dance show recap/review

[keryx]

By far the most exciting thing about the show on Friday was Carolena & Megha (the workshop instructors) doing a duet - really good, in sync performance where the performers are truly paying attention to each other is engrossing in any artform. Their level of attention is what I love about tribal.

Pssst... kazoogrrl, I heard a rumor that Marta and the woman who moved to NoVA from Devyani are going to start an actual ATS tribe soon. Thought you'd approve.

The worst was a tie, and even the worst weren't godawful or even unwatchable - just, um... well-intentioned but not quite right. There was a performance with lots of bending and squatting that had much more in common with bad modern dance than with bellydance. And I'm not a bellydance bouncer - anyone can come into the bellydance club, I don't care what you want to fuse together, if you can make it interesting and have something to say. But no, nothing to say, no interest - really not even technically cool. Which is weird (the nothing to say part), since the dancer in question is also involved in that group that does public performances as protests and stuff, and clearly does have something to say.

Second in the tie were "The Orientals", as missmeridian and I called them (see, people are Asian; rugs and vases - and really stupid people - are 'oriental'). They were 3 white women dressed in intriguing bellydancer/kimono mix costumes. They did some pretty egregious representations of geisha ideas (the walk, the makeup, the faces) but nothing actually related to any Japanese dance form. I think they were aiming in part of the movement for karate-fusion, which is funny since that keeps coming up on tribe.net as a hypothetical thing no one would actually do. Better executed, it could have been a challenging exercise in political art - you know, juxtaposing stereotype and tradition with white people doing it... could have been interesting. But not so much. The women who did it seem like lovely, sweet people, and good dancers. But did they not think about this?

Which was also kinda the case with the Bollywood fusion piece (which I thought was entertaining & well-executed, not to mention that it featured a dancer I know from Tribe whom I've wanted to see live for ages). Everyone who thinks tribal fusion can just pick and choose whatever it wants from other cultures really needs to take a friend who is aware of such things to a show. Cause I wouldn't have thought about the implications of white people using Bollywood & Indian stereotype, although in ways it has some of the same issues as the oriental fusion piece that would bother ANYONE WITH A BRAIN.

Fusion is groovy, but it has to really be fusion - making both the bellydance and the whatever you add almost unrecognizable in some respects. That's the exact opposite of what a lot of bellydancers choose - they go for the "ooh, look at my pretty shiny Indian thing" rather than learning another dance culture well. And even if you do learn odissi or hula or bhangra or whatevah, what does it mean to be a white American doing that? Which makes me think more about the types of fusion I want to do - I mean, how do you bring things together in a way that is meaningful and not simply co-opting a tiny piece of another culture? I think you have to truly bring them together. Or maybe you have to stay aware of your white Americanness? Hmm.

But. Highlights! You want to know which parts were good, right?

So, I know they're students and weren't spot-on (although certainly as good as the Omega Mus) or 100% tribal (glad now I didn't take classes with them), but I got a huge kick out of the Raqs Caravan crew. It was fun. I like big group numbers - they give you a real tribe feeling.

Also striking was the uberhot German industrial performance by Shakra. Um... yum. And quite naughty. Those of you who haven't seen them should. They're somewhere between bellydance, performance art & sex show. In a good way!

Mab did a take on 'veil dancing' that completely changed my mind about using veils. It was unusually compelling dance theatre, really - taking concepts related to belly dance (sword, veil, femininity) and reordering them in a way that told this story sortof about oppression and freedom. It was awesome. And she played in a band with men in skirts, which biases me in her favor. Want to turn me on? Show me a boi in a skirt. The butch-er the better.

And there was another performer who I didn't like so much on first viewing - it seemed awfully derivative & Rachel Bricean - but liked when I met the woman who did it. Solos really don't do much for me (unless they're dance theatre), but it was well-executed & it turns out nicely evocative of her actual personality, once I'd met her.

Some of the rest of you were there. What did you think of the show?

Comments

[arovd.livejournal.com]

Shakra trips my trigger in a big way. HOT.

http://shakra.tribalgrove.com/

http://shakra.tribe.net/

I think you're both overanalyzing and underanalyzing the cultural reference thing. I mean, done one way it can show respect for that culture and an embracing of diversity. Done another way it can be indiscriminant snitching (which I think gets into the ethnic police issue - are you giving the impression that you're portraying an actual cultural replica?), or downright offensive. That geisha piece smacked of "blackface." or, ummm.. whiteface. (sorry had to be snarky... out of control.)

Though I'm also certain the girls in question had no malicious intent whatsoever.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

That geisha piece smacked of "blackface." or, ummm.. whiteface.

Yeah, that's why it bugged me so. There's always the possibility that you could take blackface/whiteface and perform it in a way that was provocative and meaningful, but if you don't... scariness.

And yeah, we talked about the uberhot that is Shakra before. What did you think of the rest of the show?

[kazoogrrl.livejournal.com]

I wrote about this in reference to the stink about the Devidasi piece at Tribal Fest - it's all fine and well to bring in strong references to other cultures, if you have a clear intent (as Rachel from Devidasi explained about the moves and look used for their Asian piece). But if your audience has no clue about those cultures or the references you are using, the whole thing will look like one big pile of stereotypes.

I feel they had the best of intentions, but another thing that irked me was the use of the word "exotic" in their program write-up. Viewing other cultures as exotic really only engages these cultures in a shallow manner, sometimes through stereotypes. Explore them for what you love about them, not just for their "otherness".

Check out Shakra's burlesque pics from PDF (they are in their tribe or maybe in Bronwen and Na'la's personal profiles). Cael's a cutie too, don't overlook him!

[arovd.livejournal.com]

hell yeah!