancing practices, or at least, the respect

to spiritual traditions that need to be protected from the commodification

propensity of our societies. Oriental dance is well preserved in the

communities of origin as non-spiritual and non-religious, although a lot of

music styles and kinesiologies of our dance are directly connected to ritual

dances of various traditions.



I am very much wary of some western dancers’ propensity to mix up spiritual

practices and theories with the dance, and to represent the mixing as

historically eternal or accurate, in order to make our dance more acceptable

and attractive. Or, with the purpose to soothe the guilt of colonial puritanism

that projects its fantasies on the colonised and their descendants.

Nevertheless, if the community celebration is at the yard of a temple to

honour a saint, or by the occasion of a major religious holiday, you cannot miss

the common joy and the licence to have fun as part of the spiritual agenda of

the day. This is very much missed not only in the studio learning but also in the

approaches that emerged in the West trying to attribute to the dance a

spirituality that is not of the culture.

No matter how good intentions some dancers might have, they cannot and

should not replace the original communities of the dance. Particularly about

spirituality, it is a form of social, political and spiritual hubris to think that you

know about the other worlds of another community better than the

communities themselves.

In a community setting people learn humility about what is spiritual and what

is not and what is acceptable to be brought to the unaware public or to

become a commodity and what should be kept away from the market and

from the people who will not respect the spiritual tradition. You might see

religious souvenirs sold on stalls around temples, but many religious people

will tell you this is a desecration. Yet, they will not complain for the vernacular

dance. Obviously, it is not done in parallel with a religious ritual and it is done

only in designated spaces, not everywhere.

Therefore, we miss all those social nuances in the dance school and the

opportunity to dance oriental dance within a culturally rich, multifaceted

context.

There is still one more aspect of the communal dance we will never have in our

formal training communities that stay away from the communities of the

cultures:

If we could go to a panegyri or to a big private party of the people of the

cultures, we would experience the dance in a context so meaningful, that it

relieves us from the quest for perfection; or for filling all the beats of the

music; or for showing off all the things we know. The culture is a communal

activity where all the people know the meanings so well that they can forget


about them. Therefore, the collective culture transmits information and

emotion even with our mere presence there. When we dance there with

others, culturally it is like a feast of fireworks with every step with take.

That means, we don’t need to impress anyone (although we can, if we want

to). We can be perfect dancers, not because we are the best (communal

events are full of excellent dancers, competition has no meaning there), but

because we allow ourselves and others to dance their best by being together.

This we miss in our studio-based niche-oriental events. As a dancer of the

culture, I feel that I am not making justice to other dancers, who did not have

my long history of communal dancing where I learned the dance. If we all

dancers could have been exposed to this type of communal dancing, we could

easily see our dance in its complexity and cultural meanings and have an

experience as full as the full persons that we are.

How to do this?

We need to be more active in working with communities and dancers of the

cultures for events. It is important to remember that communities have events

that do not cater to oriental dances and they should not cater to them/us.

However, we need to attend the events anyway because learning the culture

means we will also understand the dance part of it.

Moreover, the cultures of our dance are creations of communities that have

suffered and still suffer a lot because of colonialism. We cannot see the

community as entertainers for outsiders or as exotic artists and forget about

them when their countries of origin are facing any type of problem and their

people in the West have no ability to organise celebrations that fit our dance

teachable moments. Same when these communities who also exist in the

West, are attacked by racists mobs: we cannot stay silent and wait until the

turbulence fades out without wondering how the people who make our art

fend under such terror.

Obviously, if we dancers want to get involved with the communities, we

cannot pretend we are interested only in maqamat and sparkly necklaces. The

access to and the enjoyment of the cultural wealth and inspiration of another

community comes with responsibilities. Some dancers don’t want the latter

and quite honestly stay away from the former without claiming any

authenticity or cultural knowledge. They at least don’t start competing as

apolitical shallow performers with the cultures out of which they take


kinesiology and ideas of styling. Other dancers are not so honest although they

are educated enough to know that this art has an enormous and complex

cultural and historical context around and underneath it.

However, my focus here is on the dancers who had never had the choice of

experiencing the dance in its cultural context. They have not attended enough

events, like festivals, private parties, holiday celebrations of the cultures, and

they don’t even know what they are missing. Yes, at a festival family day you

might not be able to put on a sparkly bedlah, but you can wear this at your

teacher’s hafla. What about watching dancers of the culture dancing

gorgeously in their everyday outfit? How good can they be so that they dance

like that?

They can be really really good. Because they draw from the collective

intelligence of the people around them and the people that danced the dance

for generations before them. There is no way to learn with this collective

intelligence if you don’t bother to meaningfully and respectfully engage with it.

Despise the collective and your individual intelligence will end up thirsty,

hungry and alone.

Practically, think about organising nights or days out to spaces run by peoples

of the culture. Support artists of the cultures in general, not only the musicians

who know to play the music that you are most familiar with. Learn about

artistic associations of the peoples of the cultures and support their events.

Attend events that are not danceable but will give you an understanding of the

culture you take joy from. Study with dancers of the culture and pay attention

to how they speak, move or socially represent the dance, their culture and

themselves as dancers. If you can visit the countries of origin of the dance,

please do and try to be more than the western middle class consumer dancer.

Be a person with a full personality that owes this dance to entire peoples.

Learn the culture not only from translations of songs, but also try to learn

about the symbolisms and underlying meanings that exist behind words and

inside musical notes, pauses and silence. Learn not only what might make you

an “inappropriate” dancer but also what will make you a dancer that is

beautifully speaking to the community with words and movement.

We need to recognise that this is not an individual quest. It is the sector as a

resource holder who must do it and the artists who make the sector are those


who can do it. Collective learning requires collective humility and

collaborations.

It is not that the style of festivals and events we have are not good enough. We

can have all types of events. Literally, an event with fellow dancers is a family

gathering, cannot be replaced either. But we also need to open up, invite

communities to our events and make those events interesting enough for the

community dancers to attend. Equally important: when we go to community

events of the people of the culture, we need to be respectful and not expect to

be centered or attract attention there while there are so many good dancers

around.

Whether we are from the cultures or not, we are not more important as

individuals than the cultures and the peoples who make the cultures. On the

collective level we will never be better than them and we never wanted to be

better than any community. By choosing communal, cultural dances, we

created a connection to the communities and their cultures and we are now

expected to cultivate that connection as best as we can.


Notes:

[1] πανηγύρι, paneghyri, means: gathering of everyone, and it comprises food

feast, live music, dance of the community, market stalls, and other parallel

events, which can be of religious, secular, commemoration or cultural

character. This is a dancing excerpt from a Thracian gathering.

[2] tsifteteli, a vernacular name for oriental dance in Greece.

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