The Three Rules of Middle Eastern Dance
This weekend I was lucky enough to attend two Middle Eastern Dance workshops as a student at a camping event. The first class was taught by Phedre of Madison, WI, and the second by Lady Cocoa from Chicago.
In the first, we learned basics of posture, foot position, and then the standards of hip circles, figure 8’s (flat), walking, and hip shimmies. One of the things that she mentioned towards the end, though, caught my ear: the Three Rules of Middle Eastern Dance, as taught by her teacher, Mona N’wal
- If you can walk, you can dance – it’s just shifting your weight back/forth, right/left, over and over.
- Faster means smaller: if you want to move your [insert body part here] faster, the movements it makes will have to be smaller.
- “No pain, no gain = no brain.” Dance practice should maybe make you want an ibuprofen or a hot tub – not a chiropractor. Don’t overdo it
I’m still mulling over these (for some reason, my mind kept trying to apply them to relationships) and I can think of several examples in the dance world that are exceptions to all the rules…but mainly, I just have to say it was a lot of fun to be in the line at a dance class again.
Tomorrow I’ll talk about my turn at modeling a Whirling Dervish outfit…
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