The Big Bang on Certifications As usual the first blog of the year is one that may be controversial to those who believe in certifications and feel they improve their dancing skills.
Believe me this is not the issue here and I have always felt workshops are a good thing as well as private lessons.
The question I am going to start out with has to do with the explosion of belly dance certifications across this continent and abroad.
Where are all these women coming from who offer certifications and how does anyone know if they are getting the "real" deal? The answer seems to lie within so I guess I am sharing with you my feelings on this new craze.
I just saw on twitter a tweet stating that you can go to a well known dancer and Skype in a lesson and get a critique on your dancing.
Maybe with the gas prices as they are and the world economy the way it is, this might just be the way to go but I was wondering about the critiquing part.
This is only because critiquing can become a plague that spreads like a virus.
Anyone with a mouth can critique another's creativity even the legitimacy of the mind set of another.
Pretty much we can take a modest amount of information and make decisions based on preconceived notions and views.
The difference between common sense and radical opinions is the agenda behind the person making their own ideals stick.
Agendas can hide behind habitual ways of thinking that are comfortable and help validate the world a person sees.
We can defend our opinions which is very human to do so but what happens when we defend a view point that is questionable to many? All dancers look for the treasure trove of answers and ideas that have eluded them but I think the question one might ask is where does this treasure trove lie? Does the answer lie with a variety of individuals or can the answer be as simple as an inside job where spirit is asking for each of us to focus on ourselves and look within? Dancers often search for years and travel to far off lands to find out the answers to their insatiable questions thus leading life long quests that become more then a rite of passage but a way of life.
Can the actual quest be the real answer here? Sometimes in the preparation of learning we find the answers in the littlest of signs and hints making the journey secondary to our own self awareness.
The more aware we are of the dancer within the more she ventures out of her cocoon and reveals to the world her unique design and interpretation of dance.
Just like the design of the wings of butterflies is unique only unto each individual butterfly the individual dancer expresses her rhythm in a way only from her unique stamp and expression of creativity.
So if I go to a dancer who certifies her interpretation of belly dance then what happens to my interpretation of belly dance? I have learned from so many wonderful and well known dancers and they all helped me understand various aspects of movement, brain to body signals and muscle control but eventually I had to make belly dance fit my body, my way.
Even a well intentioned interpretation of another dancer's choreography and philosophy still lacks the original thought that comes directly from divine inspiration.
Once we learn the mainstream stylized interpretation of this dance form from well known dancers, where do we place our own interpretation or does it morph into the information we have just learned? If we don't see it in action with the actual dancer performing her curriculum, how do we know what we have just learned actually works? I have learned more choreographies through out the years in workshops then you can imagine and when I saw the various choreographed performances on stage I always knew that I would never look like the original inspiration because it was never mine to begin with.
Does it really matter? A wonderful and masterful dancer Helena Vlahos told me in a recent interview that in her infancy of learning the how to of belly dance that she went and studied the well known dancers of her time and observed how they moved and interpreted dance.
Helena said this was the way dancers learned their craft in her day and I think this is a huge part of what is missing in dance today.
There is nothing like watching a professional dancer in her element on stage with a live band.
There is so much to be said for seeing it first hand.
I learned this when I was in Egypt and watched Sohair Saki live with her orchestra.
She was the soul expression of belly dance and what she taught me that night was the most important lesson of my dance career.
I learned that dance is genuine only if the dancer understands her own rhythm.
The band played to her movements and her signals and she was the most important aspect of the music because I visually saw it's interpretation and meaning in every move and gesture of her dance.
I finally understood at that moment that dance is really about how we feel about ourselves and how open we are to spirit guiding us.
That night she was the high priestess of belly dance because she was completely enveloped within it's synergy and meaning.
http://www.
youtube.
com/watch?v=HfRATlwjxqo The cultural aspect of dance is important because we have to understand the customs behind the music, gestures and ideology of a specific region.
So are certifications an easier way to go instead of the expense of visiting the actual places of origin for our dance form? I would be on the fence post here because I am a hands on kind of dancer; I would want to go see it for myself.
Learning about belly dance is as much fun as dancing it but there also has to be some authenticity to any dancer performing another cultures dance form.
How far any dancer is willing to venture out and experience this dance depends on her mind set.
In the end it really depends on the type of experience each person wants to have with this dance and how much of it they want absorb into their lives.
With all that I have learned from so many amazing dancers I wonder what would happen if I would have taken to one dancer in particular, absorbed her way of dancing and took the plunge to dance her stylized way.
Would I look like me or would I look like another photo copy impression of the original design? How many women look so much like their teachers only because they are immersed in their teacher's curriculum? I was told years ago that people could tell who my students were by their hip work.
Did that mean they were my carbon copies or did it just mean that I was the main influence around them at the time? Anyways what I am getting at here is with so many women offering certifications can there be a danger of diluting the root form of this dance? I'm not talking about styles of dance, Gothic, American Tribal, American Cabaret, Egyptian Cabaret etc.
I am talking about dancers thinking that once they are certified the journey can be less traveled and experienced or that one certification equals a lifetime of experience.
How many certifications will equal a dancer becoming a professional? Where does experience and life come into play if the very need to look for answers is quelled by tests and course levels? We all know that in high school much of what we learned went out the window once the tests were over with and summer vacation was upon us.
If my life depended on what I had learned in high school, I would be a goner! But ask me today about present topics and issues, we could talk for hours.
My point is that belly dance for me was never put into the category of processed methodical learning because it was and has always been an unknown destination for me.
I guess the certified dancer and journey dancer will meet on the crossroads of progress and only then will they be able to answer these questions.
Will we be so different that we won't recognize each other or will we figure out a way to co-exist? Only time will tell...
"Focus on the journey, not the destination.
Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it.
" Greg Anderson