Belly dance in Ellicott City, Baltimore Maryland–and Online!
I started going through the whole song mapping/choreo process in Andah Aleik (which is still ongoing and WILL BE COMPLETED someday I swear) but there are other ways to choreograph. I will show you two!
Continue reading “Other Ways to Choreograph”I recently attended a workshop with Shahrzad (https://shahrzadraqs.com/), hosted by Sahara Dance (https://saharadance.com/). She currently lives and works in Cairo and I was excited for the opportunity to learn from her!
Continue reading ““Egyptianize Your Dance” with Shahrzad”I’m blogging along as I work on a choreography to “Andah Aleik” for my duo, io. Feel free to leave a comment with your process–I’m curious to know how people approach choreography. I’m going to take it step by step! Except sometimes I don’t always follow these steps. Whatevs. I hope it will be useful to you as you work on your own choreographies…or I hope you find it vaguely amusing. π
Up until now, everything I’ve done has been pretty procedural and can be completed in less than an hour (except listening to the song 100 times). Now I start the actual process of developing movement…which is why I’ve been putting this post off. It’s hard. π
TL;DR: Take one section of a song and put it on repeat. Improvise along your floor map X times in a row–I do 5 times, which is an arbitrary number that seems to work for me. Review your video and pull out what you like. Working in shorter sections is nice because you can notice what you like and start developing it right away, as opposed to doing the whole song and then trying to remember what the thing was that you liked and when it happened.
Continue reading “Choreography Creation: Developing Movement Through Improvisation”I’m going to blog along as I work on a choreography to “Andah Aleik” for my duo, io. Feel free to leave a comment with your process–I’m curious to know how people approach choreography. I’m going to take it step by step! Except sometimes I don’t always follow these steps. Whatevs. I hope it will be useful to you as you work on your own choreographies…or I hope you find it vaguely amusing. π
So, you’ve got your sections. Now what?! It’s time to map out your floor patterns so you know where you’re going on stage.
TL;DR:
I’m going to blog along as I work on a choreography to “Andah Aleik” for my duo, io. Feel free to leave a comment with your process–I’m curious to know how people approach choreography. I’m going to take it step by step! Except sometimes I don’t always follow these steps. Whatevs. I hope it will be useful to you as you work on your own choreographies…or I hope you find it vaguely amusing. π
Truth time: I don’t always do the FULL SONG MAP EXPERIENCE(tm). A lot of section description/energy level stuff is just sort of in my brain and I don’t always write it out. But now I’ve got a blog to update, so… π
TL;DR:
Go on a choreography journey with me! I’m going to blog along as I work on a choreography to “Andah Aleik” for my duo, io. Feel free to leave a comment with your process–I’m curious to know how people approach choreography. This is just “an” option and sometimes even I don’t follow these steps, depending on the project. I hope it will be useful to you, or if nothing else, vaguely amusing.
I’m interested to document this particular project because I’m envisioning a more collaborative effort as opposed to prescribing the entire choreography and applying it to somebody else, which is what I’ve usually done. This is a new approach for me!
TL;DR:
I wrote this post in 2018 on my personal blog. I’ve re-posted here because, well, it makes sense to have it here. π
Earlier this month I survived my fifth annual (except I missed a couple years) big belly dance show! I wanted to share a bit about what putting on a show entails and what lessons I’ve learned.
This isn’t really a step-by-step process and I’ve just sort of organized Things I Think are Good Ideas in general sections. This is about self-produced belly dance shows that are small in the scheme of things, but big compared to the informal stuff we usually do. I do insert some comments about smaller haflas here and there because I can’t help myself.
I’m not saying I put on the best shows and don’t have room for improvement – in fact, writing this is my attempt to reflect and get better. So if you’ve been to or in one of my shows and thought something was dumb about it, please (politely) tell me so I can fix it!
If you have anything to add from your experiences, please leave a comment!
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