Mariza Dance

Making a Frame Drum & Finger Cymbal Piece

Posted on March 21, 2021March 21, 2021 by Mariza

I was introduced to the frame drum as part of the Dance Cohesion program and totally fell in love with it. When I play finger cymbals I feel like something relaxes or uncoils in my brain (this is the only way I can describe it); I get the same feeling when I play drum but with the added benefit of not cutting of circulation to my fingies.

When I signed up from drum lessons, I told my teacher (Josephine Dow of The Rhythms Within) from the start that I wanted to create drum & cymbal compositions for dance. And now I’ve DONE IT! Well, hopefully just the first of many. 🙂

Here’s a little rundown of how it went.

Dancing Digitally: Teaching Online Dance Classes and Performing Online

Posted on March 1, 2021March 14, 2021 by Mariza

I started writing this post like a million years ago and never posted it. So… here you go! Some observations and lessons learned from teaching dance online and watching and participating in online dance performances. This is not a technical post.

Other Ways to Choreograph

Posted on April 4, 2020April 8, 2020 by Mariza

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!

“Egyptianize Your Dance” with Shahrzad

Posted on December 20, 2019January 3, 2020 by Mariza

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!

Choreography Creation: Developing Movement Through Improvisation

Posted on November 13, 2019November 13, 2019 by Mariza

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. 🙂

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. 😀

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.

Choreography Creation: Floor Mapping

Posted on October 3, 2019October 14, 2019 by Mariza

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. 🙂

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:

Draw a floor map or pattern for each section, which represents how you will travel on the stage. You can note how many counts per “leg” of the pattern
Film yourself walking–just walking–the floor map to make sure you aren’t spending too much time standing around, ending up in weird areas of the stage, etc. Adjust as needed

Choreography Creation: Song Mapping

Posted on September 22, 2019September 26, 2019 by Mariza

Step 2: Song Mapping

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… 😉

TL;DR:

Section out the song based on musical changes
Write down the counts and timestamps of each section
Name or briefly describe each section
Give each section an energy level out of 10

Choreography Creation: Prep Work

Posted on September 15, 2019September 26, 2019 by Mariza

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!

Step 0: Research

TL;DR:

Look up the lyrics of your chosen song, if applicable (even if you’re doing an instrumental version)
Search around for the song in general (any history, famous renditions, etc). In the case of modern or pop songs, I would also look for music videos
Watch how other dancers have treated the song

Putting on a Belly Dance Show: How Do?

Posted on September 14, 2019September 26, 2019 by Mariza

I wrote this post in 2018 on my personal blog. I’ve re-posted here because, well, it makes sense to have it here. 🙂

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!