Belly Dance Podcast A Little Lighter

This interview with Rachel Brice dives deep into recent American belly dance fusion history and fashion. Rachel reminisces about her influencers Suhaila Salimpour, Carolena Nericcio of FatChanceBellyDance® (formerly ATS), and Jill Parker, and opens up about inclusiveness and past mistakes fusing dance forms.

It is such an honor and a pleasure to welcome Rachel Brice to A Little Lighter! There is a beautifully written bio of Rachel on https://www.rachelbrice.com/about, so I’m going to share it with you piece by piece as we take a little journey through the career and life of Belly Dance Fusion icon Rachel Brice

“Rachel Brice first fell in love with Belly Dance at 16 years old, when she saw a group (who later became Hahbi Ru) at a Renaissance Faire, and started classes immediately. Soon after, she discovered a video of Suhaila Salimpour which she obsessively studied. She began making her living by performing American Cabaret Belly Dance at restaurants and teaching yoga while putting herself through school.”

#1. Let’s pause your bio here. I remember hearing you say something like, “I used to think belly dance wasn’t about being sexy. But come on. Just being young is sexy.” And that really struck me. You and I are just a few years apart in age, and after I heard you say that, I saw dancers in their 20s in a new light. What do you want your dance to say about you at this point in your life and career? 

So, I’m challenging a lot of my own BS right now. it’s really easy to have ideas about what something’s gonna be like, when you arrive there.

But destinations are rarely like you anticipate they’re gonna be, and that’s how aging has been. When I was younger I thought, women should embrace aging.

I feel differently about my appearance. I’m not always proud of the way I feel about it. it’s different than I thought.

There is something to be said for having lived through decades. We just need to find a place in our culture that celebrates experience. And I feel like a lot of times there’s this huge rift between older generations and younger generations because both of them are defending themselves instead of the older generations being fascinated and excited about the changes that are happening and the younger generations being excited about what people learned in the past.

I think Gen Z’s amazing and I’m super excited by the changes that they’re making.

And they seem to be really appreciating elders too. So I think something is on the horizon. For the relationship between younger and older generations. So I’m looking forward to that.

I think that it’s really Gen Z that’s making us realize so much because I’m of the previous generation where when I was dancing in nightclubs and restaurants and meeting people from the Middle East, they were like, wow, how did you get interested in my culture? That’s so cool.

And, then their kids come along and are like, wait a minute, you’re gonna make fun of my parents, and then you’re gonna wear a bindi? I don’t think so.

So this next generation is speaking up in a way that their parents hadn’t. And I wasn’t there when that shift happened.

I was happily on a plane somewhere thinking that opinions are fixed in time and space. And when I started reading, the bindi is a really great example of how many different feelings there are about a cultural object and what that object represents. I mean, there’s no way that you could say that a person from India feels A, B, or C.

There are so many different feelings about it. And yeah, so the more I’m learning the more I’m realizing that whatever I do, I need to investigate it and learn enough to where I feel comfortable with doing it, but also still be open to the fact that I could learn more and need to let it go. Here’s the big challenge.

You know, as long as I’m more interested or as interested in how my actions affect other people as I am in how they feel about me I think that there’s the opportunity to learn.

But if I’m defending myself like we’re gonna do, then I lose that opportunity. So, yeah, I sure hope that I find something that I feel is a respectful homage that brings people together that I’m as in love with as I was with some of the previous incarnations of the dance that I was doing.

Cuz man, I had so much fun. It’s so much fun. I loved it so much and I still love it, but I just haven’t found the pants that fit, I guess.

#2. I interviewed Suhaila Salimpour on this podcast back episodes 38 and 44, and we talked about the history of belly dance and where we are now. What are some of the best changes you have seen in belly dance since you started dancing in the 90s?  

I think my answer’s gonna be less about the actual dance and more about the community, I think because of the loss of so many venues.

We don’t have the same kind of Middle Eastern restaurants in America that we did before 9/11. The community has really decided to keep it going through all of these festivals and theater shows. And in a lot of cases, it’s dancers dancing for each other and, maybe you get five or six husbands or boyfriends or kids that were dragged there.

But, generally speaking, instead of us dancing for non-dancers the way it was in the eighties and before, we’re really doing a lot for one another.

And it’s a testament to how much we love this dance. No audience. Fine. We’ll do it for each other then.

And I think that’s pretty amazing that we’ve figured out a way to keep it going.

#3. I believe you are a person who fully embraces your shadow self, so I think you will also appreciate this question. What are some of the unfortunate ways you have seen belly dance change since you started dancing in the 90s? 

One thing for sure that I really miss is the large number of musicians hanging out on a regular basis and playing music together. In the Bay Area in the late nineties when I went to school for dance ethnology at San Francisco State, one of the awesome extras that I didn’t expect when I moved there was that I would meet this large group of people that not only hung out all the time but were constantly learning and growing and striving to be better. And I learned so much about practice from these people.

One of my favorite things was that Tobias Roberson, who was my boyfriend at the time, had created this life where he would play music all day, then he would teach, and then he would do gigs. And when he was hired to play a show people were just basically seeing him do what he did all the time anyway.

https://open.spotify.com/track/6NhzQCKIztsUWo7q2EMf91?si=3d4894ec24ca4e23

And I remember thinking that that was such a huge difference. Rather than practicing for a show, I felt like people got to see a snippet of his life and he didn’t have to prepare for his show because he was always playing for hours.

I had such a struggle with practice. But I started to develop a practice at that time as a result of hanging out with him. And their bar for excellence was so high. And they were constantly playing music togethers like Dan Cantrell of The Toids, and Peter Jakes of Brass Menagerie and a whole crew of people that were just constantly playing music together.

And so the people I was doing shows with were also my best friends, and that was an amazing time, and I really miss that. And are small pockets of musicians, but because dancers use recorded music so much you know, they don’t get a chance to work as much as they would like to.

And so they have to turn their attention to real pursuits and there’s not as many musicians out there, so there’s not as many people seeing the music and getting bitten by the bug. And it was a romantic time that I hope can have a resurgence at some point just because it’s so enjoyable to have a community like that.

When I started dancing in clubs. I learned what works for dancers that are established in a club and what doesn’t work. And the first thing that doesn’t work is not meeting the dancers before you go to the owner, as you can imagine.

Once I moved to the Bay Area I went to the dancers and said: Hey, if you ever need a sub, you know, I would love to sub. And next thing you know, they’re calling me all the time. I don’t wanna go in, will you dance for me? And then I ended up being really good friends with the dancers and loving my relationship with them as much, if not more than the actual experience of performing for the audience.

And Nanna Candelaria, who became a dear friend of mine, was telling me that back in the day, what she started, cuz she had been dancing for like 25 years. When I met her, she said when she started, the dancers used to put cigarette burn holes in each other’s costumes.

https://youtu.be/dWrr6AknDG4

They were trying to take each other down and it did not feel like that at all. We would hang out, we’d drink wine, we’d laugh, and next thing you know, we’d go collaborate for fun for some show outside of the restaurant. It was a great experience.

But that was also because the owner of that restaurant was a lovely person. Culture is often built from the top down. So if you have a good restaurant owner, you’re gonna have a good time.

#4. A decade after you started dancing, you discovered Carolena Nericcio’s FatChanceBellyDance®Style (FCBD®Style), formerly known as ATS or American Tribal Style. When I interviewed Carolena back in episode 58 of this podcast, she said “Successful patterns repeat themselves.” Can you tell us some of the ways that Carolena and FCBD Style changed your patterns? 

Yeah. I mean, she changed everything at some point.

I was in love with Sue’s technique in Dances for the Sultan. And if you haven’t seen it, you need to go buy it right away because everyone needs to own this piece of American belly dance history. Just stunning, amazing technique. And I wanted to be exactly like her until I saw video of myself trying to be like her…

And then I was like, oh, that doesn’t look the same. So that was my first experience of, oh, what looks good on one person, doesn’t necessarily look natural and right on another person. And I just couldn’t find my place.

And then I saw Carolena, and the first thing that I really resonated with was the posture. Was the way that she held her neck and how high her chin was and how long her neck was, and how pressed down her shoulders were and how lifted the chest was.

She just looked like royalty to me, and immediately I resonated with that. She had a huge smile. And then of course the jewelry. Fell in love with the jewelry.

And later when I learned a little bit more about Masha Archer‘s intentions with the dance, I understood why it looked the way that it did.

But at the time, all I felt was just what’s happening feels right. And it didn’t change my love for Suhaila’s approach to technique and to drum solo and sort of more American Cabaret technique. But I felt in love with the whole chest, shoulder, arm, neck, head relationship that I saw in Fat Chance and the whole aesthetic.

So I immediately started learning fat chance style, and basically, I never thought about it this way before, but in some ways you could think of it as like –  what I was working on was fat chance from the waist up and Salimpour from the waist down, kind of a thing, I guess. Because I really loved the posture and the presentation, and I also loved the improvisational vocabulary.

But it didn’t change my love for like a shape-driven, isolation-heavy drum solo where you’re not pulling from a vocabulary, you’re dancing shapes. So yeah, the patterns that I started working with became more about applying some of the principles that I saw in what Fat Chance was doing to what I was already doing.

And, I asked permission from Carolena about that because what I was doing was so heavily influenced by her that I said, are you okay with me kind of building an entire life on what you have done, but changing it? And she was like, yeah, sure. Thanks for asking.

Yeah. So I think she’s happy to be asked , and appreciates the respect. Because yeah, She basically, changed everything.

And then Jill Parker, who I also know that you interviewed, Jill Parker added another dimension to that. So she was just coming out of her eight years with Fat Chance, maybe a year or two into her next project. And she was trying to move away from structured improvisation and was moving more towards what she was calling Belly Dance Theater at the time. And it was very Bay Area, you know, there was fire dancing and we were wearing shredded fabric and painting our eyes black. And the head wraps came off and the cholis came off and things got very sinister and oh God, I was in love with it. In love with it.

And that kind of broke because before Jill, you had to choose a side. It was, what was called tribal at the time. You’re either tribal or you’re cabaret and there was no fusion. And Jill just kind of blew the doors off everything.

And I think the first time I saw anyone doing it I think it was the Rakkasah performance in 2000 where Sharon Kihara was in this performance too.

They all came out in what we were all expecting. Had head wraps and chos and skirts, and she came out and had like 30 people in the troupe or something, and after the first song, half of them left and finished out their thing. And then Jill and a number of dancers came back on without head wraps or cholis.

And I remember the feeling. I was like, oh, I don’t think I liked that. Oh no. Like, you are not allowed. This is not allowed. You know, cuz everyone was wearing head wraps at the time. Even then it was Paulette’s group who I saw wearing flowers in their hair. But that was after, I think, so nobody was doing that.

So basically all of these different patterns. And all of it really comes from Jamila. I just always continually circled back to Jamila, the vibe that she created but yeah, Carolena’s group changed everything and then Jill changed that.

#5. Around the same time you discovered FCBD, Jill Parker became your technique inspiration. Jill is one of my favorite people on the planet, and I featured Jill Parker in episode 30 of this podcast. What was it about Jill’s technique that inspired you? 

What isn’t it about Jill’s technique? Oh my God.  Jill Parker.

I think one of the main things was that I always felt like I was scrawny. I am embracing the way that I was built now. I know there’s room for all of us, but at the time I had this idea of what a belly dancer was supposed to look like, and I didn’t look like that naturally.

I mean, the first dancer that I saw was super curvy. And what I really responded to was the reverb of her costume. Like she had tassels on. Her movement extenders were bouncing off of her curves. And I was like, I think that’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.

I wanted to be curvier.

Like that muscular rippling that happens when a cat is hunting or a snake is slithering. That intense ripple that was accentuated by her belly tattoos. The grapes that she had tattooed on her belly. You could see the skin sort of sliding over the muscle. And I was like, oh yeah.

So for the first time saw a way forward.

And because she had just been doing the Fat Chance vocabulary for eight years, it was completely effortless for her. She’s as close to perfection as I’ve ever seen, and she has this crazy rotation in her shoulder joints where I’m like, does she even have an acromium process?

Like upper arm bone I feel like doesn’t bump up against any other bones, and she could. Keep rotating her arms forward, which means that her elbows can go really high with no effort and mine can’t. I’m like bone on bone. So there were so many things about watching Jill that opened up all kinds of possibilities and falling in love with the slow stuff.

Where in the American Cabaret restaurant world, the slow stuff was really, really sexy and sultry and hands in the hair and, peeling away the veils and I love watching other dancers do that, but it doesn’t really feel like personal expression for me.

https://youtu.be/ZNwsqntreWQ

It made me feel crazy. I remember at the time saying, I just feel like I got punched in the gut and the face at the same time, like Jill’s dancing just punched me everywhere in the front that I was out.

So, yeah. It changed everything.

I was in Jill Parker’s dance company for a while, and you’d go to her place where she had classes and she had W Magazine all over the place, and she had pictures all over her walls, and she was fusing belly dance with flamenco. She had a dancer friend named Carola Zertuch.

They had a dance company called Zambra Bailar Yalla! And they actually got into the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival here doing a choreography together in their respective styles. So she was really pushing the envelope in a number of ways, but also fusing it with pop culture, which I hadn’t seen before.

I’m gonna do this other thing. And then Jill was somehow reintegrating it in an interesting way. So yeah, she just changed what the rules were and what I thought was possible in so many ways.

#6. You earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Dance Ethnology where you studied Kathak with Chitresh Das, Flamenco with Rosa Montoya, Odissi with Vishnu Tattva Das, and Dunham Technique with Alicia Pierce. You started to mix these dance forms with San Francisco culture and your 10 years as a restaurant dancer. Was there some connection between these dance styles that motivated you to study and fuse them? 

I was just taking classes with people who were teaching dance forms that I thought were beautiful and that I was fascinated by. I didn’t realize that Kathak was actually a big aesthetic influence in Carolena’s FCBD style. The Fat Chance spins at the beginning, a lot of that we inspired by Chiresh Das as well. He was famous in the Bay Area.

I saw more of a connection between Odissi, Flamenco and belly dance.

Before I took flamenco, I thought I might fuse more flamenco into what we were doing, cuz there’s so much of it in the posture, in the arms, in what Fat Chance does.

I might be able to take some inspiration from the body line, but it’s not really fusing flamenco, I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like taking one tiny little element.

But yeah, after 18 weeks of flamenco, I was like, oh no, I don’t know anything about flamenco and I can’t really say with any confidence that I was fusing it.

I kind of wanna go back and look at these bios again because as my understanding of what I was doing is deepening. I’m attempting to more deeply understand what culture means to individuals that are raised with it it’s changing the way that I feel about how I fuse.

But I have a lot of journals, so I can actually read what I was feeling at the time, especially around that period cuz there was so much exploration going on.

But I think sometimes when you write a bio and you’re trying to explain what it is that you do to people that may not have seen it before, it’s very easy to go for really broad strokes. So yeah, hearing that in the about section, I’m like, Ooh, maybe I need to go put a little more subtlety back in that bio.

And that’s, really I think one of the most interesting ways to play.

#7. You recently said “Belly dance is a sort of Cosplay. I love the creation of a character that doesn’t look like they are from any one place. I still have conflicted feelings about that.” Do you have guidelines that help you see when fusing forms is appropriate and when it is not appropriate? 

Ugh. All right. Here we go. Put on your seat belts, ladies and gentlemen.

I think that when I realized the cosplay thing I don’t feel that great about that right now. For myself personally, it’s so multi-layered and nuanced and different every time I learned something else.

But where I was at the time that I was making a lot of work and dancing all the time, I took a lot of inspiration from Frederico Fellini and his Satyricon film and what he said about creating Planet Rome.

I’m not from India. Creating what I wanted to be a “Planet India” may be missing some really big pieces.

And now I think that I haven’t found really where I feel that my next…

Okay, let me say this. I know that I’m going to land on an answer.

I know that I feel good about dancing in class and teaching what I’ve learned and sharing resources that I’ve discovered and turning students onto other teachers that are currently doing really good work. All of that makes sense to me.

I don’t know if you saw the most recent tour from fall, I think it was last September, October where I went to Europe and Finland and Kazakhstan and performed. The night before I was supposed to go on in Finland, I’m listening to all my belly dance music that I have and all of the stuff that I used to really, really love. I have learned a little too much about what that may have represented to the people playing the music or what it meant, or I’ve considered what it might feel like for someone not connected to the music to be dancing it.

And I’m like, well, okay. For me, belly dance has always felt very authentic for where I was in the moment. So what have I been listening to? What have I been feeling passionate about? I’m like, Bo Burnham. But you can’t dance to Bo Burnham. I don’t know if you’ve seen “Inside” on Netflix. it’s considered a comedy special, but it’s not funny.

I mean, it’s funny because it’s sad, but really, it’s sad. It’s about everything that we’re going through as a people. And it was in the middle of the pandemic. So, you know, all I’ve been doing is listening to Bo Burnham and learning more about our history and having all kinds of feelings about human beings.

And I finally was like, you know what? I will do one weirdo witchy fusion thing but I’m also gonna do something that feels really authentic, which is a couple Bo Burnham songs. And in one of the songs he says, “I’ll bother getting better when I bother getting dressed”.

I don’t know about you, but in the middle of the pandemic, that was a real thing for me.

And I’m wearing all this jewelry. And I’m thinking, how could I go out there and dance to “I’ll bother getting better when I bother getting dressed”, like dressed to the nines?

So in the song right before my piece, I said to the three dancers in the dressing room, “Can you help me take this off?”

Can you help me take all the jewelry off? And there’s three dancers on me. It’s like one minute to go and we’re like pulling earrings off and they’re pulling stuff outta my hair because I had it all embedded in my hair.

And I put on a Bruce Lee t-shirt and went out there and danced to this thing that was really expressing what I’m going through.

All of that being said, I’m not a trained contemporary dancer.

So some might say that was even more true to raqs sharqi dancing to Bo Burnham in a Bruce Lee t-shirt than pretending to be from Egypt with this, Sunny Lester album or whatever. That is not truly Egyptian.

https://youtu.be/jGceYrpDQ-I

It’s a huge, huge topic and I thought I would be further along in my understanding by now.

But I’m working continually. I’m reading continually I’m working with a counselor specifically about understanding culture, understanding my place and my own culture.

I’m learning about Orientalism. Learning about what Orientalism looks like. Learning about respectfully borrowing and studying.

Like, if I’m using a name or costuming that actually belongs to a people and they haven’t invited me to use it, I don’t feel comfortable using it. There may come a time where I learned something that changes that.

So basically I am still exploring cuz it’s important to me and I’m still dancing and I’m still teaching. But I really don’t know how to answer your question more than: I don’t know yet. I’ll check in with me in a year. I’ll let you know if I’ve learned anything by then.

Alicia: Well, it’s like what you said, you took 18 weeks of flamenco to realize you’re not comfortable fusing flamenco with what you were doing. The deeper you get into it, you realize it’s harder to do in the way I wanna do it than I thought before. 

Very well put. Yeah. Thank you. Exactly.

#8. When I interviewed your friend Ceremonial Botanical Bodywork Practitioner Rachel Fisher back in episode 53 of this podcast, she mentioned your appreciation for “The Little Book of Talent”. That inspired me to read the book, and fall in love with the concept of “smallest achievable perfection”. Something I can focus on and achieve rather than doing multiple things half-ass. Do you think that is a helpful book for dancers to read? 

Little things like when I would learn a choreography outside of the practice space when I was working with other people, if there was a part that I didn’t get, I would be like, I’ll take care of that part later.

And I would skip over it and then I would never learn those parts. And then I started getting stage fright because I would push my hotspots away, the parts that I didn’t know. And then I started thinking I was just bad at choreography. So things like that.

Make sure that those little hotspots are the spots that you focus on before you go on.

Slow it down and break it into chunks.

Learning the difference between soft skills and hard skills. I didn’t understand that hard skills require a totally different type of practice than soft skills. And people usually say, oh, I’m an improviser, or I’m a choreographer. And after reading that book I was like, oh no, we have a natural tendency to go for one or the other, but we can develop strength in the other one with the right kind of practice.

So it’s only 52 tips, but felt, so complete to me. As far as answering all these questions that I had about practice. So yeah, that and also has booked the Talent Code. It’s so funny because I put it into practice just last night and was talking about it today. Again, my mom and I are trying to learn the theme song for Big Bang Theory, just cuz we watch it so much and we’re tired of having it stuck in our heads without knowing parts of it.

Cuz you know how infuriating that is to be like the whole world of what’s that part? So we decided last night we were gonna learn it. And so I thought, okay, first thing we need to do is slow it down and break it into chunks. And so we did exactly what Daniel Coyle talks about in the opener of the Talent Code.

We would start from the beginning, we’d go till we messed up, we would focus on the mess up part, make sure we did that part correctly, then go back to the beginning and then go until we messed up in a different part and fix that part. And yeah, so if you’re at all interested in creating a practice and it’s such a quick read, isn’t it?

It looks like a little gift book. It looks like something that wouldn’t have anything useful in it, but every tip is like really solid, so, absolutely. Yeah.

Alicia: I got it on audiobook and kept listening to it while I was cleaning and whatnot. Yeah. and just like thinking about how to help my kids excel mm-hmm. At what they’re going to choose as their passion, their superpower, you know? Yeah. I loved so much of that.

Oh yeah. It’s great.

But I had no idea how to practice. That was my biggest challenge is how do you get the stuff in your body? Do you just repeat it over and over? Like, do I just ignore my mistakes? Do I arrange a practice ahead of time, or do I just do what I feel like doing in the moment? Or, you know, how do you, organize something that becomes efficient, that gets you from point A to point B when you need to get there?

Dunham technique was huge in considering how to approach a practice.

Alicia: You could just see how precise and how beautiful your technique has been for so many years, how much you practiced, how much you thought about it, how much you did, you looked at it over and over again. You know, I do really admire that.

Well, nothing ever made me feel that way. Even boys.

And I loved boys. I loved looking at them and listening to men talk, but I did not love them as much as I loved watching belly dance technique.

And I think most belly dancers know what I’m talking about. Where you go watch a show and when somebody hits it, you’re just like, oh my God. You just lose your mind. And I just loved reaching for it. And every once in a while I’m like, oh, you know, I’ve been in this relationship with the dance form for like, oh my God, how long? 1988. What? It like 36 years or something.

And I keep thinking, yeah, maybe I don’t feel that way.

And then I’ll watch Heather dance. Heather, who’s in Portland here and just be like, I’m wanna scrape my skin off. She’s so beautiful. Like I still get that feeling about belly dancers that moved me.

About

I mean, yes, there was definitely an element of like, I should practice, which never worked for me. Cuz the more I’d be like, you have to, you must, then it just became a chore.

But then when it was like, oh my God, this is so fun. I love it so much and I’m learning something and oh my God, I love this drum soul and I’m achieving and it was so fun to practice.

I did not have 20 hours a day to practice. And half of that time was just wandering around the room, figuring out what I wanted to do. So yeah, that’s how it came about. I mean, that’s not the thing that floats everybody’s boat. And I don’t think it has to be.

One of the first times I worked with Donna Mejia, all the teachers that she hired for her summer event were required to adhere to certain principles. And she would give you the sheet of paper when you first arrived and you would read it and agree to it.

And I remember where I was standing, it had such impact.

And I was like, oh my God. And I mean, such. A huge impact on me because I think most of us assume that our perspective is just like this is.

What dance is, or what dance is supposed to be or what your priorities should be or what’s most important and I remember reading that and being like, oh my God, I don’t know why someone else is dancing. I don’t know what their path is. Therefore, how could I tell someone else what their practice should be or what they should be working on, or what their hierarchy of importance should be?

So that was really humbling, but also opened up a lot for me.

And people are like, oh yeah, people in the dance for social reasons. And I’m like, oh God, that’s just terrible. How could you? Isn’t it that from what we know, the origin of the dance is like to bring together and to dance at a party and to enjoy each other’s company?

I mean, a lot of people would be like, how dare you focus on technique and westernize this stuff? There’s something beneficial coming out of it. If we’re doing it with respect we still can’t know how it’s gonna impact each other.

#9. In 2001 you were “discovered” by rock mogul Miles Copeland, and toured for several years with his company, The Bellydance Superstars. It has been really fun to interview the Bellydance Superstars Artistic Director Jillina on this podcast as well as Kaeshi Chai, who was also in BDSS. That is also where you started making costumes influenced by the late 1800s to 1920s together with Mardi Love. BDSS toured the world, youtube emerged, and a global interest in your emerging style of Belly Dance grew. Do you remember a moment when you realized that you were creating a legacy? 

We don’t know what is going to be a fad and what will be a legacy.

I feel like I could create a program where you start at square one and we know what we’re going for. We know where we wanna end up and I can assist people in getting there. But I have no idea what’s gonna happen with it. It’d be great if it continued without me, which is why I didn’t name it after myself, cuz I wanted it to, belong to all of us.

And I have a personal style that’s different than the style that was on stage with belly dance superstars. And I feel like that’s the style I’m really codifying and trying to simplify and just name all the component parts.

I can tell you the first time that I realized that people felt that fusion was a dance form because I didn’t think it was a dance form I don’t know if I thought of it as a legacy, but like, oh, people are thinking this is like, A thing that has edges.

And that was on MySpace. There was a dancer who said that she did cabaret and at the time we were calling it tribal fusion. And she had a picture of herself in a Bela, like an Egyptian bra belt set. And then she had another picture of herself. She was wearing a coin bra and two big roses and a yarn belt with pantaloons so this was her tribal fusion outfit and this was her American cabaret outfit.

Like I’m fusing things and it changes every year.

You can’t go get your tribal fusion costume. You can’t just say you do fusion unless you’re studying many dance forms and fusing those with Carolena’s style. And that’s what it meant to me at the time. But now I feel like if I hold to that opinion, I’m like a parent that’s insisting that their child becomes a doctor or something.

Like at a certain point you’re like, this is my child. My child will be what it is and it will grow and change in the way that it grows and changes.

And the reason that I sort of settled into that was because of something my yoga teacher Gary Kraftskow said, who has completely shaped the way I feel about teaching. Like he’s my number one influence in my approach to teaching. And someone asked him, what if someone comes to you and they wanna learn headstand, but it’s clear when looking at their posture that’s not really what they need.

And my first thought was, will you have to be authentic? And you have to, tell them what you think.

And he thought for a while, and he said, well, if you give them what they want, you will then have the opportunity to give them what they need.

And I was like, what? I never considered that. You could meet a student with the questions because they’re gonna have different questions the longer they study.

Like you were saying earlier, the more you learn, the more you’re like, oh, I started out there, but I can’t do that anymore. If someone’s like, oh my God, I love tribal fusion and I want to do this thing like the Indigo did in 2006, and I do this kind of dance. How disappointing would it be for me to be like, well, “I don’t call it…”

Okay, well Rachel, why don’t you take a deep breath and look at what the hell you were doing and show people that.

And then after four phases, maybe you could tell them, you know what? It’s really exciting. Not any of that.

And that you put these things together.

You have to start somewhere. so I feel very comfortable now with teaching a set style of dance that has been codified because I feel like the whole time, my actual message is we’re gonna learn this so you can discard this if you want to eventually.

So I don’t know if that answers the question about legacy, but yeah. There was a moment I realized it was the thing, and at that time I didn’t get how that could actually be useful, I guess. And now I feel like I’m getting in touch with that a little more.

Alicia: Nice. Yeah. Carolena said something similar when they went out on stage and was it Morocco was named what she was doing. Yeah. like Carolena hadn’t put herself in that box yet. Took other people to kind of put the box around for her to go, oh, okay. So there’s something changing here.

Yeah. Yeah. It was one of Morocco’s students said, Morocco thinks you’re tribal. And at first Carolena was like, “Well they really got a lot of nerve naming my style”, you know. but she didn’t connect with at the moment was that on the East coast, which is where Morocco was teaching. They were using that as a descriptor for anybody that wasn’t, you know, sparkly. They’re all wearing stripes.

And if you go back and read all the Arabesque magazines, which was like the East Coast magazine of the seventies and eighties they would talk about, oh, this dancer is doing it in the tribal style. And she always had on stripes and like, more earth tones and wasn’t so sparkly. So basically Morocco could have just been saying, oh yeah, that group is sort of like East Coast tribal style. But it wasn’t, it was a description rather than a name for a style those are my words, not Carolena’s.

Carolena’s words were, wow, you’re naming my style for me. Huh? And then she said she thought about it later and was like, actually, you know, that makes a lot of sense. we are, we sort of are. So I love that story because you know, words can mean so many things and for Morocco’s student, I can’t speak for her cuz I don’t know what she was thinking, but I can only assume that she was just saying, yeah, Morocco recognizes your style is similar to a style of dancers we have on the East coast.

And then it changed everything over here. So it’s interesting.

Listen to the full podcast to hear Rachel answer these questions as well!

Alicia: I think one of your gifts to our world belly dance community is your playfulness. When you and Mardi and Zoe Jakes created a show called Le Serpent Rouge, you gave many dancers a license to play. What do you cherish about that show? 

Alicia: We are recording this interview in March 2023, and The Mega Massive 2023 starts soon, and I am super excited to head out to Vegas to see Ebony and Zoe Jakes and Amy Sigil dance in person! They are just a few of the incredible instructors we can learn from on Datura Online which is an incredible resource for dancers. It must have taken a ton of heart and time to grow Datura to the size it is now. What motivated you to create Datura online back when so little structured belly dance instruction was available online? 

Alicia: What are some of the things that makes Datura an amazing program? 

Alicia: Tell us about your 8 Elements Program, and what dancers take home from that experience. 

Alicia: Back when I first asked you to be on this podcast back in early 2022, you were working with a coach and processing cultural appropriation and fusion and your life. You did a dive deep into this in your Bedtime Stories series on youtube. In the 21st episode, you again mention your coach’s clarity, compassion and unity that she wants to bring to the world. You said that she sometimes drops a bomb of love and clarity that melts all of these defenses that you have. Are you up for sharing one of these bombs your coach dropped on you that might help us grow as well? Alicia: Let’s end with something we can eat 🙂 You recently said something like “Dance is more like making food than painting a picture.”  I love that. What is one vegan whole food ingredient you love?

Thank you so much for sharing your insight and life stories on the show Rachel! 

Most dance in our era is performative, but dance can do so much more. Harlem High School Assistant Principle and dance teacher Kierra talks about dances for healing, transformation, connection, and acceptance.

Alicia Free: Kierra Foster-Ba is a Body Wisdom Coach and New York City dancer who has done some deep work, and her presence is a gift. I am so excited to share Kierra’s voice with you! Kierra dances with Kaeshi Chai and PURE (Public Urban Ritual Experiment) an international organization of artists devoted to using belly dance to promote peace and end suffering. I met Kierra when I was running around wildly putting on a show with Kaeshi. I was hosting 10 performers, managing our band Taksim Ithaca, dancing with the band Beatbox Guitar, coordinating volunteers, buying and hauling concessions up the elevator, and trying to take care of my 3 and 5 year old kiddos at the same time. It was a little intense the way I did it. 

When Kierra smiled at me, calm washed over my body. I needed that! 

After the show, we took a workshop together with other dancers, writing our intentions in the water in the creek near my home. Letting the water heal us. It was so magical. After that experience opened me up, Kierra mentioned a dance-based meditation practice that she teaches. I relaxed into the most incredible hug with Kierra, and I wanted to know more about how she has cultivated this energy that shines through her. I wanted to share it with you.  

Kierra dances for human liberation. She helps us tap into the wisdom of our bodies with dance. To practice deep permission and acceptance. Giving us permission to be both graceful and graceless. 

https://youtu.be/30a85_R_XGE

https://youtu.be/uyhs2mNLgyA?t=92

https://youtu.be/qm0cM2fa1ik

Let’s start with the 5Rhythms classes that you’ve been offering in New York City since 2008. Tell us about that Kierra

Okay. So I just want to back up a little bit if that’s okay. Cause there are some people who might not be familiar with the 5Rhythms. So I want to give a little bit of a history of the 5Rhythms.

Some people say she was the originator. There’s some conflict about that. As it always is, there’s more than one person who’s pursuing something at the same time as someone else. But she definitely was one of the pioneers of what we now call conscious dance. Sometimes people call it ecstatic dance.

In fact, many people who’ve gone on to create their own bodies of work came through her lineage. And so what I know of her story is that she is someone who was a classically trained dancer, and so that informed how she looked at the world and how she observed people. She definitely observed movement, and I like to think of her as a really powerful detective of the heart because she was able to see what was being communicated in the movement.

And as I said, she was a classically trained dancer. Something happened so that she wasn’t going to pursue that as a profession. And so she began to be offered dance related work and all kinds of venues, you know, everything from asylums where people were working through breaks in their psyche to work at Esalen when Esalen was just being founded as this community center for exploration and healing.

And so what she discovered is that all movement can be broken down to five specific qualities. Movement is either flowing, meaning it’s continuous. One part of the movement is flowing into the next part.

Or it’s staccato, meaning that it’s segmented. It’s very clear. Often there’s a repeated pattern, so you can see, like boom, boom, boom. Boom, boom, boom. Boom, boom, boom.

It’s percussive, it’s clear, it’s directional.

It could be continuous and staccato at the same time, or there can be this light, effortless quality to the movement.

And the fifth and final rhythm is the rhythm of stillness. And it’s the idea that the dance movement is equally as internal as it is external an expression. So something is happening. And that’s why it’s a meditative practice because when you do the practice.

We call it a wave. You started out flowing. Grounding. It started to get percussive. Maybe a little bit more energetic. The high point would be chaos. When you’re just letting it all go, whatever is in you that’s ready to be released, you are letting it go.

And then after that cathartic movement you do just naturally, and there are physiological reasons for why you feel that -which I’ll talk about a little in a minute- you do feel this sense of ease and lightness, lyrical.

And then when you get to stillness, you feel emptied out. And so that still voice that maybe you don’t always listen to sort of bubbling up from the deepest, wisest part of yourself you now have access to in a different way.

I say that she’s brilliant for so many reasons, but one reason why I say that she’s a detective is because there are physiological reasons for why this works. For one thing each of the rhythms has what she called the gateway or the primary body part that is kind of instigating the movement.

So when you’re in flowing, it’s your feet and it’s the idea of getting as far away from your head as possible, which would be your feet really dropping down into your most instinctual animal self.

Then when you get into staccato, it’s the center of the body, primarily the hips.

When you get to chaos, it’s the head. And in your neck, you have powerful glands that pump you with endorphins. So when you start moving your neck and not keeping it straight the way that we normally do, you stimulate those glands. So on the one hand you are shaking it all out, so you’re resetting your nervous system, which all mammals have access to do.

If you’ve ever seen a mammal that was frightened, and then in order to help themselves get over it, what they do is they start to just shake and that resets the nervous system. So we have the opportunity to reset our nervous systems when we tremble and shake out, but we also are flooding ourselves with endorphins so that the release of whatever it is, frustration, rage, grief, actually after it’s done feels really good to us.

And so then when we’re in lyrical, there starts to be this ethereal quality where you almost feel that powerful connection that you have with all that is. And then of course, you go into stillness, which is the place where you can actually get answers to questions you didn’t know that you had, which is often how I experienced stillness.

You know, sadly it’s never the winning lotto number. Okay. But you know, it’s like all of a sudden something that in the background of my mind, I wasn’t even allowing myself to be conscious of, like a minor worry. All of a sudden the solution is just right there. I didn’t even ask the question.

And the solution is right there. Yeah, when we get still, that’s what happens. So that’s the 5Rhythms.

https://youtu.be/0Ge29tf2DJ0

What happened was, I was at a gym where my first 5Rhythms teacher, who was an amazingly brilliant soul it was a gym and God bless her, but she offered the 5Rhythms in a gym.

And it takes a lot of courage because you’re asking people to dance like no one’s looking, but everybody’s looking. Think about most gyms. This is a gym, you know, two of the walls are glass. People are looking in, they’re waiting for their class to begin. They’re like, “What the hell are those people doing?”

But somehow she created a space where we were able to just go for it. So I’m a pretty literal thinker, so I took it as playing. I was like, oh my God. The teacher said, ” Be a circle.” I’m a circle. I’m a circle. The teacher said, “Shake it.” Oh, I’m a washing machine. I’m shaking it oo. Okay. So I was just having fun, you know, like my inner five year old was like, Oh my God, this is great.

And one day I was just shaking like a washing machine.

And I’m shaking and my teacher just said, “Keep moving, Kierra, keep moving.” And then I got down on the floor and I was rolling around on the floor, like just shaking and moving and crying and raging, and then it was gone.

So, I don’t know to this day what caused it. But there was something in my muscle memory. There’s something about the position that I got myself in that clearly my animal self had a memory about and it was not a good one. But whatever it was left me. I didn’t even need to understand it.

It just bubbled up, it got released. And this euphoric sensation, this understanding of how I am part of a whole. I am not alone. I have never been alone. I am part of a whole. I am connected with all that is, and all that will be. This very profound sense washed over me. And after that I was hooked.

Alicia: I just got these waves of just like chills all over my body. I watched this video, Kierra Were you dancing rage or anger?

Yes, I was.

https://youtu.be/7Radhvvoryc

Alicia: I couldn’t stop watching it. You were just so honest with your movement. Like yeah. Wow. Thank you for explaining that. And I’ve heard of Ecstatic dance. I’ve been to Ecstatic dance parties, but I didn’t understand the origin until now. Like I didn’t know where any of that came from.

Yeah. And so I might be kind of jumping ahead. But in your introduction of me, you talked about that I believe that this is a path -one of many, I’m not saying this is the only path- but one path for human liberation.

Why?

Okay. Well, because we have evolved, especially those of us in the West, with a lot of restrictions around how we think about dance. For us in the west- and of course I’m making generalizations- but it’s almost always a performance.

It doesn’t matter if you’re dancing at a wedding or dancing on stage. You don’t what people saying, “What the? What is she? Why? Did you see? What is she doing?” We don’t want that. We don’t want people to say, “You know, she couldn’t find a beat if you gave her a magnifying glass.” Like, we don’t want people saying that.

And I see this a lot when I’ve worked with belly dancers through Kaeshi. I’ve offered classes and 5Rhythms classes. And what I have seen is that after the class, after the 5Rhythms, the movement that they were struggling to create comes much more easily.

Because a lot of times when we’re in our head and we’re trying to get everything right, there’s so much restriction. Just have fun with it. It’s not the end of the world, it’s just movement. Just have fun with it.

And there can be greater self-acceptance.

I think it’s important because I really do believe that we are all things, everything that exists is actually inside of us, whether we ever express it or not. It’s still there.

So for example, I’ve long wanted to do a workshop around inner serial killer. Because I think part of the ways in which we suffer is because we don’t accept that we came to the place of polarities. This is a place of polarities. Earth is a place of polarities. It’s hard to really understand something unless you know it’s polar opposite. if you’ve never known dry, how can you really know what wet is?

So, you know, building on that, the way that I look at the world. That would mean that if we are creatures that live in a place of polarity and are trying to understand what this is, it would mean that all of these things, not that we’re going to go out and do the worst thing that we’ve ever heard of, but it’s all within us. It’s all within us. And we won’t let us see those aspects of ourselves even when we can have enough self-discipline that we never do the things.

I think there’s other things that they have to now do to manage that, to keep that shadow side suppressed and unexpressed.

And it’s not just Carl Jung’s work that I’m building on, or Gabrielle Roth, the founder of the 5Rhythms.

I’m also building on Carolyn Elliot who wrote Existential Kink because I think she’s a very brilliant woman and she really expressed everything in layman’s terms with lots of historical evidence, you know. So she’s a PhD.

She’s done a lot of research on a lot of different things, and so she brings that to her work. But one of the things she talks about is the fact that most of us are run by our egos. So when we think that our egos is us, which is something that Gabrielle Roth talks about also, in fact, she has a whole body of work called mirrors, which is using the movement in the 5Rhythms to explore all the different ego characters that all of us have.

But what Carolyn says is that because our spirit actually came here to know all, right, our spirit is not making a judgment between, let’s say, prosperity and scarcity. Knowing that is like exciting and rich.

No, I do not wanna know scarcity. No, I said prosperity. So what happens though is that there’s this little secret part of us in our subconscious that will keep creating experiences that we say we don’t want because part of us does want those experiences.

So she talks about how you can integrate all of that. And part of that is by acknowledging the secret tiny little glee you have when you experience those things that your ego doesn’t want.

So I think dance is a really fun and light way to express all of that. Like I can count the physical altercations that I’ve had. The last one I had, I must have been in fifth grade, and sadly I got very beat up and had to run home, you know. So I’m not someone who’s like going to be beating people up, but in my rage dance, I can f*ck a mother up. Okay? And it’s like, no one’s hurt, but this is a way for me to express that dark part of me that feels like slapping people.

Alicia: There’s so much there. So one thing I’ve been working on called the connection course, and he talks about anger and just expressing but never directing your anger at anybody, but befriending your anger, right Never shoving it down, but nobody has to be a victim of your anger. You know what I mean? It comes out and it has so much truth in it, right? I just keep thinking of the inner serial killer class and like, what we resist persists, right? So the more we resist, we say, no, that serial killer is not in me. No, I’m different. They’re nothing like me. The more we resist that, the more we create the serial killer, right? Yeah. By feeling that separateness, Oh my God, there was so much. You just. Oh, I love this. I can’t wait to hear this one too.

Wow. So, there’s so many ways I can answer this question. I want to try to be really succinct and not so new agey.

For anyone who’s really practical and like doesn’t really wanna hear woo woo stuff, I wanna be able to speak to that person as well.

So I would say that sometimes it just happens in life that things that seem like they could never happen to you, happen to you. Okay? So I just wanted to be a dancer. I mean, I wanted to be a dancer, but I my family circumstances. When I was little, it was not set up. My dad was a single father.

I’m the oldest of four girls. My dad’s a musician, you know, like his income at that time was not really steady. Like dance class is just not gonna happen. But I still was obsessed anyway, and I was one of those annoying kids that would go up to adults and be like, “Oh, does this look like a ballerina?”

And they’d be like, “I don’t know kid leave me alone.”

But I just would not stop. I used to get my sisters when my father was not home and we would all put on our bathing suits and get in the shower because to me, feet slapping on the water sounded like tap dancing. And I was also obsessed with tap dancing.

And then what time my father came home early, and that was the end of that. Okay. But I was choreographing dances, like I just was really trying to make it happen for myself.

So that just wasn’t in the cards for me. But then one day I walked into a 5Rhythms class, as I said at my gym. And that led to me being in two videos. One with Gabrielle, she created this CD series so people could do her work at home. So I was in the Power Wave video.

And because I was in the Power Wave video, the filmmaker wanted me to be in Dances of Ecstacy, which was her documentation of ecstatic dance in different parts of the world.

And then I was like, wait a minute. I’m doing it. I’m doing it. So clearly there’s something here. I need to really explore this. And so then I became a 5Rhythms teacher and oh, and even belly dance. It came about because Kaeshi Chai went to the premier at The Knitting Factory of Dances of Ecstasy and loved the piece that I was in, and then invited me and kept inviting me to different things. And then finally one day I went.

And so that’s that connection. She selected me. She created this show called Pure Reflections: Beauty Reimagined, and I had a leading role. I played the mother goddess.

And then I was like, Okay, wait a minute.

I said, No, this is not ever gonna happen for me. And so then I began to do some inner reflection like, why dance? Why is this so important to me? And all the things that I discovered.

So I am someone that grew up with some really challenging circumstances and didn’t have a lot of faith or trust in people. When I first was going into 5Rhythms rooms, I wanted to dance by myself. I would often dance near the door. I didn’t even realize, but I had a very profound, like survival.

Like I was always dancing by a window or a door. I didn’t even realize that whenever I went someplace, I was always scoping if I have to move quick where like, okay. I didn’t even know that about myself. I was so unconscious in so many ways.

And the fact that I really love people, like I genuinely do. That doesn’t mean that I don’t dislike someone’s actions or something that they stand for. But the person who’s inside of all of that I can love. I can understand that they, like all of us, we are fear-based creatures and that they are acting from fear and ignorance. And I still could have a level of compassion.

Which was not really easy to do. I definitely grew up with a lot of ridicule. I was a girl that did not have a mom. I grew up at a time when people were supposed to match, and my father just said, “If it’s clean, put it on.”

Okay. So I was going to school looking like hell on wheels. Okay. So you’re a mom. You can imagine what was happening to me when I would get to school. My hair just going anyway because my dad didn’t know how to comb it.

And people were not enlightened. Even adults would right in front of us say, “Don’t play with those girls. Those are the girls that don’t have a mother,” right in front of us. It was really hard the way that we grew up. And it was hard on my dad.

He also really adultified me as the oldest child because he didn’t really understand that at seven you can’t go to school and register your little sisters for school.

Okay. Somehow he just thought that that was something I could do, and so I had to figure it out. When adults ask a little kid to do things that they’re not really equipped to do, but somehow they do them, what happens is that you will often feel really incompetent because somehow you kind of like made it happen, but you really didn’t have the skills.

And so there’s this nagging sense of like your own incompetence. So that w as like a part of how I treated myself. I always felt like it’s just a matter of time. I don’t know when it’s gonna happen and when it does happen, it’s gonna be your own fault. I was so mean to myself. My interior dialogue was really like, I was both a victim in the serial killer, like, you know, I was tormenting myself.

You know, like I wasn’t happy unless I was tortured.

So understanding and having grace, it’s just subsided. That need to constantly tear myself down. It dissipated it got satisfied once I actually saw it and said, No one’s doing anything to me.

I’m doing it. I’m doing it to myself. No one did anything. No one. It can actually hurt me. It only hurts me when it connects to something that I believe about myself. Something that a lot of times is not even true.

And even if it is true, if it’s not helpful, why think it? Why beat yourself up with these ruminations that are not helpful?

I’m sorry if that’s a bit longwinded, but I guess I wanted to really tease into the terror that I think a lot of us, I mean. I don’t think I’m unique. I think a lot of us are so cruel to ourselves in a way that we would never be to anyone else.

It’s crippling. And so, once I understood, that there was another way for me to interact with myself, it gave me so much more compassion for other people. So much more understanding that people have to do themselves.

You know, like even Trump. Trump, he has to do himself. Okay? He does. I may not like it.

I may be upset because him doing him impacts so many people in a negative way. But I can’t be mad at him for doing him. I just have to do me and help other people to do themselves better so he doesn’t have the same impact.

Alicia: All right, so now you all know what I was talking about when I said Kierra has done some deep work.

I love that I’ve heard a couple times is if somebody else talked to us the way we talked to ourselves, we would slap ’em across the face and say, Get the outta here. You know what I mean? And we never talked to them again. And yet, this is how we talk to ourselves throughout our lives or throughout our day when we wake up.

Right? I love what you said. I’m not gonna say it the way you said it. I love the way you said it, that we wouldn’t be bothered by something that somebody else says unless we think that about ourselves to some extent. And like, that just resonates so much too, because that’s that when you get triggered, right?

Yeah. Because the thing is that when people say things to you that you know are not true, it’s funny to you. You’re like, Oh my God, who let you out the house? You’re an idiot, you know.

Alicia: Right? You don’t get triggered by that when it’s not something been saying to yourself, but when it is something you’ve been saying to yourself, whether you realize it or not, that’s when you get activated, right?

Mm-hmm.

Yes. Yeah. And the more compassion I have for myself, the more compassion I have for others. It’s really funny how that works.

Alicia: Have you heard of Tonglen, one of the meditation practices that Pema Chodron teaches?

No.

Alicia: It’s about compassion and you take on the suffering of others, but you often just start with your own suffering.

Mm-hmm. you just kind of sit there. You know, it can go either way, but you breathe in the suffering of yourself or of others, and you give it space and you say, Well, what does this call for? I mean, it’s a process. It’s not that, you know, bam, bam, bam.

No, I don’t know it in that way, but I’ve definitely been in meditation circles where that was a direction we were given.

Mm-hmm.

Alicia: Yeah. That’s the thing, right? Once you have that compassion for yourself, you’ve created the space to have compassion for others, right?

Mm-hmm. Yes.

Alicia: It’s a matter of space. It’s a matter of freedom. It’s like this freedom of movement too. When you’re moving so freely. When I watched that video of you being so angry, it gave me permission to move more freely you know. Oh, thank you.

Well, thank you for that feedback, because that’s my intention. My intention is that, and why this is really important to me is, I just don’t know how much time we as a species have left. Because of choices that we have made, choices that the ones who came before us have made. I don’t know how much time we have left.

So for example, right now I’m just teaching online and at the end of every class, we go through the wave and then at the end of the class, I have people check in to see if they feel complete, because I only want them doing this from a place of fullness. And so then we will dance one or two more dances, but we are dancing for the larger society.

Gabrielle said that the 5Rhythms doesn’t mean a thing unless you take it to the streets. So yes, it’s a powerful tool for self-actualization, for self-healing and transformation.

The sacred duty is of course, to first uplift ourselves, but in the very next breath, uplift the other.

We are not alone. We are intimately connected in ways that it’s hard for us to wrap our mind around. But think about the pandemic. We could not be in the same room with each other because when I breathe out, you breathe in. So that’s how connected we are. Hm.

Alicia: Love it. And I do wanna say, I think most of my listeners are into quite a bit of woo woo. So, I like how you were like, this is what happened the journey and… yeah. So feel free to put in a lot of woo woo too, if you’d like. But I loved the way you explained how you got to your mission.

Alicia: I love these people that meditate in caves for 12 years and then they come out, you know, and they come out. That’s the magic, right?

Yeah. It’s also very hard to maintain that, right? Because now, they are on a higher vibration, but human beings are very social, so we wanna connect with other people.

So eventually, if you haven’t developed a meditation practice that is in community, you’re gonna be pulled down to the vibration of everybody that’s around you. Or you’re gonna have to extricate yourself, but you can only maintain that high vibration by bringing others with you. You know?

The other thing that I think is one of the reasons why I like to introduce myself as a body wisdom coach, because I think one of the things that we as modern humans forget is that we are primates.

And all the other primates, except for us, spend a lot of time touching each other. I mean, they are hierarchical like us and so it follows hierarchical lines, but they’re constantly grooming and touching each other and rolling around.

And we try to, as modern humans, talk ourselves out of that. That doesn’t make sense. That’s not appropriate. you know, all of this stuff can be resolved just by taking somebody’s hand in your hand and just sitting and holding hands.

Without having a big old conversation. Just that skin to skin is really important. And one of the things that I find the 5Rhythms, of course, but lots of forms of conscious dance allow for is when you dance and sweat and open up, there’s a way that you then become open to physical contact in the way that you might not have been before you danced.

And I just think of that as really important. I think if we could dance together, pile on each other, like all of that, we are just gonna have the society that we really want.

Alicia: You see kids too, how much they touch each other and touch us. Yeah. Right. Like, okay for them when you get to be older, it’s not okay anymore. Right? Yes. And primates too. They’re touching trees, they’re touching leaves, they’re touching rain water, they’re touching dirt. You know, all these things that we’ve isolated ourselves from, you know, in these structures.

Alicia: And I was like, I, I actually wrote it on a post-it note and stuck it above my computer. Cause I’m like, this is why I make this podcast. You know, the community. Yeah. It’s the community. We are creating this universal consciousness.

Yes. You know,

Well, I would say that we’re recreating it because early humans did live in clans and… yeah. I just feel like we’re just gonna go to hell in a hand basket if we don’t really start doing the things that we actually need as a species. Like, that’s why I feel that we have so much addiction, it’s rampant.

We need to be in community with each other. We came to this planet of diversity. We came and incarnated as one of the most diverse, if not the most diverse. Humans are so diverse. We have it all, every single shade that is every, height and width and you know, the, the shape of the body.

Like the eyelash length, like we just have it all. So instead of like marveling at our endless creativity, the endless possibility and how we show up in the world, we choose to not like it think everyone should be the same. And that if they’re not, they don’t belong. Like what kind of crazy mess is that?

Like you came here. You incarnated as a human specifically to have this experience. Only to be in denial. I don’t know. We’re complicated and messy. So that’s why I feel like the only way out for us is to keep expanding. Expanding our circle, expanding our own, and developing our self-love so that we have more love for each other.

Alicia: Oh, I love this part too. Surprise. Kierra is assistant principal at a high school in Harlem, so she is an educator in multiple realms. I also saw that you went to Yale. And I would total nerd for the Ivy League Cornell, you know, of I league institutions because there’s so much progress that comes out of these schools and they’re so pretty.

I love the old architecture in a lot of them. And I watched an amazing video of you speaking about your work as assistant principal and you included dance in that conversation. And I was just amazed. I was like, Oh no, she’s not gonna talk about dancing here. And you did! So how has dance impacted your other work? For example, your work as assistant principal?

So I’m still trying to figure it out because teenagers are hard. It’s a really challenging part of their lives. Especially because you know, in earlier times would’ve been considered adults. Even though we understand more about the human brain, and we know that they’re really not adults in terms of understanding consequences.

So it’s an interesting group. I say all that because my dream was to be able to teach the 5Rhythms in school. I’ve brought in other modalities into my school.

We work with an organization called IBREA, which is an international organization that teaches mindfulness. It’s like a interesting combination of meditation and yoga and Tai chi. Because a lot of it is not only based on reframing things, but also on the meridians. In fact my school was on the CBS News because of the work that IBREA does in my school.

So I have been able to bring other things in, but the 5Rhythms is really hard.

And so I actually went on a workshop this past August, just before school started with someone who teaches people how to bring not just the 5Rhythms, but you know, theater games and movement games to bring them into the school.

So I just finished that part one of that training. So the work that I do with students is not as physical as I would like. I did have a 5Rhythms club. But it was hard, you know, clubs, people come when they want. It was hard to sort of maintain them. They kind of like the idea. But this was also really early. This was probably like 2009.

Now I would do it very different. I have a lot more tools in my toolkit in terms of how to entice kids to move. But I would say that what I do although it’s not dance, I focus a lot on finding out, for example, what kind of learner am I. And I don’t know how familiar you are with the work of Howard Gardner.

Okay. So he pioneered this work back in the seventies and what he posits is that what we typically call intelligence actually has at least nine different components. So he talks about a verbal linguistic intelligence. He talks about a mathematical logical intelligence. He talks about a musical rhythmic intelligence, a visual spatial intelligence.

And so what he says is that all of us have all nine of these different aspects of intelligence, but depending on how our particular brains are wired, one or two or three will be stronger for us than all the others.

And so other people have taken his work further. And the idea is that most schools are set up by people who are strong in one or both mathematical logical and verbal linguistic. And so that’s how school is set up. That’s how the teaching goes. So somebody who’s bodily kinesthetic, who needs to move to think so that same lesson, but you incorporated some movement in that they would be able to do just as well.

And so ideally what should happen in classrooms is that once a week you go through all of these different learning modalities. I, for example, I am an auditory learner. It makes sense because my dad is a musician. So there’s probably some genetic in my family wiring around sound. So what happens is if I have to read something challenging, if I read it out loud to myself, I understand it and retain more. It’s more likely for me to store it in long term memory in a way that’s retrievable than if I just read the words on the page without hearing them.

So that’s just an example of learning style. So what I do is I, in the classes that I teach this semester, I am teaching two classes. Each year I do it one of two ways. Some years I start with just give me a paragraph about the smartest person you know and why.

And so then everybody writes about, Oh, my mom, oh my cousin, he graduated with whoever they wanna write about. And so when they say why we pull that out and I put that on the board so that we start to think about all these things that smartness is, that it is to be smart. Then we read this, Isaac Asimov piece called “What is Intelligence, Anyway?” It’s a personal essay, just one page.

He describes the fact that he has an IQ of 160 and he thinks that he’s smart, but he wonders doesn’t it mean that I’m just very good at taking tests created by people who are similar to me? And then he talks about his mechanic and he talks about these other experiences. And if somebody who had those particular strengths created a test, he would not be able to do it well.

And so that leads us to understanding that people need different things to learn. And so then they take self assessment to learn what kind of learner they are.

So we can create that as a community and then we go on to whatever it is.

You know, if it’s a 12th grade English class and we’re studying Shakespeare, you know, whatever it is. Or ninth grade where we’re looking at the individual. So we’re reading a lot of young adult fiction. We have started with knowing who you are because my goal is to always give people agency and to understand that you have intrinsic value that no one can take away from you.

Doesn’t matter what the circumstance is, it doesn’t matter if you’re always in these situations where it seems like you’re not doing as well as other people. There may be some reasons for that. Like your teacher is a verbal linguistic learner. That’s how she processes and that’s how she teaches. So yeah.

And the kids, I call them my grand babies. I tell them that they’re my grand babies.

Alicia: How long have you been teaching?

Over 32 years.

Alicia: Wow. Always in Harlem.

No. When I first became an assistant principal, I was also down in Chelsea at one point, but mainly it’s been on the Upper West Side or Harlem.

Alicia: So always in New York City.

Yeah.

Alicia: Cool. Wow. Oh, Kierra, you just have such an open, light heart. You know, think about a teacher, assistant principal in the city. You think about the stress that must involve at different times I mean, like, you’ve seem like you’ve figured out how to deal.

Well, it is really stressful, but I mean, I really do love what I do. And you know, I’m the oldest of four girls. I have three sisters. Two of us went into education. I think that, you know, school was definitely a place of humiliation, but it also was a kind of sanctuary. It was like a mixed bag.

And I really do believe that education is a moral imperative.

But it’s because we have such a incredibly hierarchical way of thinking, which is to be understood because we are primates, and primates are hierarchical, but we also have a higher self that we don’t seem to tap into and listen to very much because, you know, you look at a country like Finland. And Finland is at the top of the food chain, and Finland had a lot of the same problems that we did, and they figured out how to solve them. Like us, school is funded by property taxes. So they had you know, a lot of disparity. And so what they did was, it’s still funded by property taxes, but it goes into one kitty and every school gets the same amount.

It’s divided equally. That’s something that we could do here. Another thing is that they don’t kill and drill. They don’t give homework until like secondary school. That a lot of how children learn is through play and through exploration. Yeah. There’s no reason why someone goes so excited. I have my lunchbox. Is today the first day of school? And then by third grade they hate school. Like why? Because it’s a place of humiliation. Because it’s a place of not getting it right. It’s a place of memorizing things that don’t make sense, and you don’t even really know what they mean. But someone said, “Memorize it.”

It’s like, what the hell man? What the hell? Humans love to learn. They love to learn. This is what we do. And we could do it so much bigger and better.

So like, what? Why?

So you could have 10 million purses? You are only one human being. What are you gonna do? Change your purse every five minutes? Like, come on.

Alicia: I love that. Cause that’s a sign of success, Kierra, to have 10 million purses that you don’t use, right? Like, that brings me joy.

It’s an addiction. That’s an addiction.

But we’re keeping it together. I don’t mean to be pessimistic because we are going to get it together. Human beings are magical beings. We are going to get it together. I don’t know that I’ll see it in my lifetime though, but we are gonna get it together.

Alicia: You see glimpses of it when you’re doing the things that your heart wants you to do, right?

Yes, I do see glimpses of it. I do. I really do. Yeah.

Alicia: I heard you say that we can accept our whole selves. That we love to show people our shiny bits, you know, on Instagram and everything. Posting what we’re most proud of, what we think makes us look the best. But we all have places where we are deceptive and selfish and cruel, and it’s that shadow self we’re always fighting against. and therefore we are un unified as individual beings. We’re ununified. And you said you can’t be a compassionate person if there have not been times that you were cruel.

Oh, so there’s a lot of ways of doing it. One way that I did it was.. So one of my defaults used to be until very recently, even after doing a lot of work, was resentment. And it wasn’t only for myself, if it looked like something unfair was going on.

I think sometimes people in big families, at least one person can have this characteristic. You know, you’re always looking like, oh, look like you got a little more juice. Well, how come you got all the juice? It was like, you know, families can be like that.

I’m really gonna dance resentment, that burning resentment, you know, no one even knows that you’re resentful except you think they don’t know because you’re like smiling. No, it’s okay. Like what’s that burning resentment?

That resentment where it’s just like, it comes to you in flashes. Like most of the time you’re okay, but then something happens that you’re just right back in it. Like, really how does that move, you know? Is it like quick little movements? Is it like slow and sinewy and panther?

What body part wants to take on expressing that? So many, many, many dances of resentment. And then I didn’t have that resentment anymore. It got fully and completely expressed. It didn’t happen with just one or two dances. It was like, this was a nightly practice.

And sometimes you don’t stay there. You know, you dance resentment and then something else wants to come through. But I had a specific practice of, I wanna give my resentment a voice. I wanna give it a voice, you know. And then it just doesn’t happen anymore.

Like, that’s not my default setting anymore. So that’s one way of doing it. So if any of your listeners wants to pick up Existential Kink by Carolyn Elliot, she describes some exercises that you can do. And she works with the idea of turn on, like really allowing the sensations in the body and really noticing like, what sensation are you feeling, where are you turned on by this darker aspect of yourself, you know?

And that part of us is always useful.

Even when I was describing my inner serial killer that is torturing me, she’s saying, ” Listen. This world doesn’t like you. You need to be careful. I’m gonna beat you up so nobody else has to because I’m going to whip you into shape.

Even though you never listened to me, I’m gonna whip you into shape so that you’re never vulnerable and you’re never caught out there.”

I talk about the resentment dance. But once I did all of this, I, I saw that everything about me is helping me. I mean, sometimes they’ve outlived their usefulness, you know, it’s not really that helpful anymore.

You know, like, so thank you. I love you, but I got this from now on.

Alicia: Giving it a voice. Yeah. Giving the shadow parts a voice.

Mm-hmm.

And a fun way, if you have the space, dance is always because there’s a reason why babies dance.

Babies hear music and they could be in your arms, and they just started moving their bodies. Like I don’t know all the science behind it.

But it’s real. There’s a reason even if you feel like you have two left feet, please dance. If you don’t feel like you can dance in front of other people, you know that there’s always the bathroom. You know, put your airphones on and go in the bathroom and give yourself, you know, it’s your birthright.

I know you don’t believe me. There’s levels to this. Of course, there are dancers who are artists. I’m not taking that away, but every human being. We are dancers. That is our birthright as humans.

Some historian may know more than me, but from what I know, the ancient Greeks were the first to get weary of dancing, and they actually wrote it down.

So that’s how we know. What they didn’t like about dancing is when they would have those long, like 10 day feasts and people would be dancing and dancing and dancing. They found it difficult to reestablish the hierarchies once the feast was over. People’s hearts would be open from that deep dancing and that deep connection that would be fostered by dancing together.

So they said, Something’s gotta go , you know, something’s gotta go. So they began to cut down on how long feasts could last. But they had some serious concerns about dancing. And in many religions, because I think you know, just from what’s written, there’s often this fear of sensuality. Particularly sensuality in women around dancing.

Sensuality is related to sexuality, but it’s not identical. You know, they’re not the same thing. Sensuality. The love through the senses. That’s part of life. That’s part of being in a body, you know? And enjoying smells and sensation and sounds and textures and taste. That’s part of being in the body.

But people started to have fears around that. And, dancing could definitely invoke the imagination. Which that’s why you have an imagination. Enjoy it. But you know…

Alicia: This is perfect cuz my next question is on your website, shakingspiritwaves.com you wrote, “Our ancestors danced. They danced for healing transformation to create community, to unify the will in preparation for a hunt or to wage war. They danced for ritual, for celebration, for artistic expression. Our ancestors danced in every single part of the world. We are each from a long line of ancestors who danced. It is quite recent in human history that dancing is no longer an integral part of our lives.”

And you spoke a little bit about, with the Greeks, it interrupted their hierarchy. So any other ideas about what happened and why did so many of us stop dancing?

Well again, I think the other part of it is sensuality. Right? The sensuality too. Okay. So the woo woo part of my story is that and it wasn’t even about like career path.

It was actually about a relationship. And so the reading was to end the relationship because this was related to suffering from the lifetimes, more than one that I had as a temple dancer. So according to this reading, I have had lifetimes more than one as a temple dancer.

They would never belong to you. So you cannot stay in this relationship. It’s just no. You need to be in a more committed relationship. This is not gonna work.

So it was great to get the news about what to do regarding relationship, but was very interesting to me to find out that possibly I’ve had lifetimes where dance was important to me. Cuz that would explain why I was like such a fanatic and went around annoying people as a little girl.

Alicia: Sensuality, the humanness of it. I was at a Tony Robbins event and there was a man next to me who was probably 10 years older than me. He goes, I just started dancing. I was like, What? He’s like, No, no. I went to a Tony Robbins event like two months ago and I just started dancing. I never had danced in my entire life. And I was like, this is so real for so many people.

And when you say like you come from a long line of ancestors who danced, like. What are you telling yourself about dance that’s keeping you from being in it? From having it, from experiencing it? You know, what are we telling ourselves?

We have to be doing it a certain way. Like what you were saying before is you don’t want people looking at you, you know? And then we catch ourselves too, being the one that’s looking at the dancer going, What is she doing? You know? We’re like, well,

I mean like, I don’t know if you ever used to watch Seinfeld back in the day, but on the show Seinfeld, there’s a character Elaine.

And like her dancing was legendary. How many people were like laughing at that awkward dance that she was doing? And you know, part of it was that, you know, of course they exaggerated it and looking like she was hurt. But what’s wrong with that? What is wrong? If that’s how the beat is hitting me. The beat is hitting my shoulders.

Right. And that’s why it was so funny too. It’s because people were making fun of something that doesn’t need to be made fun of. Right? I mean, it’s that fear of so many people, like, am I gonna look like her?

You know?

Yeah. And listen, I have no shame in my game. Like, I don’t care. I love dancing so much. I don’t care. Right. I’ll take it all from the best one to the worst one to in the middle. I don’t care. I don’t care.

Alicia: I was in a workshop once too, and they said, Dance like someone from another planet, like doing moves that your body’s never done. And I was like, Wow, I’ve never even given myself the opportunity to do that. You know? And I’ve just been so limited in my thinking of what a dance move should look like, how I dance, you know? And once you take a step back and not worry about what you look like it’s gets so much bigger.

So I’m not denigrating that or equating the two. I’m saying that they are separate, that there are some of us that will develop our dance so that it is in art form.

But I am also saying that you know, you could think about it like cooking, right? There are some people that are going to be these gourmet chefs that are gonna be so inventive with the flavors and textures that they put together. But all of us have to cook in order to eat. And all of us in our own way will bring love and artistry to our cooking.

And so that’s what I mean about your dance. I do believe that there is medicine for us and often for other people, but medicine for us in our dance.

Alicia: Some people tell themselves they can’t cook either.

Yeah, that’s true. You know, that’s true that, but I know exactly what you’re talking about. But also sometimes people, that’s how they like it, you know, sometimes people like a little charcoal on their food or I happen to like very dry things.

Most people like Turkey, that’s all juicy. And I’m like, eh, no. My grandmother technically was not a good cook, and she would make a very dry Turkey. And that’s what I grew up on and that’s what I like.

I also think it’s because I’m Kapha however it’s pronounced. So I have a lot of moisture in me, so I like dry stuff.

Alicia: Ooh. I Is that the Kama Sutra kind of stuff? The different body types? Is that what that

Yes. Pitta is very lean. And that’s a drier body type. And so they need more moisture. And then there’s Vata. And then the one with a K is the largest body type. Nobody is purely one or the other.

Alicia: Yeah, I never thought about it all that way. Yeah. Uh, I know that Kaeshi’s in Europe now I’m gonna do their peace event.

Yes, I’m going for that.

Alicia: Oh my God, are you really? So this is perfect.

It is definitely in the top 10 things that I’m most grateful for in my life. One of the things about PURE that is so wonderful is that you have all level of dancers.

So it’s not a company where everyone is a professional or even a high level amateur. There are those of us who just love belly dance, who love the movement. And we approximate the movement in however way we can. And like there’s room for us. And how many companies like that? You know, so there’s a lot of ideas that we like because they’re egalitarian, but how many people actually put it into practice?

Right? So it’s one thing to have this idea on paper, but she puts it in practice. And I think she does that because she has multiple companies. So she can have the Belly Queen Company where you really need to be an elite dancer in terms of your understanding of both artistry and technique. But then she can have this company where there’s room for people who are advanced beginners.

Alicia: Nice. Yeah. Kaeshi’s a magic being. What she creates.

Where she gets her, I’m like, Oh my God.

That I’m in service to our mother. I love that. I love that.

Alicia: Yeah. So cool. I’m so glad you’re gonna be in Rome. That’s gonna be beautiful.

That’s F E M M E with an exclamation point, which is a movement practice to live drumming. That’s my favorite way to move, is to live music. And it sounds amazing. What’s it like?

So Bernadette Pleasant is the founder of Femme!. She is someone who is a Nia teacher. She also is a professional pole dancer and a teacher of pole dance. And so when she created her body of work, she combined elements of both and then put her own special magic into it. So it is very much a transformational form of dance.

So there are poses and movements that you create based on prompts that she gives you. For example let’s say confidence. How does confidence move?

What does confidence look like when it’s stationary? So she gives you prompts for you to create and find that in yourself.

So it’s really just that profound heartbeat music. I love it. I was really grateful to be accepted into the training because I wanted to expand my understanding of somatic healing and somatic movement.

And so it has everything that I’ve been exposed to, but there are some things that I felt were missing. One was sound. And then the more that I learned about sound, for example, the “Ah” sound does the same thing for your internal body that shaking does for the exterior.

The “ah”. When you go, “ah”, it resonates throughout your body. And it sort of resets your nervous system.

Because I find that one reason why I think people say that they can’t dance is allowing the hips full expression is not really acceptable in many, many, many, many cultures.

You know, I’m speaking as somebody who’s 61. So now we have twerking, you know, all these things. When I was growing up, it was very hard because if you didn’t move your hips at all, people would say that you can’t dance. But if you got a little carried away, the next thing you know, people are saying stuff about you.

Oh, I’ll better watch her. She’s gonna be fast. It’s like, I was just, what? Like as I said, I’m the oldest of four girls. So I go to school and I learn this ring dance. You know the one “shake it, shake it, shake it, shake it. If you can shake it like a milkshake and do the best you can, rumble to the bottom from the top.”

So I come home from my little Head Start program and I had to put my sisters in a circle so I can teach them to dance. The next thing you know, I’m picking myself up off the floor. And I said, “Daddy, what?” And he said, “What are you doing?” And I said, “Oh, I’m just showing them a dance I learned at school.”

“I didn’t send you to school to shake your ass.”

And so that’s what I’m bringing forth in Hum. Healing, Using Movement. Sound, somatic movement, but a special emphasis on sensuality.

And I don’t mean like sensuality, like performative, which is another place that we go to, Oh, look at me, aren’t I sexy?

No. For yourself, for yourself. You know, starting from the inside. Just curling and arching and you can even close your eyes with that sensation.

Yeah, so I’m still developing. I hope to have my first offering in the spring. So many ideas are percolating and I wanna just see what really lands, cuz you know, I can’t have, like first we’re doing this that, then we’re doing this.

Like I want it to be a really uplifting experience for people and especially for women.

I want it to be something for you.

Something for each person. This is for you. For you to really enjoy yourself. Just because these images are really pervasive and we’re very familiar with them.

Babies just love themselves. They just see their toes. They’re like, I have to eat these damn toes. These toes are too cute. They can’t be out here like that. I gotta devour them.

They just love themselves. Oh my God. Did anyone see these dimples? Oh my thighs. They’re so cute. Yummy, yummy, yummy. I want us to feel like that. It is not performative. It’s for you. And then you can decide what you wanna do with it. But first it’s this juicy gift to yourself.

Alicia: Hmm. My friend Tessa Meyers, who lives right up here in this area. I feel like she’s really good at that. Just giving herself her own juicy gifts.

And then she puts it on Instagram and you’re like, Wow, could I do that? Like, could I feel that way? You know what I mean? So, yeah. But a lot of it is us creating a hierarchy of who’s the most desirable.

It’s what you’re saying, right? It’s cuz you wanna be more desirable than somebody else. For some reason that makes us important? I don’t know what it does for us. There’s some payoff there, right? Beautiful. Okay, last question.

When we were taking that workshop together in the creek and our friend Kazuma, a little awkwardly asked you to speak because you are our elder he speaks English really well, but I think it was a little hard for him to communicate what he wanted to communicate right there cuz it is his second language. Or third, I’m not sure your response, smooth it all out when you said something like, “Thank you. I do consider myself an elder.”

Well, I think oh gosh, I could almost cry when I think about this because I do see some lovely things happening in the belly dance community where people who are moving differently because they are older, like they’re still rap attention.

People aren’t like, Okay, when is she getting off? Like, Yeah, still seeing the gift and the beauty in moving in all the stages that people go through. Really seeing that, like reframing it for ourselves so that we have an expanded sense of beauty, I think is really important.

If you’re fortunate, that is what’s going to happen. You’re not gonna look like you were 20 and you are just not, you know how they say, 60 is a new 40 or whatever . It’s like, Yeah. Until I stand next to somebody who is 40.

Once I stand next to someone 40, I don’t look like I’m 40. Okay.

You know, cause they don’t have creaky knees. It’s like, Yeah, but all of us are going to experience this, we have not always thought this way. This is some what recent in history that we have all these prescriptions.

Maybe it’s because early humans when someone did live that long, it was like, Wow, what’s your secret? How can I be like you? You’re a unicorn, Right?

Yeah. but I just love the fact that we unlike all the other primates, we are not limited by our biology. We have tremendous choice.

We are hardwired for all these things. We’re hardwired to be fearful. That’s why we survived. We heard a twig, we started running. We didn’t look to see what was going on. But we don’t have to continue to be fear-based. We’ve conquered so much. We don’t even have any predators anymore. Except for each other of course.

Don’t have to be so fear based anymore. Like we actually can choose to retrain. Because our brains have plasticity. So we can actually rewire our own brain in real time. Like the children now, they can do things that people in my generation had a hard time doing because they’re constantly doing more than one thing at one time.

They are better at multitasking because they are on the computer and they’re doing this and they’re doing that. And the brain has rewired itself to be able to do those things. Now, of course, they have a harder time giving focused attention than, you know, people my age who we just had to pay attention cause you’ll get knocked out.

You know? Cause there was no such thing as child abuse. And let’s face it, children of all social classes, all demographics, you go to the supermarket, someone’s getting a smack. That’s just how it was back then.

Mm-hmm. So you were saying expand your concept of beauty. That was one of those things right.

Yes.

That’s something we can all do.

Cultivate patience so that if you’re speaking to someone who is talking slower or maybe is not as focused as maybe they were 20 years ago when they were younger, like having that patience. Also, I think it’s important. I love what they’re doing in some parts of Europe, where I think it’s in Holland, where they are having college students live with seniors and the college student gets a discount on their rent.

And they were right, that friendships did develop as because of that. The other thing that they’re doing is they’re building daycare centers in senior citizens homes. So that’s something that we can start to think about.

It is important for young mothers to be friends with people who have grown children, to be friends with teenagers, to be friends with the children that are friends with their children. Like real friends. Like to actually know about my child’s friend, not just, Oh, that’s Peter’s friend, but know something about Peter’s friend.

Peter’s friend’s favorite color is purple. He likes chocolate cake. Like real friendships. It’s important. I think so. I think it’s very important because I noticed that the people who don’t like old people never had any relationship with older people. I had a relationship with my grandmother, but friends that didn’t have relations, they were always saying mean things about older people.

But I didn’t have that because even though my grandma was one of those mean grandmothers, but I still love my grandmother.

Alicia: Have friends that are different ages. That’s great. I remember I had a friend and she was like, Where are all the 30 year olds here? And I’m like, What? Like, you know, when I have a party, I invite the people I wanted to be there. They could be two years old, they could be 70.

Right. You know what I mean? But she was always thinking about like, where are the people that are within three years of my age? And I was like, Wow, that is a way that a lot of people do think. You know? Mm-hmm. And that does limit your concept of like the value of an older person, you know? And younger people too. Yeah. Like you’re kind of around little people, you know, or teenagers, all of that, all of that spectrum of life.

Yeah. I think it’s really important.

Yeah. And if we don’t do something about it then, you know, the young people, when they get old, they’re gonna face the same thing. Like, it’s important to stop that trend and to be in community.

Alicia: Yeah. Rachel Brice, I heard her say just being 20 is sexy. It just is. A nd when she said that, I was like, Oh. That’s why I feel so different. It’s part of it you know, like I’m 40, what am I 41 now? I’m like, okay, that, natural thing is not happening to me anymore.

And I don’t have a responsibility to do that. Like, I don’t have a responsibility to hold onto that or try to keep on being the sexiness of my twenties, you know what I mean? Because I had that in my head, like I was comparing myself.

I think it might take a different shape, but I don’t think that it’s something you ever lose.

So glamor for example, there’s some people that like to present themselves. They love glamor, and they’re 70 and they’re still really glamorous. They find ways to make it work for them. And I feel like sexiness operates in a very similar way. It’s just that I think particularly in America, I think less so in Europe, for example.

And I don’t know if I should really be saying this from public, but my last long-term relationship with someone who is quite a bit younger than I am. But he’s from the part of the world where it really wasn’t an issue for him. When we broke up, he said, No, that was never an issue for me.

And I believe him, so I think this is something that might be uniquely western that you know, when someone is over 30, they lose their sexiness in some way, but that’s not really true.

Alicia: And one other thing too with Fifi Abdou. I mean, look at the woman. Look at the way she moves. she’s so sexy, right? I think she gets sexier, you know, so. Yes. Yeah. So you’re right. it’s a big story. In some ways we tell on ourselves like, is it a value to us? Is it something we want? Is it a quality we want? You’re like, so cultivate it.f

Yeah, exactly. And I. just think it’s hard to be a person and it’s really, really, really hard to be a woman, you know, Because we have, so many ancestors behind us that had it so much worse than we do, because they were female, you know?

And so we’re carrying all of that in our dna. there’s the fear of being, oh, you know, a sexy woman, because if something happens to you, very few people are gonna stand for you. Even people who are your friends are gonna be like, What? Well, you know, is she, I mean, like, we are not there yet.

I think we will be someday, especially the way people are being galvanized right now around abortion rights. But, yeah. there’s gotta be like really standing for woman.

And that includes a sensuality and sexiness in the feminine form and the way that it shows up in women and all the different ways that it can be, you know? And also not being so narrow about what is sexy. Like I’m a straight woman, but I remember years ago I was teaching a college class with this very butch woman and I was like, That woman is goddamn sexy.

If I moved in that direction, I would definitely try to get her number.

Alicia: You’re being honest with yourself.

Yeah. I was like, wow.

You know, And even if it’s not your type, that’s not what you signed up for. You’re still, you know what?

Alicia: Prince was one of those characters. I think

He was like so short and skinny, you know, not what the typical idea of masculine, but the man was.

You’re like, You know what? I think I in that direction.

Yeah. I think he allowed a lot of men that are straight to be like, Hmm, you know, Wow, I wanna keep watching this person. You know?

Yeah. yeah. Yeah. That’s what I think.

Alicia: Energy. Yeah.

Kierra, you have been such a wonderful, wonderful guest, and to have your voice in our heads is such a gift, you know? So thank you. Thank you so much for the exploration that you have gone on. With your dancing and the 5Rhythms and teaching and creating your own body of work for all of us to just let us all ruminate in, you know, such a wonderful thing to do.

When you said that I’m creating my own body of work, I was like, Wow, it’s a big responsibility and it’s just a big gift.

Yeah. But the thing is, again, a little woo woo. I feel like I’m downloading it because it was just like before anything. I was just coming from a 5Rhythms workshop and I knew it was gonna be named Hum. Then I was like, Hum, but what is hum? Then I was like healing using movement. I was like, Okay. Hum. And then I was like, it has to be with sound and sensuality. But it’s been like these flashes, you know how sometimes you just get an inspiration. It’s been like that. You know, I am somebody that I do my own little version of ancestor worship.

Like I do feel that there’s more to life than what can be seen or explained. And I do believe all of us have unseen help. And so I’m leaning into the unseen help around me.

Alicia: Beautiful. Oh, thank you so much, Kierra.

Thank you. Have a wonderful night.

https://youtu.be/kmm9CZM2QwQ

Salit of NYC on the sisterhood of belly dancers, the politics that divide our community of Arabic music lovers, and how focusing on our belly dance technique rather than our appearance brings us more happiness.

Salit (Sal-eet) started belly dancing in Israel when she was 21, and she did not expect it to become her profession and the foundation for her own bellydance school! I met Salit at Art of the Belly when I took a super fun cane dancing class from her. I love her sass when she dances, as well as her commitment to authenticity and the sisterhood she has created with other dancers. 

https://youtu.be/3Dhhn_SKAVE

Salit on Youtube

Alicia: Let’s start with sisterhood. Please tell us about Sheba. 

Sheba stands for the Sisterhood of Eclectic Belly Dance Arts. Sheba is all about community as well as technique, history, culture, musicality, improvisation, and giving confidence to our sisters. We have classes together and take class trips. We perform for each other at our own events and perform at other events. It’s all about the fun.

Sheba on Facebook

Sheba on Instagram

Sheba on Youtube

Alicia: You describe belly dance as the epitome of femininity with movements that emphasize every curve in the body in a soft, yet powerful way. You have also said that you were more of a tom boy when you were younger. Identity is powerful! It can be hard for us to do something that we believe goes against our identity. Do you remember what attracted you to belly dance? 

I remember Arabic film Friday in Israel.

What stood out to me the most was the power of a dancer to just stand still and do nothing, and be so amazing. To express so much with so little movement.

To stand still but be so energetic. I have never seen that freedom in another art form.

Alicia: Are there any Israeli dancers that are famous in Egypt or through history that have been famous in Egypt?

Not Israeli, there are Jewish dancers, but Egyptian Jewish. It’s problematic as you can imagine to be accepted as an Israeli and Arab countries. So, no.

Alicia: On your website Shebadance.com in your bio, you wrote that when you were younger you took ballet, and wrote that you hated putting your hair up in a bun and wrapping it in a hair net. I feel the same way! I want my hair to do its own dance too. You also wrote that you felt like your movements were too heavy for ballet. But heavy sounds perfect for stomping a dabke! You love to lead dabke, and you do it beautifully and with passion. It was so much fun to be pulled into your dabke to a live band at Art of the Belly and snake through the room in a line of dancers, holding hands. What are some ways we can learn how to do dabke with energy similar to how they do it at gatherings in the Middle East? 

So definitely it’s great for that for dabke, actually. Yes, there’s a lot of stomping, but there’s a lot of very quick footwork and jumping, which you actually need to be very light on your feet for. So I was very bad at footwork before. So I had to work on that a lot and condition my body. It was hard, but definitely worth it because now I really feel like I’m flying.

So I have that heaviness, but when I step back I need some of the lightness.

Dabke is originally from the military showing their pride in their victories. Mostly for men. So the main characteristic of dabke is pride. Hold the upper body really tall and open and strong, and keep that energy up very strong and held and proud. That’s the key.

Alicia: So it’s really big in Eastern Europe, right? In the Balkans they do line dance. Is there crossover? Did it come from one spot? Did all line dances come from the military? 

There are a lot of line dances in many different cultures. It is really interesting that dabke and Irish dancing are very similar, I’m not sure how that came about. It could be a coincidence, could be not. Specifically Levantine style line dance. So Egyptians don’t do this kind of line dance. They have saidi, which they’re proud of but it’s a different feel.

The Levant is Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, technically Israel is not included in that. But that area.

You hold the whole hand of the person next to you. When you lead a dabke you hold a masbha. And it’s originally prayer beads. That’s what people hold. This one that I’m holding up I made this with the troupe leader that I’m in. It’s made of his old t-shirts , which he assured me were clean before we did this. So, I guess this is common to improvise. This masbha has red, green and white colors, which are Lebanon colors.

Alicia: Oh, it actually has a handle on it. And then it has a little weight on the end so that it spins well, is that what’s going on?

Yes, it’s just a lot of tape. It’s very improvised.

Alicia: Is that something people would put in their purse before they go to a party? Or do people carry those to a place where they’re going to line dance? 

I’m not sure, but I think Muslims generally just have prayer beads on them. That’s what they use. They use prayer beads for dabke. It’s part the culture. Part of the patriotism. Religion and the land usually go hand in hand.

https://open.spotify.com/track/6Qxe17yNxxG1KkYbdp9xf8?si=8af383bb740141be

This is an instrumental version of “What Happened to Me” It’s different. It’s very classical and pleasant to dance to.

Alicia: Was there a key moment when you realized you want to focus on teaching Egyptian style belly dance? 

https://youtu.be/GhvCRtbLlog

I don’t really see myself teaching a purely Egyptian Style. My base is very Egyptian, but I always have to add my own from what I have learned, observed and feel. Sometimes I’ll add a fan veil, or flamenco, or even elements of Halloween.

Alicia: You have stopped using the term “Oriental” when you talk about belly dance. Can you tell us more about that?

Oriental has always bothered me, especially in America when it is used to describe Asian people. Why do some say “Oriental” instead of “belly dance”? But “belly dance” can be associated with prostitution. So we find other terms that sound more elegant, more sophisticated. So I understand that, but for my research, “Oriental” is a colonizing, derogatory, racist term that was created to separate us from them. So “Us” being the sophisticated superior civilized West, which is primarily Britain and France, and “Them” as often referred to the inferior, primitive, barbaric, uneducated East.

Let me read you a quick quote from Edward Said’s book “Orientalism”, a very important book.

“The Orient was almost a European invention, and had been since antiquity a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences.”

So to me, referring to this dance as Oriental is fetishizing and exotifying and dehumanizing.

In a way it’s like people over in the orient are not real people. It’s this fantasy land with fantasy people. And if they’re not real people, we don’t have to treat them with the same respect. And I am real. I am not a fairy, I’m not a mermaid. I’m not a fantasy. It’s great to be creative and to take on different characters and play around with.

But at the end of the day, it has to be a character. It can’t be the person. We’re still human beings. And I put a lot of emphasis on presenting how real I am personally. So it’s very important for me to present another perspective, something for people to think about.

I’m not telling anyone what to do. Or to completely change their minds. I want to just have them go and continue researching. and just question, why do we use this term? Why do we think that this colonizing term is better than that colonizing term? Maybe we should use another term.

At least the term “belly dance” is descriptive to me. And it is not just about a specific place. What we present in this dance now is very far from the origin. There’s a new dance style that deserves it’s own name. Even “Raqs Sharqi”, meaning dance East, is somewhat related to colonizing. Even just Raqs is in Arabic, and this dance is not only done by Arabic speakers.

When the Egyptians and the teachers use the word “Oriental,” I think they are using it to elevate the art. But if people of “the orient” see themselves as inferior to European culture and because of this add ballet steps to belly dance. Add more European elements to the costuming, then…

So I started belly dance when I was 21 and then maybe two years later, I moved here (to New York City). So I didn’t really work as a dancer in Israel.

I was still kind of a beginner so when I started working in New York, and I didn’t think it would be a problem to tell people I’m Israeli. I was never ashamed of it. I’m not ashamed of it. It’s just where I happened to be born. And that’s how I was raised. And it’s a part of who I am. And even though I knew there was some issue with a conflict, maybe Arabs will not accept it.

I still wasn’t afraid to say I was Israeli. And then little by little people started telling me “You can’t say that, or people will not work with you.” And then I noticed, for example, I danced to this Egyptian restaurant and as I mentioned, I love Egyptian style. So I was like, yes, I can really be myself, hardcore Egyptian music and dance, and they’re gonna love it.

And they appreciated the music choice, and they appreciated my dance. And they got up and danced with me and everybody was happy. This guy was dancing with me and then he started talking to me in Arabic afterwards, which was very flattering. He thought I was Egyptian, but then he said, “Where are you from?”

And I said, “From Israel.” And then I saw his face just drop. It was like, oh, thank you. And he walked away.

And that’s the experience I get.

And it doesn’t make sense to me. It makes me very sad. When I’m dancing in all kinds of Arabic weddings, but especially the Palestinians. They’re so happy. I bring them joy. This is why I’m there and they love it.

But if they knew, they would not be happy anymore. Palestinians especially.

And I understand it, but I don’t see why it has to continue. So that’s my experience.

Not all Arabs, and not all Palestinians, but in general, they don’t think we should be working together on any level. They can’t just look at the dance and the music and that moment of celebration. There’s always the history and the politics in everything. And it’s such a shame. Because if we put all that aside, we can all just celebrate together and just enjoy music and dance and art, and then it doesn’t matter where we’re from.

https://youtu.be/a7EYAs5cLL4?t=253

It has different names. Some call it a double arabesque or a brush. It looks like a circle on one hip. However, there’s a twist in it. And essentially it is a figure eight forward.

So if you know how to do a horizontal figure eight forward, you twist one hip forward, and then you slide the way back and then you twist the other one forward and slide the hip back. And then you round it and you have a figure eight. So, this is essentially the move that we’re doing.

All that’s changing is now I’m with one foot forward with a heel up and I do the same move. I twist the hits forward, slide it back. And then I snake in an out. Your toe is sweeping the floor.

If I let go of the foot and just relax it, then I’m brushing.

It’s a great move and it has to be done from the correct place, because if people think of a brush, then they might do that from the foot. And it’s not from the foot. It’s all in the waist, in the obliques, just like a twist, and a figure eight.

And then the whole leg and the foot needs to relax. You need to feel your leg just kind of being pulled down. And relaxing and all the work is in the hip and the waist, and then you get that beautiful motion and it’s flowing and it’s fluid. And also it’s not a circle. So people need to understand first do the figure eight forward with both feet flat and then pick up one heel.

Dr. Valerie Poppel, aka Nefertiti of Delaware, is a Clinical Sexologist and belly dancer who lived in Cairo. Find out what Nef warned about Soul Ties when she was featured in Cosmo yet again and how shimmying can improve our sexual health.

Imagine a gorgeous brown-skinned dancer flecked in gold taking the stage with yellow isis wings unfurled. When she opens her arms and looks up, it’s like the sun is pouring into her soul. On her face, ecstasy. She dances and shines. At one point, she looks into the back of the audience and beckons. A fully-costumed dancer emerges and joins her on stage. And then another, and another. Each uniquely beautiful and proudly honoring the one who invited them there, Nefertiti. 

That was my experience at the Art of the Belly Dance Festival on the ocean in Maryland when I saw our guest Nefertiti perform. This is going to be an incredible interview. Not only are we talking to an amazing passionate dancer who lived in Cairo for years and has danced all over the world, Nefertiti is also a clinical sexoligist who has been featured in Cosmo not one, but 2 times. And she hosts a radio show about sexual health and relationships called Brown Sugar Confessions. So we are all in for a treat! Thank you so much for being here with us Nefertiti, aka Dr. Valerie Poppel. 

I was so excited to hear that you were recently featured in Cosmo, and when I asked you about the article, you said it’s about tarab. Can you tell us more about that? 

In a moment of ecstacy, as dancers we draw our audiences into us. So that’s what the article mentioned. Soul ties. When you’re performing be very mindful of soul tie connections with people. As a dancer, I’m always trying to get that energy connection with the audience. I have caught the eye of a young man in the audience, and he stalked me. Some people receive your gift of dance in a way that is not intended. When you are dancing and giving your energy, being mindful of looking at someone to the point that you are looking into their soul and creating that tie.

How can you create ecstacy?  And what does that look like on stage? How do we take away the mystery of tarab and how we can see ourselves?

Hooray for the first Black Belly Dance Bundle! I am so excited to start scheduling my pre-recorded classes with Chudney, Lady Liquid, Ebony Qualls, Danielle Hutton and more fabulous dancers who are part of that. And you are going to teach about the pelvic floor in a lecture called “To tuck or not to tuck”. Can you give us a little preview of that lecture? 

https://youtu.be/B89Wwt7ajEU?t=130

It is important to understand what the pelvic floor supports, how it changes as we age, and posture. Is the tuck good for dancers? Where did it originate? Is it beneficial as we are dancing? What does a strong pelvic floor look like on a dance body? How do we strengthen the pelvic floor with belly dance?

Sit down on the floor and do an Egyptian shimmy while doing Kegels. You can stand and shimmy and do kegels too.

Having a strong pelvic floor is important to have longevity in the dance.

Your interview on the Ask me Anything series with Sara Shrapnell was amazing. 

You talked a little about teaching belly dance to people with sexual concerns. One highlight is where you spoke about the kinds of orgasms and how to structure your shimmy to orgasm while you shimmy. You’ve gotta tell us more about that. 

My husband loves when I dance for him. No need to do your hair or makeup. If you choose to dance for your partner and release energy, why not?

You can use belly dance as therapy, and get in touch with your body and get grounded. Moving your pelvis has been known to help women have a higher drive for sex if they are suffering from low desire.

We are often skittish about talking about the sensual part of belly dance. But it is quite beautiful.

And you teach about Tantra, which I heard you say can teach you how to breathe through an orgasm. I never realized before that we generally stop breathing when we orgasm! You said that breathing through it can elongate and deepen orgasms, and can lead to mutiple orgasims. 15 orgasms in one session sometimes. Yes this is a belly dance podcast, but this shit is important! What should we know about this? 

Tantra became very big in what late eighties, when Sting spoke about six hours of orgasms. I was like, that’s a lot of orgasms Sting. And many people got on the tantra bandwagon wanting to learn, wanting to prolong release of orgasmic energy.

I’m a tantra specialist. I teach tantra all over the world. And one of the benefits of tantra, and not to mention the. connecting of your partner, is the ability to breathe through your orgasmic energy release. Oftentimes we choose to hold our breath. If you think about your own release of energy, when you’re in that state of ecstacy, you might tend to hold your breath.

That’s why they call it the little death, because you stop breathing. And the tantra principle is about breathing all the way through to your pelvic floor all the way out to elongate the orgasmic release. To have a deeper orgasm by breathing through it and not holding the breath.

So there are a lot of benefits. Not only to your relationship, but also to the release of energy when you understand and practice tantra.

How important the breath is in every part of our life and breath is important. When you dance, of course, and it’s important during sex. A beautiful way of connecting with your partner when you’re able to release the energies together and using the breath control. Using Tantra kiss to elongate it even further. So there’s so many modalities of understanding how energy and breath works when you’re releasing orgasmic energy and the world of tantra.

So I advise anyone that’s listening to this podcast that may have questions, just reach out to me. I’m more than happy to answer them and to help you out. www.swanncenter.com

If you are listening and you are like, sex coaching? I need that. I want to let you know that Nefertiti is also known as Dr. Valerie Poppel, and she does that! Coaching online and in person on low sexual confidence, no orgasms, porn addicition, early ejaculation, sexual shame, sexual identity and more incredibly important topics that help us become fully expressed humans! 

It is a natural part of our self-expression and our love center. And I hope people, maybe not in my lifetime but one day, we’ll get comfortable with understanding that energy force and how valuable and beautiful it is when you’re connecting with someone from your heart center.

Sex coaching is a small portion of what I do in the world of clinical sexology. At the Swann Center we also do sexual researcher, sexual science studies. I’m affiliated with many universities and affiliates all over the world where I work with understanding sexual medicines doing a research around the pharmaceutical industry. So I often tell people that the field of sexual health is growing and emerging. In Europe is quite large and the US it is still quite small. And we also run a clinical sexology certification program for those that choose to work in the field of sexual health and sexual wellness. And it’s about a one-year program that someone can take it. Even  MDs come take this course to continue their education. It is also for those that actually want to get certified as a clinical sexologist. So yeah. Check it out and reach out to me.

In this country I hope we get away from the shame and guilt around pleasure.

You can hear more on Brown Sugar Confessions on youtube. 

You are based in Delaware, and you have danced and instructed on all 7 continents. When we were scheduling this interview, you were on your way to Tahiti. The photos you and your partner posted were stunning. And the photos of how your body was painted on Bora Bora by world champion body painters. Whoa. I had to show Jill Parker those photos because I was overwhelmed with how goddamn cool you are. Many of us would not have the confidence to be painted topless even by skilled artists, especially after our 20s. You went for it. You already are a work of art, and you became another stunning work of art brushed with paint. Can you tell us about that experience? 

I follow Scott Fray and Madelyn Greco. They’re five time world champion body painters, some of the best in the world. I have followed them for many years and they were in Bora Bora, and I had asked to have my body painted.

And they said, what do you want Val? And I’m like, oh, just do whatever. Well they kept painting and before you know it, they did my whole upper body.

And it was absolutely amazing. And by the time they were done they did the Kundalini rising, which is a tantra. And my stomach and they also did the Pharos on my chest and paint. And they had no idea my connection to Egypt. So it was a really, fascinating experience with them because they don’t know me and they painted my life on my body. And I thought it was quite beautiful and it lasted for three days, they seal it on your body. I was their muse.

Nefertiti on Instagram

https://www.livingbrush.com/information/181-2/

You founded Jewels of the Orient Bellydance & Wellness Festival, Sambabelly ™ Fitness, Belly dancers of Color Magic Group & MENAHT dancers of color wellness & dance retreat. You have created so much Nefertiti! Can you tell us some of the impacts of these projects, and some highlights that make you proud?  

I started Jewels of the Orient when I moved back from the Middle East. I really admire Aida Nour of the Nile Group. I wanted to bring this energy back to the US. I wanted to bring 1-2 international stars, local stars, and rising stars. We had opportunities for dancers to get feedback from judges without competing.

https://youtu.be/I9UVg_Uuuy8

Samba Belly Fitness is the fitness side of belly dance. We fuse belly dance with reggaeton, Latin dances, African dances, and hip hop. We have instructors in various gyms that teach this style. It’s comparable to a Zumba class with a belly dance focus. You can find out how to get certified in that if you contact me through the Swann Center.

I decided to form a group for dancers of colors from all over the world. To have a safe space to share and grow and learn from each other. It is the Belly Dancers of Color Magic Group. We dropped the words “Belly Dancers” after being educated by dancers of the culture. So it’s Menaht Dancers of Color Magic.

Jillina of Jillina’s Belly Dance Experience mentioned you and the Belly Dancers of Color Magic group in the interview I did with her back in episode 61. 

I started out at an ATS dancer.

Then I saw a male dancer from Egypt in New Jersey and my mouth opened up and I started to get serious about it. I found this spoke to me more than anything else. I have my own flair as well, but my foundation is in Egyptian Raqs Sharqi.

You lived in Cairo, Egypt for several years, and were mentored by several top teachers. You studied at the ISOC in Cairo for her teacher’s certification under the direction of Dr. Khalil and is a member of UNESCO (which means United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). What are some of the jewels you still have with you from that experience? 

Have the technique and education, and still be you when you dance.

You are a researcher. When you were asked about cultural appropriation in the Ask me Anything interview mentioned earlier, you said something like

What Should we Know about Cultural Appropriation as Belly Dancers?

This is a big one for all of us who feel connected to fusion belly dance styles, where we get excited to take what we like often without having a clue where it comes from.

Can you tell us more about that? 

I can only share with you from my own experience. When I lived in the Middle East, I had privilege. I had an American passport. I could take my butt on a plane and go back home if I wanted to. Other people in the country could not.  I was humbled. I just wanted to do better.

I wanted to give back. So I started bringing dancers from the Middle East to the US. Putting money in their pocket. Acknowledging and recognizing them.

We can take what we want from other cultures, like their dance, and not have to wear other things that confine the culture. I respect that some people of the culture go against their family norms, values and beliefs in order to give us their art form.

In other episodes of A Little Lighter, I ask guests if they have a danceable ritual to share, a danceable song, a favorite dance move, a costume tip, and a vegan whole food ingredient. In this episode, I wanted to focus on your sexoligist expertise and leadership in our belly dance community becoming inclusive and aware and anti-racist. So I’m just going to end with one of the questions I consistently ask in this podcast, because I know your answer is going to be awesome. Do you have a feel-good-look-good habit you want to share?

When I hear them say my name and I start to step on the stage, I take a big breath in and then exhale.

Author of 22+ belly dance costuming books, Dawn Devine talks about current belly dance fashion trends in Egypt and Turkey, how to make assuit fabric feel good on your skin, and how to get more out of your belly dance costumes.

Alicia Free: I just don’t know where to begin with Dawn Devine aka Davina! She has created so many costume-creating resources for our dance community and influenced many of our costumes. I remember borrowing the book “From Turban to Toe Ring” from my first belly dance teacher, June Seaney of Ithaca. It came out in 2000, which was the year I started dancing and started making my own belly dance costumes. That book is still precious to me.

Dawn started belly dancing in the 80s as a teen. 22+ books later, it is an honor to have Dawn on A Little Lighter! On your website Davina.us, you wrote “My mission in life is to help people make beautiful, well designed, perfectly fitting costumes.” 

You are a Do-it-yourself queen! You have taught so many of us how to make our own costumes with your books, articles, videos, and Instagram posts. 

We love hearing about Danceable Rituals in this podcast. I heard you say in the interview on Belly Dance Geek Clubhouse that you go from Dawn to Devina when you put your false eyelashes on. Tell us more about your whole process of putting a costume on.

For me, the ritual starts with the makeup way before the hair, the costume, the jewelry, and all of the other layers in that five layer system. I always think of layer #2, the makeup, as being the real important transformative moment.

https://www.davina.us/blog/2018/11/belly-dance-makeup-info/

I’m listening to my set for the night or if it’s live music, something similar in vibe, or maybe a recording by the band that I’m dancing to, even if it’s not the specific piece. So there’s that make-up moment.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=_r-EqMl0tsE&feature=share&utm_source=EKLEiJECCKjOmKnC5IiRIQ

It’s that, moment of music and paint and looking at myself in the mirror and, you know, making love to my eyes as I brush on the different layers of warpaint. I’m such a drag queen. And of course I don’t wear my costume to events. Usually I usually get there and change in the back of my car, you know, out of my trunk, digging around like a fiend. Not glamorous at all, but totally keeping it real!

So I started off in fashion school and this was an associates degree in a, fashion program in San Diego, California. And I wanted to make every outfit in my classes belly dance costumes. And they were like, no. Dawn, this is a fashion program. You can’t just make belly dance costumes. Well, it came to the attention of my faculty advisor that I was a problem child. And she sent me to a new faculty advisor whose name was Margie.

When I walked into Margie’s office, she had a wall devoted to belly dance. And she’s like, you’re here because you’re a belly dancer. And I’m a belly dance instructor when I’m not here being an academic advisor. Let’s get you out of here and to, UCSB, which is where I got my BA.

And of course I started taking belly dance classes with her. So she became my dance mom. I was able to channel my love of belly dance costumes into a new facet, a new age of my belly dance career. And I was able to focus on the curriculum.

So I think that, that was my most memorable moment when I was still 17. I met my dance mom, and I started dancing professionally in San Diego. Again, not the best dancing on the planet, but everyone’s got to start somewhere. So that was it, finding my dance mom in fashion school.

In San Diego, during the heyday of my professional belly dance career, going out dancing and nightclubs earned me a lot of dance students.

I started teaching after I got to UCSD and I founded a belly dance club on campus. And we would go to a nightclub, we were 21, and we would dance and then I would get students. My number one way of acquiring students was dancing informally in nightclubs, not at restaurants. At restaurants, I was the low girl on the totem pole, but at the nightclub, I was the hottest thing.

https://youtu.be/66g_ySXCHxA?t=347

Because I primarily danced at Greek restaurants, I got to do the ouzo dance on a regular basis. I’ve never seen it anywhere else other than in five restaurants in San Diego in the nineties.

So the ouzo dance involved, dancing around the restaurant with a waiter behind me selling glasses of ouzo. I had a glass of ouzo on my head, so then we’d get to the middle of this tiny dance floor. We’d put our ouzo glasses on the ground and we would literally lay on the ground like a harbor seal and take the glass between our teeth and shoot it. I had a real glass, but their glasses were like the medicine cups that come on cough syrup. You get your teeth on in and you’d shoot it.  And so that was like the halftime entertainment that we would do in the middle of the dance show.

There was a lot of dance at Greek restaurants before. Now there’s more hookah bar dancing and more Persian and middle Eastern dancing in San Diego.

Alicia: What are the fashion trends you are seeing in our worldwide belly dance community these days? 

In Egypt right now, what the current elite dancers are wearing falls into two categories: a native Egyptian style with bike shorts with thinner, straighter skirts, much higher waisted, in that sort of 1950s movie style, and the Russian influenced style with lace.

For the native Egyptian style, in addition to bike shorts, you see a lot of strappy things on your legs like garters or head dresses that are being worn on the upper thigh. You see a lot of attention being drawn with jewelry or rhinestones, to the upper thigh area.

And of course the Dina bra, which isn’t actually a supportive garment, so it’s kind of teaser, right? Dina can wear them because it basically pops onto her synthetic breasts. The bra itself isn’t really a viable bra for women who have more naturalistic, not gravity-defying breasts.

https://www.sparklybelly.com/things-i-wish-someone-told-me-before-i-bought-my-first-dina-bra/

I think the Dina bra trend is going to turn because it’s becoming clear that these Dina bras style costumes are only good for people below a certain age, whether their bust tissue is nice and firm or people have enhancements.

The other style that’s happening in Egypt is this Russian influenced the style using lots of lace, using lots of stretchy materials and lots of rhinestones that basically enhance the figural quality of the lace.

And that really comes from this Russian Ukrainian, Eastern European design aesthetic. And because we have a lot of dancers from that area currently operating professionally in Egypt.

And then I think another sub trend is that real, ruffly skirt with horse hair braid in it. That’s an influence that comes  the south American dancers who are dancing in Egypt. Some dancers are bringing the flavor of flamenco and Spanish dancing, and that is a trend as well. So you’ve got these Russian styles, and you’ve got this giant voluminous, skirt style.

Didem from Turkey is also an enhanced dancer. Her bras tend to be very small, non-supportive so basically a covering rather than a supportive. In Turkey, Didem is really leading the Turkish dance scene, and consequently the styles.

And she’s really doing the reflective bra and belts paired with nude color skirts and nude color costume accessories. When performing in a dark environment, it looks very naked. She’s doing it by using those nude illusion fabrics and soft gold Champaign colors paired with metallic or rhinestone brown belt sets.

I’m always hoping for a resurgence in assuit. I want to see more assuit costumes because I’m obsessed. We want what we want.

https://www.amazon.com/Cloth-Egypt-About-Assiut-Assuit/dp/069227054X/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&qid=1522618095&sr=8-1&keywords=the+cloth+of+egypt+by+dawn+devine&linkCode=li2&tag=dawndevine-20&linkId=174ca50443e0ef97c9c3bced4d2b9e2c

Alicia: And I love assuit. The real assuit. I love 1920s. That stuff is so gorgeous, but I think they’re doing a really good job with a lot of the different a suit prints, when you’re at a distance, oh, it’s gorgeous.

And they’re comfortable to wear. I have a Melodia faux assuit top and skirt. And let me tell you, it feels like you’re wearing pajamas when you’re wearing it.

Assuit is having a moment. I feel partially responsible for that because my last book and because of my flooding, the web with assuit, but I really love that more spandex costumes add a layer of comfort to both our performance attire and our semi on duty belly dance wardrobes. Like what we’re wearing to festivals, what we’re wearing to go watch a show.

Alicia: I didn’t realize that those were headpieces that people were taping or their thighs

Type in bridal appliques or bridal appliques with rhinestone. They’re usually white or champagne color because those are actually designed and made for the bridal industry.

All you have to do is put a piece of elastic on it sized for your head or thigh. Those aren’t actually designed to be head dresses. Those are just bridal applications that are being used as is, or are being more heavily embellished with glue on rhinestones.

Look for something that’s eight to 12 inches, depending on the size and shape of your head and how far forward or back you like to wear it. Or use your thigh measurement. Buy bridal appliques and just add elastic. It’s a really affordable accessory piece to hand-make.

You can even sew it by hand. You don’t even need a sewing machine. There’s your costume tip for the day. If you go for AB crystals, wear an AB necklace and it’ll tie in your ensemble and viewers will go, wow, she’s really got it.

Put an application on a clip and clip it to your shoe. And then you can take it from head to toe.

I really love body undulations. I wear a lot of assuit robes, because my stomach region is not ready for prime time. If you know what I mean.

So in a full length assuit robe with those metal stitches, going down the front, an undulation of the body very much shows under stage lights. And you don’t have to do a lot. It’s a very mellow move, a body undulation.

I like to start at the bottom. I like to start in a seated position and then push everything up and forward.

So hips up and forward, stomach up and forward, chest up and forward. And then a head flick.

I like to start as deep as I can go that night in seated position, which makes the move look so much more dramatic. And it looks great on stage. If you do it as a trio one to the right one to the left, come to the center, lift up with a double chest bump, boom, boom at the top.

And if I can pop my chest, hard enough to make my jewelry fling off my body. that’s my ultimate goal. So deep body wave up, chest pop with jewelry flinging force vector. Let the jewelry fly.

I want people to be able to up-cycle recycle, save money, extend the length of time that their costume is viable to be able to buy second hand and fit it, upgrade. I want people have that power. Knowledge is power is my key mandate. So my goal is to share all of these skills that I feel every dancer should know, but it’s hard to learn right now.

We’re in an age where people buy ready-made. They go to an event, or they buy online.

And then we see that result in dancers wearing costumes that are not fitting as perfectly as they could fit.

So I want to prevent that from happening. I want people to make good decisions as a buyer, and good decisions as a dancer. Good decisions as a maker. The design is the process of making an infinite number of tiny decisions. Is it going to be red or blue? Is it going to be fusion or is it going to be ethnographic? Is it going to be glam? You know, all these little tiny myriad decisions.

My goal is to help people make those effectively for their needs and to help them build the skills. to make it happen.

And we have a lot of flexibility here. I think that comes from the polyglot nature of belly dance in the United States.

Since the earliest days of belly dance in the United States, it was a mixture of cultures. So you might have a Turkish drummer and an Armenian oud player and a Lebanese singer and an Egyptian tabla player.

So by its very nature, the club world in New York city and Boston and Chicago and Los Angeles, those scenes were a composite of cultures. This meant that the costuming wound up being a composite of cultures, which then kind of got the name Amcab –  American cabaret. Costuming that is not intrinsically tied to one specific country, but rather reflecting the melting pot ideology of dance and dance spaces in the 1940s, fifties, sixties, and seventies.

And it’s with us today.

So number one is right now, today in Egypt, they are making assuit fabrics that are much softer than they did in the 2000s. So the assuit industry almost died in the eighties. There were very few women taking on this embroidery art form that was indigenous to upper Egypt. And they were down to just like a few really old aunties who still had this arcane knowledge.

https://www.amazon.com/Cloth-Egypt-About-Assiut-Assuit/dp/069227054X/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&qid=1522618095&sr=8-1&keywords=the+cloth+of+egypt+by+dawn+devine&linkCode=li2&tag=dawndevine-20&linkId=174ca50443e0ef97c9c3bced4d2b9e2c

UNICEF went into upper Egypt and they discovered this art form and that women could make this culturally significant handicraft and sell it and support their children. They went back to the United Nations and UNESCO, the United Nations historical arm, and they set up a program utilizing people in Egypt, from the Egyptian cultural heritage center.

And it was funded by Italian investors to go in and do microloans for women to set up assuit studios, to train a generation. So they made workbooks with the explanations they sent in people to help with training. They built these studios, and now we have an assuit industry again. Well, when this was getting started, by the nineties, UNESCO had already come in, and was starting to fund this.

The suit tulle went from being stiff to being soft because that’s what people wanted to buy. But at the beginning it needed to be stiff in order to accommodate the new embroidery artists.

That stiffness is a wax coating. It isn’t intrinsically stiff. It is treated at the industrial level with a wax coating that you can actually remove through hard work and labor.

So, you can remove it with an industrial, surface stripper, which you can get from a dying company. So, I use a product called Milsoft that is available from Dharma Trading. Milsoft will industrially strip it and it will become soft. And then you can add fabric softener to it.

Now, if you don’t want to invest in that kind of product, you can soak it in super hot water and then wash it and soak it in super hot water. And over the course of washing, it will get softer on its own. Milsoft just sort of speeds up that process. And there’s a little more industrial. Okay. So modernist suit doesn’t need that treatment though.

It is soft today because that generation of embroidery artists is two generations down and they now have the facility to work with that softer, more pliable, mosquito netting. Let’s get real. It’s cotton mosquito netting. That’s what it is. So they’re doing an embroidery art on that now. That’s the fabric.

Let’s talk about the stitches. The metal is aluminum. Now back in the 1920s, it could be any sort of assorted metal alloy ranging from something that was a little more silver to something that was a little more copper or a little more brass.

You never know they used whatever metal they could find. Nowadays it’s uniformly made out of aluminum. So modernist suit as much lighter. And aluminum is aluminum. So you want to make sure you don’t get any acid on it. Like don’t spill lemon juice on your assuit because it will do weird things to the aluminum

Okay. So don’t clean a suit and vinegar. Vinegar is the enemy.

So each individual artist is going to have a different capacity as they make it. So sometimes your stitches will be a little puffy and the breaks where they’ve snapped it off, you know, they make the stitch and then snap it.

if that little edge is long, it will be scratchy. Right. So what you can do is lay your assuit piece on a table and take a rolling pin and roll it out. That flattens and compresses the stitches and helps smooth out those edges. So that will also reduce it.

And if you love your assuit robe but it itches, try wearing it inside out. Now I know the seams are going to show, but see if it’s more comfortable for you inside out because those little edges are all on the inside. So if it’s more comfortable to wear and inside out, the audience won’t know if you finish off those stitches.

So you’re just going to like flat fell your seams, just go through folded under hand. So it goes down the side, instant reverse dress. Right? So if you find that it’s too scratchy, you can reverse it.

The next thing you can do is wear it over a mesh dress. So make a base layer of mesh. That could be a mesh body stocking that fits your body tightly. And then your assuit would go over it. It could be made out of cotton. I frequently wear turtlenecks. Dark opaque fabrics make the silver or gold or brass, whatever color you choose makes the metal pop.

So against your skin with your skin showing through the mesh, the metal is not as distinctive, but when you wear something opaque underneath it, suddenly the metal pops. And so you can get just a dress off the rack LBD little black dress to wear under your suit.

If you have purple assuit, a little purple dress. So you buy something to wear underneath it or make something. But, if you can buy a dress for 40 bucks to wear under your assuit robe, you’re saving yourself time and if you’re making a dress, that’s going to cost you that much in fabric.

So I tend to suggest that dancers buy something to wear under their assuit. So there you go. Roll it, wash it. flatten it. If it’s still scratchy, try it on inside out. If it’s still scratchy, put something under it.

I make it on the stove with the shaky shaky and an old pan, old school, the way they’ve been doing it for centuries. I know how to make the perfect popcorn on the stove. He’s got the little wrist technique. You go right left, right left, really fast, and then you switch hands.

https://youtu.be/3EwuCdIWggo?list=PL823AF97C90D542C8&t=143

You go from your elbow so you don’t wear at your wrist. popcorn, it’s affordable, it’s nutritious. I know there’s a lot of people are anti corn right now because of GMOs and stuff. But depending upon where you buy it, you can get good popcorn these days.

And it is a good, way of eating in a volume metric way. So I can have, one cup of corn turns into a giant bowl of popcorn, which you can eat and enjoy for more than just three scoops. So I really like having that volume.

Alicia: You’ve talked about a performance trinity of: Style of costume + Style of music + repertoire of moves. How the sound, visual and movement go together.

Pick your style. Glam? Ethnographic? Fusion? What time period?

Now pick a costume, music and moves that all fit together in that style. If you want to capture a space, time and location, do your research.

The way you combine these elements and unify the trinity shows your research skills. It proves your chops.

If you dance in a restaurant, catch the vibe of the restaurant so you are giving your audience the music and costume that matches the restaurant.

2. People native to the Levant also understand the trinity

3. People who know little about belly dance.

Saroyan coins are made of musical grade brass and german silver, so that when the coins touch they ring like zills. Ethnographic coins are pretty, but the sound and musical tone of saroyan coins surpasses the sound of ethnographic coins. They don’t make the coins anymore. They do make Saroyan finger cymbals now.

If we love the sound, we love the hip wrap. We might not consciously realize that, but we are drawn to costume pieces that make a nice tone more than clank.

https://www.davina.us/blog/2021/10/saroyan-coin-earrings/

https://www.davina.us/blog/2011/06/jean-jinglers/

It’s like a reveal! Pin and secure a hip scarf on the bottom layer and hand tie a coin scarf on top so that it can be shimmied right off seemingly on accident.

How Belly Dance Superstars was Started

Miles Copeland put Belly Dance Superstars together for Jane’s Addiction’s

Bralapalooza will become Belly Dance Costuming in Detail. It’s a DIY Instructional book. It will be filled with costuming and wardrobing. Wardrobing is what we wear as off-duty belly dancers going to events as spectators. From high glam, through fusion and ethnographic.

I’m writing a book on Salome and the Salome Phenomenon in Europe from 1850-1950 and Belly Dance at Worlds Fairs. I’m publishing my vast knowledge of Belly Dance History in America over the next 5 years.

https://www.davina.us/blog/2020/10/yalah-raqs-2020/mad-about-maud/

A book can last beyond a video. We don’t know when Youtube, Vimeo, and Instagram will be gone. My books are in the Library of Congress. They will exist beyond me.

If you are a belly dance historian, write your book. Get it in print. The knowledge of the dancers of the 70s and 80s is going to pass with them, and I don’t want that to happen. Publish a book! Email me! I help people finish the book and publish.

Many of us dancers cycle through sad spells of pain where we don’t dance, and then we heal and get back into and achieve more victories, and then another injury surfaces. This is a pretty familiar cycle for humans, especially those who love to move and continue to challenge ourselves and grow as dancers.

The intention of this episode is to shorten the sad spells of pain, and elongate our experience of comfort and joy. Sounds good right?

Before I dive into Pema Chödrön’s teachings on pain how it can actually connect us to our fellow humans, I have an invitation for you as well as something to celebrate.

And even Oprah will tell you, Pema is one of the most wise, compassionate, and connected humans on our planet. In this episode, you will feel her.

https://youtu.be/_kDwINzk1GU

Kaeshi Chai is coming. That’s right. Kaeshi of Belly Dance Superstars, Bellyqueen belly dance school, and Djam NYC, which is a live music and dance show running for more than 10 years now which features belly dancers and the music we love. It was once a weekly show, and now it is monthly. So if you are planning a trip to NYC, look up Djam so you can also catch a fun belly dance show!

Kaeshi Chai is an artist who makes things happen, and she  is coming to Ithaca New York to put on an amazing show. If you are driving distance from New York and it is before July 8 2022, come!

In Ithaca there will be workshops with Jill Parker and Kaeshi and a performer we’re calling “Nature Dancer” who is an award winning street dancer and martial artist and teaches people how to dance in nature. I’m going to set him up in a magical space in the gorge in Ithaca, and I believe we are going to dance right into the water in the workshop Nature Dancer teaches. Sounds pretty life changing to me!

So come to Ithaca Thursday July 7, take a workshop, go hiking and rejuvenate, and on Friday July 8 enjoy the show with Beatbox Guitar. This band is also ridiculously talented, and they often perform with belly dancers. You might remember beatboxer in the band Djinn, that is the same beatboxer in Beatbox Guitar. You can find music from both of these bands online, and they are both tons of fun to dance to.

https://open.spotify.com/artist/7fvnancAuiBMR45Y1u6nAH?si=EB6-veOKSeCd08oCJTur0g

https://open.spotify.com/artist/1emtRxR8BOfrZC6MkcSjFD?si=Lv72yvh3TX6ehUJySErjmA

I think there will be workshops on Saturday July 9 as well. Our band Taksim Ithaca is opening at the July 8th show! And then in New York City Kaeshi will host another Djam event on Sunday July 10. All of these events will be fantastic, because that is what Kaeshi does. She brings talented musicians and fabulous dancers and appreciative audiences together and gives the gift of art wherever she goes. Very exciting!

And I just performed at a festival with Jill Parker and Anya of Pittsburgh’s Hamer sisters as well as a very gifted dancer in Ithaca named Ellen George. It was really special.

https://youtu.be/yv4F2ZR2hzQ

This is something I would like to celebrate: I honored my own mind’s design and nailed Jill Parker’s choreography so it looked and felt good to perform a group piece. Yes!!! I do mostly solo improv to live music, so this was a victory for me.

Do you have a system for remembering choreography? Some dancers seem to just naturally remember what to do next. Not me!

I have to write it all down with words that help me remember the movements, print it out, and carry it in my pocket so I can run through it whenever I can. When I’m walking, and each morning before the kids wake up. When I got stuck, I looked at the notes and fixed the hole. That’s how I learn. It’s so valuable to clearly see how we learn, right?

I watched videos of Jill doing the choreo for like 4 hours, pausing, restarting, slowing it down and writing down each part in my own words. Jill also taught it to me and I physically danced, and that was super helpful. I know that I also need additional time sitting and writing to concretize it. Like sketching it out.

It also helps immensely that Jill is such a clear teacher and brilliant choreographer. That’s for sure.

I also put in the time and honored my own learning process, and it was really fun not to struggle to remember the choreo while performing.

I haven’t performed choreo with other dancers in years. It felt so good! And I sang with our band, and really poured my heart into our live music performance as well. It really feels like Covid is loosening it’s grip that has restricted our movement for years now, and I am so grateful.

Ok. So this is an episode about dancing through our pain.

I am writing this on the eve of the day that I sprained my ankle. Again. It’s the sixth time. I actually started belly dancing because I used to be a distance runner, and I sprained my ankle so many times running in the woods and after that just walking that I decided to start dancing instead.

I think the last time I sprained my ankle was in India right before a 10 day Vipassana meditation retreat. That was pretty lucky, because my whole plan for the future at that point was to sit on my butt meditating. My ankle appreciated that. I was in my 20s.

I’m 41 now, and I honestly had been saying that spraining my ankle was a thing of the past for me. So I stopped doing the fantastic balancing practice of standing on one foot every time I brush my teeth. That was really helpful back when I was doing it every time I brushed my teeth but I became inconsistent with it.

And this morning before the kids woke up I came down off of a step onto a flip flop on the floor and turned my ankle.

At first I was repeating “Please no. God please no”. Resisting what had just happened. I usually walk my 5 year old to kindergarten up hill with my almost 3 year old in a carrier on my back. We live at the top of a 3 story staircase. I go up on tall ladders, carry furniture around, cook a lot, dance. I’m a very active person.

So dread set in first. The interesting part is that it didn’t stay for long. I did not dive into my own suffering or blame like I have in the past.

This experience helped me realize that I have grown from being a student of Pema Chodron and Thich Naht Hahn.

I started with resistance repeating “Please no. God please, no” and in a minute or too I softed into repeating, “I will take care of you ankle. I will take care of you. I have something to learn here that will make me even stronger.” I shifted from resisting what I could not change in my body into softening to it. Befriending it. This is a big deal.

I am hoping that you are pain-free right now, and you can listen to this podcast and soak it in for the times in the future when pain will again be present. And maybe you can share this podcast with a friend who is in pain now.

There is a treasure in here for you. Something that will relieve your suffering. Please perk up and listen for it. Even write it down so it stays with you. It’s coming.

A couple weeks ago I went to the American Buddhist nun Pema Chodron’s last public discourse at Omega, just outside of New York City. And there I decided that I was going to record a podcast for all of you lovely dancers that would relieve your pain.

At that time, I was pain free. I was thinking more about my husband’s chronic knee pain and the pain I’ve seen other dancers move through. I didn’t realize that this podcast was going to also be more immediate medicine for me as well.

Back in episode 50 I recorded Dance Lessons Learned from Pema Chodron. If you haven’t listened to that one, please do. It’s actually one of the most listened to episodes of this podcast, even though Pema is not a dancer!

I’ve actually listened to that Pema podcast many times after releasing it because it is so healing. Those were lessons I learned from an online retreat with Pema, which was quite frankly mind-blowing. It’s really wonderful to find that even online we can be transformed and expanded by events like this. You might be able to still purchase the May 2022 Pema retreat recording on the Omega Institute website.

On the Pema Chodron Foundation website archive many of Pema’s talks can be downloaded for free. And she has written so many incredible books. So Pema’s direct teachings are very available to you!

Back in episode 50 of this podcast, I shared Pema’s teachings on softening, saying things to others that open our own hearts, freeing ourselves and others from fear.

These are all parts of our dance life too. Dance is woven into so much of our lives. Not just rehearsals and performances. Dance influences how we see the world.

It can all be a dance. Swerving a cart through the grocery store. Hammering a nail. Hitting frame drum. Switching a child from one hip to the other.

What makes it dance is how we see it. How present we are with our own movement and the beauty in and around us at all times.

I was not present when I stepped on that flip flop this morning, and now my ankle is a swollen little blob of ouch. Again I am reminded to return to my breath. To spend more time in my body in the present moment.

So being there in person learning with Pema was so powerful. And she gave me many more gifts that I am now honored to offer to you. 3 steps for freeing yourself.

When we are in pain, we often have less self-esteem. That’s putting it nicely. We treat ourselves like shit. We say things to ourselves that we would never say to other people because it we know it is unkind and damaging.

I’m not good enough. I can’t believe I did that. What a stupid move. I’m getting old. My body is just going to keep falling apart. This pain will keep getting worse, and there’s nothing I can do. Why can’t I just be healthy and strong? Why do I keep getting hurt? Now I’m going to gain weight and it will ruin everything I’ve worked for. Fifi Abdou started dancing in the 1960s and she’s still dancing. What the hell is wrong with me? It’s my genetics. It’s my upbringing. It’s my diet. I’m broken. I’m weak. How am I going to work like this? How am I going to dance like this? Why is this happening to me? What did I do wrong?

I’m a big fan of asking better questions. I can’t remember who said this. Maybe it was Tony Robbins. If we ask shitty questions, we get shitty answers.

So what question can I ask that open my heart? What questions can I ask that will bring healing rather than hardship?

How can I show my ankle how much I love it? What does my ankle need to heal? How can I use this time to show my whole body how much I appreciate it? So many parts of my body work with ease right now. My mind, my breath, my skin, my upper body.

When I stopped panicking, softness returned. I gently massaged my ankle with ointment. I drank water and breathed deeply. I wrapped it in a soft towel and ice pack.

I’ve been here before, and each time I’ve gained insight on how my body works and what it needs.

Breath in the guilt for not being able to figure this out yet. Breath out, and try to soften to that.

My mother in law asked if I had just started doing something new.  I actually was doing some new pretty intense hamstring stretches and modifying the orientation of my slightly out-turned foot. Going forward, I’m going to focus on strengthening my ankles along with any other new things I’m trying with my legs and feet. It will all go tougher.

There’s no need to carry around smelly baggage to stink up your whole life. We can let it go and forgive.

I have apologized to my ankle. I have touched gratitude. I’ve made a new promise. Now for part 2.

Befriend the pain. Soften to it. Cry. Speak to it. Move closer. Get curious. Just like you would a help a child who gets stung by a bee. We can be this kind and caring to ourselves as well. We can comfort ourselves as if we are children.

How can I send healing and forgiveness to others in pain right now?

Connect with others who are suffering just like me. Just like me. Pema likes to say that. She talks about being stuck in traffic and rather than getting angry, she looks in other people’s car windows. She sees them. Instead of stewing in her own misery, she connects. She says “Just like me. They are in this traffic jam too. Just like me.”

I could focus on myself. My disappointment. My pain. My frustration at this obstacle. I can start there, because that is suffering that is super relevant to me. And I can breath in.

So many other beings are feeling pain right now. Humans, birds, insects, dogs. So many other beings are feeling pain now just like me. I breath that in. We are so connected when we give our own suffering some space. When we realize that it’s actually impossible to truly be alone. It may feel like we’re alone sometimes, but we are always having a shared experience with other beings at the same moment.

So I start with breathing in my own suffering. Any angle of it. Any feeling or texture or color or words attached to it. It’s suffering. Pain is temporary and suffering is optional.

So I breath in my own suffering. It can be like a lightening bolt or it can be soft air. It can be whatever you need.

And as I breath out, I give the suffering what it needs. Whatever it is calling for.

I do that for a few minutes. If the pain is not too great, I can actually invite in the suffering of others. That’s right. I can invite in the suffering of others who are experiencing what I am experiencing right now. I can breathe it in.

And as I breath out, I can give all of our suffering whatever it needs. Whatever it calls for. Right now, the suffering I breath is being transformed into an out-breath of these words. Calming my own body, and calming yours. Breathing in our resistance, stress, disappointment, shame at getting hurt or being sick, and breathing out space. Giving it all space. No need to hold it in. No need to run or hide. Just breath it in, and release it with your outbreath giving it an abundance of space.

Melodia had 2 hip replacements.

Danielle Hutton has Crohn’s Disease.

Maelle had cancer.

Kaeshi Chai broke a bone and danced to the song Bone Dance.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4bUcyf6Vniazuu8iQwHyob?si=a5c5d858dd0f422f

Iana talked about an Uzbek folk dance with the dancer dancing as if they had broken their arms and legs falling out of a cherry tree. “Yeah, I have broken arms and broken limbs. But I still dance. And I’m still playful.”

Pain is temporary. Suffering is optional. – Maybe said by Sai Maa?

Stay well!

Melodia of Melodia Designs has been designing amazing dance wear and comfortable-AND-sexy street clothes for over 20 years. But do you know about her intriguing dance past with the Belly Dance Superstars and Urban Tribal Dance Company? Listen and find out!

Melodia has been adorning and accenting the beauty in fusion belly dancers and more beautiful movers with her oh so lovely Melodia Designs clothing for almost 20 years.

Melodia has been adorning and accenting the beauty in fusion belly dancers and more beautiful movers with her oh so lovely Melodia Designs clothing for almost 20 years. You probably either own or are coveting your own “Melo’s”, as we like to call Melodia’s textile creations, but not too many of us also know the belly dance life of Melodia Medley. In this podcast, we’ll hear about Melodia’s start as a dancer in a Urban Tribal Dance Co with Heather Stants and Mardi Love, her first memory of Jill Parker, and her year touring the USA with the Belly Dance Superstars.

And Melodia loves to talk about festivals and food and music in addition to wearable art, so this is going to be a very fun interview.

Melodia Designs website

Melodia Designs on Instagram

Melodia Designs on Facebook

I think that was maybe 2004 or 2005. It’s hard to find video or photo documentation of that era, but we traveled 60 cities in 64 days across the U S and Canada. Riding on a shuttle bus with 16 dancers and a crew with an ex race car driver as the chauffeur.

We would show up at a venue in the evening, roll out of the tour bus, do a quick tech rehearsal, get dressed, do our show, pack up, get back in the bus and drive halfway to our next location. So many of us refer to that as the hell tour. Our saving grace though, was the talent. I had the blessing of dancing with Rachel Brice and Sharon Kihara. We kind of were the “tribal girls”. And Jalina she’s so amazing. It was quite the adventure.

And I even played hooky one night from tour.

So I could take a flight into Miami and dance with rabbit on the moon at the ultra music Fest.

https://youtu.be/_cClIlpazdY

We had shower shelves suction cupped to the windows of the bus when we were on tour.

Alicia: When did you realize that you wanted to make amazing clothes for dancers and fire performers and other beautiful movers and dance vicariously through your clientele?

Ever since I was a kid I loved playing dress up, and I would often put on little circus performances in my living room. And my grandmother had very elegant taste and she would give me her hand me down night gowns and robes to play in. I often would up cycle them with like a stapler and safety pins and turn it into some sort of princess gown and fly around the living room.

And then after high school, I ended up working retail and I met this really beautiful clothing designer when I was working at the shop. And when she came in to show her collection, I whispered in her ear, “If you ever want someone to work with you, I would love to help.”

And sure enough, she did end up hiring me. And I ended up doing everything from sales to running errands for production, to trade shows, packing orders and folding inventory. So that was a great first step towards getting into fashion. And eventually they closed down shop, and I was left with a turning point in life where I wasn’t sure what I was going to do next. And it just felt like the perfect time to start my own line.

And then in 2000 I discovered belly dance and I turned my focus towards making dance wear.

And here I am still doing it 20 years later.

Alicia: That was like the heyday for belly dance in the US in the early 2000s.

Yeah. I think I showed up on the scene at the perfect time.

Alicia: Definitely. And you were dancing with Marti Love and Heather Stants?

It’s amazing how many leaps forward we’ve made with like cinematography and posting video. I look back at those old videos and they’re so blotchy.

I’m pretty sure most of the old videos that are uploaded to YouTube were all done on the little handheld camcorder and then converted from videotape into some sort of digital format.

Melodia’s first performance with Urban Tribal Dance Company:

https://youtu.be/yWCrfHgTlLg

Heather Stants talking about he UTDC:

https://youtu.be/rjZ07RGMXTE

Alicia: I love the Elsa pocket leggings Oracle print so much that I bought two pairs of the same pants so I could just wear them almost every day. They are super soft. I think they are made of tencel? During winter in upstate New York, I also wear your bamboo fleece leggings and layer on some of your super soft organic cotton tops. It makes me feel so damn special when I slip it on. I love wearing form fitting pants that don’t give me a muffin top and make my butt look great, and that’s what you create! I could go on and on. Tell us more about the fabrics you choose for your designs.

Well, I’m a big fan of eco and sustainably produced materials. So as I had mentioned, some of our fabrics are like the tinsel and the muddle.

I might not approach the bamboo is super soft and of course, organic cotton. Those are the primary materials that I like to use. And I love them because they’re so soft and breathable and actually anti-microbial, which means that it stays fresh as you wear it.

Fabric made out of polyester ends up in a landfill. All these natural fibers are compostable.

Also polyester sheds every time you wash it, tiny little micro particles of plastic end up in our ocean. And I don’t think too many people are aware of that. And that’s another reason why investing in natural fibers is so important. I also love creating exclusive prints.

We’ve been making our own designs with faux assuit and the Oracle design, which is inspired from mehndi. And I actually hired a mehndi artist to create that print and we have some more coming in the future, which I’m really excited about.

I created the faux assuit design with a graphic artist. We basically create a template on our screen that echoes the same honeycomb, textile, like the tulle that assuit is woven onto. Assuit is basically metal fibers woven onto the tulle. So we create a template and then draw the little tabs onto that template. So it’s actually quite accurate, and very similar to what real assuit would be like. The same proportions, the same shape.

In fact, I have an assuit maker in Cairo right now recreating my heavy metal motif into real assuit. So I’m very excited about that. This is something I’ve always wanted to do.  To actually test one of my layouts into a real textile.

So that should be coming up pretty soon. I’m really excited about that.

But back to the mehndi design. So I’ve gone about it two different ways. I have a friend, Alexis, who’s an incredible artist and she did the mehndi for my wedding. I had her do both of my hands. She draws with actual henna paste onto paper, and then I photograph it and import it into illustrator. Then I have a graphic artist then set up the motif, and get it all ready for rotary printing.

So it literally is like a photograph of real henna.

Dressing up makes me want to move. Putting something pretty on always makes me feel good, and that helps inspire movement.

Putting on a cute outfit always affects how I move. Also, some things like a kaftan with long flowy sleeves can really inspire movement. Or a skirt will make me want a twirl or long sleeves with the assuit print on it inspires some snake arms.

Oftentimes in the design room, me and my girls will put on samples, and get the music going and give it a good test run. Sometimes there’s like twerking in leggings to make sure it passes the squat test. We have lots of fun in the design room. It definitely has to pass the squat test.

CloZee is super fun to dance to. And there’s some Indonesian gamelan music in this song!

https://open.spotify.com/track/2qNtbvaAjEsbI4R9eRSduX?si=83bf4dc38ab74593

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4bUcyf6Vniazuu8iQwHyob?si=a67b3eb83fd8469b

Alicia: Circling back to the Melodia Designs newsletter, I really enjoy clicking on the videos and photo posts of dancers all over wearing your designs. Listeners, if you search for #inmymelos, you’ll see what I’m talking about. Fire performers, burlesque dancers, fusion belly dance artists, contortionists, aerialists, all kinds of fun creative people to see. When did you decide to include those shoutouts in your newsletters, and what impact do you think that has had? 

I was at a festival a few years back and this bright shining woman ran up to me from across the courtyard and she’s like, “Melodia! You’re such a goddess enabler.”

And that reflection made such a huge impression on me and. Regardless of gender.

So, because I genuinely love celebrating diversity, it just seems natural to want to shine a spotlight on our fellow movers and reposting dancers in our community. And our newsletter was a beautiful way to be able to do. And I would say the impact is that it’s really nurtured our community and has reinforced our little #inmymelos family.

That’s really a gift to us and our company. So it makes sense that we’d want to share that. So many talented photo shoots and videos and concerts. It’s quite amazing that we get to be a part of something like that.

Alicia: I think the first time I realized that your clothing line is out there is when I saw Ebony Qualls wearing Melodia Designs. (Photos by @dexdelfin) 

Alicia: You have had both of your hips replaced in the past year or so. What has this taught you about self-care and perseverance? 

it’s been quite the journey. I had my right hip replaced six months ago and my left one about eight weeks ago. And it’s really been a very internal journey. The healing process and cocooning.

I really do prefer alternative healing modalities. I tried acupuncture and auto immune protocol dire physical therapy.

So I finally made the decision to do so. And I feel so privileged that I have had the resources to have this. Truly has been life giving. And as a practicing yogini, we’ve all been taught that…

And one of my favorite authors, Louise Hay, who wrote a book called You Can Heal Your Life. She talks about the mind-body connection. Pain and the body. So I’ve been asking myself,

So I’m still in the inquiry process to arrive at the answer.

Maybe exploring what limiting beliefs I might have. And it feels so amazing to finally be set free from all the pain that I’ve been in. I’ve been rediscovering who I am as a mover and getting back to yoga and walking and hiking, and it feels so good to enjoy the simple pleasures in life, like moving and going outside and being able to connect with nature.

I’m excited to go outside again and I’m excited to move.

So I definitely feel excited about what’s to come.

Alicia: You have been vegan, paleo, raw, and have also created Retox-detox recipes that are pretty fun. I’m all about pairing booze with healthy stuff, as much as that can be a paradox! What is one vegan whole food ingredient you love?

I love plantains. And I’m not talking about regular bananas. I’m talking about the green platanos. You’ve got to wait until they get real ugly, completely blackened bruised. They look like you need to throw them away, and then at that point you peel them, filet them and cook them in a pan with coconut oil and just caramelize both sides. And your house will smell like yum. And it tastes like dessert, but it’s also kind of starchy and comforting as well.

So I highly recommend the fried plantains. In Ecuador, one of my favorite dishes is patacones, which is basically green plantains squashed, and then fried and some kind of vegetable oil. Serve them with some avocado and lime.

That was an iconic moment for me. I saw Jill at Burning Man.

I think it was around 2000, and I had stumbled across the Playa and found a fire opera. And in the very middle is a giant lotus. The lotus slowly unfurled to reveal Jill Parker undulating with her grapes tattooed on our belly. And I was just completely hypnotized, gobsmacked. Star struck. All of the above.

And I will never forget that moment because when I saw her, I was witnessing a goddess with my own eyes. And her aesthetic of movement absolutely influenced what I cherish in femininity. So that’s my crush moment on Jill. And she’s amazing. She’s one of my favorite dancers and teachers and people, and I really enjoyed her podcast as well.

Being comfortable is so important. Sharon Kihara calls Melodia Designs creations as Glamjamas. Glamorous Pajamas.

Alicia: You design clothes that awaken our sense of individual style, freedom, and confidence. Clothes that feel good and look good. I always ask guests on my podcast for a feel-good-look-good habit. Do you have one you would like to share? 

I think that hangry is not a good one. So I try to proactively meal prep every morning. I love soup. I eat soup almost every day. So I often start with a big pot of something good, and throw in all these veggies or make some lentils.

I put it in my instant pot and have it ready for me throughout the day. Also, I end up doing a lot of road trips.

I’ll put my soup in there or any kind of hot food is great inside of a thermos. Also having an insulated bag with blue ice is a great way bring your salad and other healthy treats.

So, yeah, meal prepping. That’s my feel good and look good habit. Because if you prepare healthy food throughout the day, you look good and you feel good.

There was also a time that I did an intensive at Tribal Massive, and I brought my Crock-Pot to the hotel and pre diced a bunch of veggies. And then, I threw everything into the pot. I left it in the bathroom in the hotel and let it cook four or five hours. And then when we’d come back from our day of intensive dancing, it would be there ready for us. And it was awesome.

https://youtu.be/6kJsrEtTU2U

Alicia: I want to look at more of your detox-retox recipes. I drink red zinger hibiscus tea with tequila. I’m at a festival and I got my teabags and I got my tequila.

It’s all about the balance. I love goji Berry juice with tequila. Antioxidants with the tequila, it’s kind of a wash at the end of the day.

You could soak some dried goji berries in the actual tequila and make an infusion that way as well. Just let them plump right back up in there.

I befriended Lay Tracy on Facebook and she lives in Cairo with her family and has relationships with several tally houses throughout Egypt. And I found her through our mutual passion for this textile and a desire to keep this art form thriving.

And after asking her how I could help, we arrived at a solution that I could purchase the metal thread for the tally houses. Having a consistent supply of materials on hand is critical to the artisans’ productivity. And I really understand that now with supply chain issues here in the states as well, but it’s been working out.

And they’re creating such beautiful work. And this practice and reciprocity is allowing me to give back for all the inspiration I have gained from their culture and through their art. So I’m really excited to have this real assuit shawl made with my design and I really look forward to actually traveling to Egypt and visiting her and meeting the ladies in her tally house.

I’m so proud of what you’re creating Alicia. Your podcasts are such a joy to listen to. I feel like I’ve become friends with you and different guests that you’ve had on your show. And it’s been so great to get to know them more personally.

Thank you for all of the wonderful designs and moments of feeling beautiful that you have given to us Melodia! 

World-famous Egyptian raqs sharqi dancer Randa Kamel on the importance of belly dancing to live music, feeling the music, and why oriental dance developed in Egypt.

Alicia: Randa Kamel has been blowing my mind for some time now. She is based in Cairo, and I love her strength. I love seeing her dance barefoot. I have sprained my ankle too many times to wear high heels, so seeing a master dancer perform barefoot really moves me! And she dances with such passion. Randa moved to Cairo as a teenager, where she danced with the Reda Troupe for years. She traveled the world with the Reda Troupe, learning folkloric styles. After that she started her solo career as an oriental dancer and has performed and taught all over the world. Randa is hosting a festival in Egypt starting June 25 2022, and it looks incredible. Check out Raqsofcourseofficial.com for more info on that. There are a TON of teachers, a competition where finalists get to dance with Randa’s orchestra, it sounds like a dream come true, and an event to add to your vision board.  Whew!

This episode of A Little Lighter is going to be different from every episode that came before it. Why?

Because I will not be the one asking the questions. A long-term colleague and friend of Randa Kamel, the amazing dancer in Egypt right now in Cairo, her friend named Sara Farouk conducted this interview with Randa in Arabic. Sara is also a seasoned performer based in Cairo.

Sarah gave me her blessing to turn these interviews with Randa into a podcast, and I think what Rhonda says here is profound and moving. And I hope you will too. And oh my goodness. It’s so exciting to have somebody who’s performing in Egypt right now sharing their perspective! And sharing this dance that comes from their motherland and one of the motherlands of this dance that we love so very much.

The video interview series is titled “A Conversation with Randa at RK Academy and Studio”. And this is filmed in Cairo, Egypt. You can watch those videos on Facebook here: Part 1. Part 2. Part 3.

Randa Kamel on Instagram

Look habibti, oriental dance is feeling. It grows from our feelings during improvisational dancing and on the stage. When we feel something, we live it and our feelings show it, and the dancing develops.

The technique is enhanced.

https://youtu.be/tAv8qDncyiE

Oriental dance is not technique. Feeling is first. Feelings from the music, the audience, the rhythm, and feeling the words.

Some people use the songs without the lyrics and by doing this, they think they make performing easier. That’s not true. Everybody knows all the lyrics of the songs and their meaning. If you take the words away, it doesn’t mean that I don’t know them. As an audience member you are forced to add the missing words yourself.

So of course the dance developed here because Egypt is the land of Oriental dance. It’s language, it’s music, and it’s rhythms.

With all of this, you will continue to evolve as a dancer. And of course you will flourish in Egypt.

To begin with, when we dance we don’t choreograph. By we, I mean the renowned Oriental dancers. For example, I have never danced a choreography. I always respond to the feelings of the moment. I rely on the audience and how they feel and respond to their feelings, the situation I’m in and how the venue wants me to dance.

All of this dictates what kind of dance I will perform on the stage. No choreographies. We only started using choreographies when we started teaching in the West.

We never learned choreographies. The only people who did this were groups like Reda and El Kaomeyya. They had to learn choreographies, but Oriental dancers don’t have this.

https://youtu.be/BULCMMkMsUU

The music is everything. The music makes me move.

The music is in my blood. It’s what makes me laugh and therefore makes other people happy. Music is everything. It’s an international language. Many people will say that a song is happy or sad. If they let themselves feel it for a minute, you will know how it makes you feel.

Everything an Oriental dance comes from your feelings and the music. That’s why we all dance a different way from each other. We all feel and hear the music differently. And in this way, the feeling is translated into movement. Nobody’s the same. They all have their own talents, their work ethic, their power level.

Everything is music. Music is my feelings and my body translates the music, rhythm and words.

We dance to the music to reach the words, to feel the words, everything is inseparable. In Oriental dance nobody should just follow the music or the melody. Nobody should just follow the rhythm or only the words.

A top quality Oriental dancer is one who can follow all of these elements together and say it all.

Everything they play and sing is incorporated in the movement of my body and the expressions on my face. I am the translator because it is me that’s talking and singing.

Being a dancer here is a big issue. It’s very hard work. How are you going to achieve all of this at once? It’s not easy. Some people think it’s technique-based, but absolutely not. No.

To understand the audience. Know the technique well. Feel good. Express the words to the people, and make them see you in the right way.

This is very hard work and it takes a very long time. It requires a lot of practice to become a top quality artist. The people who are prepared to put in this effort are the people who love and respect the dance.

If someone is using just their looks, they have to know that Oriental dance has nothing to do with just being pretty. There are a lot of top quality dancers that are not in this category.

It’s not just being pretty or having a good body. It’s about art. It’s about talent.

We’re born with that talent, and we let it grow. We make people happy because it is honest and not fake.

During my travels, I’ve seen a lot of dance and it’s always been connected with choreography or couples doing a choreography or something similar.

Oriental dance is not like this. It has depth, and it comes from inside me. And I project these feelings. If I feel hurt inside, then my body shows this because I choose the song that I want to dance to and I share my feelings.

That I am female, a human being and an artist.

Because I’m free.

What makes me the happiest is when I see the audience feeling the same emotion while they’re watching me dance. This pushes me to do more and more.

There are a lot of people who say that Oriental dance has no rules, but there are a lot. Who knows these rules? That’s the core of the problem.

As I say to all the dancers that if you don’t come to Egypt, know what the dance means in Egypt and understand that it is in the blood of Egyptians, then what you witness will be something else.

Oriental dance changes from minute to minute and in every venue.

If I’m talking about the venues, there are cabarets, large theaters, festivals, restaurants, places for weddings and engagements, and everywhere requires different dancing. Oriental dance has many forms. I have to know how to dance in each venue, and what I should wear.

This is very important. About the musicians. They add the power. They make me express my feelings with more power and make me perform in a way that is suitable for the venue and for the people who are watching. For instance, if I do a show that has an Umm Kulthum in it for a wedding, and there are a lot of young people in the crowd, I will not perform that song for them. I have to do something else. What is that something else? Whatever comes out of my mind.

I can only do this if I have musicians.

The opposite is when you dance to a CD. I dance to a lot of recorded music abroad, but I feel like I’m in a prison as an artist because if I don’t exactly follow the music, I won’t look good.

But live all the musicians compete to see who is the best. It is always a competition between us to see who plays better. Everyone wants to be better and better, and that’s where the quality comes from. With recorded music, I’m in prison.

There’s a big difference and I adore live music.

I’ve watched a great deal on social media and a lot of it has nothing to do with reality. Sometimes I see a very big issue on the phone, and I think what’s this? In reality, it’s different.

I have to see you as a strong, true artist. Not just someone’s beauty or a dancer with a lot of power that is incorrect. It’s very nice dancing, but not Egyptian. Everything has to be in harmony so that I am satisfied with the quality of the dance.

I like reality and truth, and that’s why I don’t appear on social media a lot. Social media can be deceiving, and I prefer to have dancers in front of me live.

Because all the foreigners are women and artists and they feel something. It’s not only me who can feel. Anyone who listens to the music and sees a dancer expressing herself in a liberated way wants to join in and free themselves from their day to day life.

Like for me after I finish a show where I feel I have done everything that I wanted to do, I forget whatever problems I may have.

There is no woman with the talent of tasting the music and who loves dancing that can resist Oriental dance.

For me, Oriental dance is my medicine, my life and my soul. I’ve never regretted being a dancer and whatever is in my future, it will be with dance. Dancing has given me so much. I cannot count the benefits and still I have to give more power to the dance. It deserves it.

An artist is always suffering. They feel more, hurt more, love more. And because of this, the life of an artist is difficult and tiring. What makes us persevere is the ability to use what is inside of us and the music.

I’m talking about my experience. Nothing but music transports me. Music, practice and dance. Dance is the cure. Artists are different. Each field has different feelings.

I’m talking about my experience.

Why did I forget this finger, this movement, this hand?

I become crazy because I should’ve been better, and I wonder why I made mistakes. I feel from inside that it’s never enough, and I want to practice. Every time I practice, I know that I could get better and strive for this.

The combination of practice and having a gift makes an artist, not just having a gift alone.

There’s a saying about dance. If I leave dance for a day, the dance will leave me for 10. That means that practicing the dance is important.

The artists should be like a role model. Their words and actions should encourage others to behave in the same way. For example, people will copy the color of my nails or my costumes. I am like an idol for those dancers. So I have to be respectable and protect that image. I have to know how to walk, talk, dance, and communicate with people.

People watch and imitate, so we have a responsibility towards Oriental dancing. It needs this kind of support.

I think it’s the end when you feel it’s okay not to practice. That would be the end of me as an artist. An artist should be learning until the end of their days. They will never stop learning.

Throughout life we learn every day and discover something new through our work. We have to practice every day to understand and learn. Without this, there is no dance, no development.

The most beautiful thing is that I can share my feelings with my audience and I can see them admire my work.

I can see the respect in their eyes when I’m on stage. And because Oriental dance is problematic in our culture, this makes me very happy.

Inside me, I’m happy because I want to show everybody what Oriental dance and Egyptian culture mean. What the rules are. What is right and what is wrong and where Oriental dance is supposed to be.

If all the people who care about Oriental dance disappear, the dance will vanish.

I always feel that I have to work hard to show the people what Egypt is and present Oriental dance from the past until the present. How we feel it. I have these responsibilities. I’m happy with this and I will never get tired. I will always continue to celebrate Egypt and Oriental dance.

And she gives a *kiss* at the end.

Alicia: So now you are marinating in the profoundness I alluded to at the beginning of this show. Wow. There’s just so much to unpack here. On my website aliciafree.com, go to the podcasts page and open up this interview. Like many of the podcasts posted there, the show notes page is super helpful if you like to read the highlights. I also send a podcast highlight email out once a month, and you can sign up for that on my site too. Here are some of the highlights of this interview for me:

Randa feels incredibly connected to her orchestra and musicians and music. She practices a lot, but she is not just focusing on technique. When she is performing, she is focusing on each moment. The suffering, the joy. She is asking the universe her questions with her dance. As she said, it’s “because Oriental dance is a pleasure for us… It’s like a cure for us to feel that we are free, we are human and that we can fly.” Her dedication to her art has given her wings.

And if you look for Randa on social media, she’s not someone spending tons of time making her Instagram feed perfect. She’s spending her time dancing and getting people together to dance and play music and enjoy art.

You might want to listen to this interview again and visit the show notes page. If you get just one thing, one concept, one idea or one practice that brings you joy each time you listen to a podcast, then you are winning. Your time is well spent. I bet if you listen to this episode again, you’ll get another gift. We have so many gifts in our lives. This interview that Randa Kamel and Sara Farouk have created for us is a gift, and I am so grateful.

Gilded Serpent article on Randa Kamel by Yasmina of Cairo

The nightclubs were open, famous Egyptian dancers including Randa Kamel and Aziza of Cairo performed, live bands played, and belly dance costume shopping continued. Hear about Naimah of Baltimore’s adventures on Black Cat Belly Dance Tour in 2021.

Alicia Free: Naimah is known for her mystique, theatrical performances and gothic flair. She is a drop-dead gorgeous Baltimore-based visual artist who started belly dancing back in 1999. She has performed at many festivals including Tribal Fest and Bellypalooza, and other events with great names like Belly Horror and Raven’s Night. She has judged and danced in competitions, and been featured in a music video, and also been on the news. She’s a very interesting dancer that you are going to love meeting virtually in this interview. 

And Naimah helps organize the Art of the Belly dance festival in Ocean City Maryland!

When I first interviewed Naimah back May 2020, it was episode 43.

That’s where Naimah inspired me to start sewing big snaps to my costumes, dance with my kitchen knives, wear pencil eyeliner under my matte black liquid liner, and eat furikake. That reminds me to get back into working on my belly flutter too. I got so much out of that episode! And I hope you did too. If you haven’t heard it yet, it’s worth scrolling down to past episodes and putting episode 43 in your listening queue. 

And looking back at that interview I realize it was recorded just a couple months after Covid shutdown in the US first began, and also before the murder of George Floyd. So a hell of a lot has happened in the world and our lives since then, and it’s time to reconnect with Naimah. And Naimah recently took a trip to Egypt and she’s going to tell us all about it. 

I went with Shannon Bishop of Black Cat Belly Dance Tours of Egypt. When we were in Caira, we stayed with Yasmina of Cairo in her Dancers B&B. Yasmina also organizes belly dance tours in Egypt and offers belly dance classes in Cairo.

It felt very different than being in the United States during COVID. It was like COVID didn’t really. And they told us that going into it and we’re like, come on. But when we got there, we forgot that there was a pandemic happening. There were times where we went into buildings and we had to wear a mask, of course, but we were outside a lot and outside no one up.

And that surprised me, but it seemed fine. Everybody tested negative on the way back home. So it was fine. And then you come back to the cold climates where we have to keep going inside. Had you been to Egypt before? No, I had not. I went with Shannon Bishop’s group Black Cat. Black cat belly dance tours of Egypt.

Absolutely. There were a group shows where people who were part of the group got to perform with live music.

And that was fantastic. And we had parties where we got to dance. It was amazing. We went to clubs, but also they invited music and that’s what we danced to. We did go to clubs and we got to dance a little bit on the dance floor, but we mostly watched in the dance clubs.

There were lots of drums. Sometimes 10 drummers or more, it was just so amazing to watch and hear.

https://youtu.be/xh45GV8wFqY?t=1918

It was all live music. One band did some more electronic stuff, but they were the opening act for the bigger band.

there were points where the dancers would have us come up and dance and times where we just wanted to watch. So we just stood there and admired the dancer who was performing. And there were times where the dancer hadn’t come out yet, so the opening act would have us come up and dance we spent a lot of time watching the dancers. There were, I believe 19 of us.

They feel the music more. The lyrics, the nuances. It was like a perfect bond. They emote. Like their body grabs the music and pulls it in.

Some of the dancers we saw were Aziza of Cairo and Randa Kamel.

I wanted to see Sharazad, but she was not in Cairo at the time. And I wanted to see Sahar. All of the dancers we saw were Egyptian.

Yasmina of Cairo was our host. We stayed in her B&B and she photographed us.

https://youtu.be/KG_xBxbVGaI

https://youtu.be/MWPKDzL-8gc

https://youtu.be/2zt5elKdV5s

https://youtu.be/_LI7E2EXTHs

We saw different dance styles in different regions of Egypt.

We saw Nubian dance in Aswan.

Men did this dance. It has whirling dervish connections. Some of these performances, it looked like the dancers were just doing their routine. Then we saw an amazing performance in Cairo, where the dancers did so much with their skirts.

https://youtu.be/BxbrgcKM7KM

Men did this dance too. Some of them used really long sticks. Sometimes their sticks are ornately carved. Sometimes they do interchanging formations.

In the nightclubs of Cairo, you can see amazing belly dancers in glamorous costumes. Hollywood glamour. Many of the most famous belly dancers in the world are in Cairo.

This wasn’t part of the interview, but this Egyptian social dance can be like belly dance that people do together informally in groups at weddings, parties, etc. It’s also a dance style that is performed, and the dancer sometimes wears a dress instead of 2 piece bedlah.

This is often done to the saidi ryhthm (the double doum is in the center) and often danced with a cane. In Luxor we met Khyriyya Mazin, the last Ghawazee dancer. They were really into saidi there. Saidi style is earthier than what you see in the nightclubs of Cairo.

https://youtu.be/jfcFiHwGQBw

In Egypt now, many people associate belly dance with sex work. Belly dancers are shoved in night clubs. They want to be out in their communities.

There are dancers working on making it acceptable to belly dance in Egypt.

We are doing a hybrid version of Art of the Belly in 2022! There is an in-person component and a virtual component. So you can take workshops online and see an online show as well as coming in person to Ocean City Maryland.

NYC raqs sharqi dancer Natalie Nazario of Puerto Rico shares how to belly dance authentically to shaabi and mahraganat, as well as her love for Egyptian colloquial Arabic, culture and daily life. 

Natalie Nazario is a Puerto Rican professional Raqs Sharqi dancer, teacher, choreographer, and producer specializing in Egyptian Oriental Dance based in New York City. Founder of Raks Al Zahra Company, her group is the result of great inspiration received from her travels through the Middle East, as well as from her personal experiences that resonate and connect between her dancers and the audience. She has done so much and she is a lot of fun. So let’s jump right into it!

On Facebook: Natalie Nazario Ayala

On Instagram: @natalie_hayat

www.natalie-nazario.com

Natalie, you have a background in jazz and hip hop, and I can see that come through some of your fun Shaabi choreographies. Do you have any tips for making Shaabi performances look more authentic? 

Traditional Shaabi was made with musicians playing real instruments, and it started in the 1970s.

Mahraganat became more popular after the Revolution in Egypt in 2011. They wanted to talk about the difficulties they were having. They couldn’t afford to pay musicians, so they started using computers to make their music electronic. Mahraganat can be more fun, and has hip hop inspiration.

Is it from before or after the 2011 Revolution in Egypt?

https://youtu.be/7fHPSfotGY4

For example, you can wear modern costumes while dancing to the modern Mahraganat music.

I see that you have been visiting Egypt since 2015 to learn about the culture and modern life of Egyptian people in a deeper way.  And you have been learning Egyptian Colloquial Arabic. How has this helped you connect on a deeper level with belly dance?

Yes!

“Yallah!” (Let’s go)

“Yalla Bina”

“Mish mumkin”  (No way! I can’t believe it.)

“‘Aywa” or “aiwa “ – I say this as approval while someone is dancing. Like yes! Yes! Especially when they are dancing to beledi.

The way words are used for belly dance changes with time. For example during the Golden Era of belly dance, these words were not used the same way or pronounced the same way.

I also see you were in a show with the famous Egyptian puppet Abla Fahita when they performed at the Apollo Theater in New York City. ; an Egyptian production And you performed while speaking Egyptian Arabic.  Tell us about that. 

https://youtu.be/jG8DGhEUed4

It was incredible. It was a dream to perform to an audience of thousands of Arabs. Once you know your audience, you know how to connect with them. An Arabic audience is connecting with the dancers the whole time by making sounds. This is very different in different cultures. I performed in Japan in a big beautiful theater, and the audience did not clap. I thought they did not like my performance. But after the performance the audience came to me and told me that they loved it. Puerto Rican audiences are often more like Arabic audiences by clapping and saying things and getting very excited at the end. But Egyptian audiences can even start saying “Yallah”

I dance differently according to my audience. I dance different in Egypt and Puerto Rico.

Every audience demands something different.

Natalie’s motto is: “I write my life with every dance movement. As I perform, I dance my past, present, and future to come.” Do you have a Danceable Ritual you would like to share?

Every time I wake up, I start moving my body with the background sounds. Like birds. I start awakening my body with movements with sounds from life. If a car passes, having a specific sound, I will move with that. Or if someone starts talking, moving with the energy around me.

I was listening to the sirens from the ambulance, and I start dancing to that.

Moving my body to the sirens of the ambulance. and that reminds me where my movement should come from. I go back to what is natural.

And I noticed that I was dancing even more from inside-out. I started doing it one minute. And sometimes I dance for 3 minutes, up to 10 minutes. Even if I was just raising my arm very slowly for one minute.

It makes me connect right away

I have featured Kaeshi Chai and Brenna Crowley of Belly Queen, and it seems like such an amazing community of artists.

What are some of your most memorable takeaways from the Bellyqueen Teacher Training Certification?

Body language and connection with your student is very important for a dance teacher. The way that you present to your students. Be prepared for class. Organize your ideas. Understand the needs of each student. Different ages, experience levels, etc

I visited your website www.natalie-nazario.com and I saw a video of the Raks Al Zahra show which featured some of your most outstanding students. And it looked like you included a lot of different dance styles that Oriental and Folkloric Style choreographies. Khaleeji hair throws, Shaabi in blue jeans, full skirt (this is actually a piece from Dalia Carrella Company, they were our guest in one of the 3th Anniversary show), white galabeya like Fifi Abdou. The show looked like a lot of fun. When you are producing a show, what do you want the audience to experience? How do you want them to feel? 

So much culture is represented in dance. I want the audience to be immersed in culture. To feel like they are traveling with us. Music and daily life.

https://youtu.be/Acs_0eOagwY

And see the dedication of the dancers. The effort that they put into learning the choreography and everything that goes behind it. I guide my dancers to read articles, see documentaries, translate the music. The dancers connecting to each other and performing as they are one.

The Fairuz version is on Belly Dance Body and Soul playlist! But we could not find this Elissa Lovers version on Spotify: 

https://youtu.be/IBZAO068oxQ

It’s a Lebanese composition. I first thought it was Egyptian. The lyrics are amazing. Longing for your country. The breeze. Wanting to see the fish swimming in the water. Fairuz sang it before. When I heard another version, the energy and the way the instruments were being played was different. The way it was sung. The pronunciation of each word.

Music is like dance. You can see when it is more Turkish, or Egyptian, or Lebanese. The way that Egyptians play the tabla nowadays is completely different than the way they play table in Lebanon.

I am going to ask you more about the fantastic food market dance video you released in April 2021. But first, how did you figure out what music was legal for you to use in the video?

https://youtu.be/VQW2uIdR80s

Right now in Youtube you are able to add the credits for the song. Then the musicians allow you to use the song if they approve and of course they will get at least .03 cents for each time the video is played. 

The music company Hollywood Music Center did approve the video after I uploaded it.

I had to take a risk. I invest a lot. They could have said that I could not share the video. First I uploaded the video as unlisted, and I knew that they would figure out. Then they approved it when I agreed to pay them 3 cents each time the video is played. I thought that was a good deal for them.

One time I did a performance to a live band playing “Zay el Hawa” by Abd El Halim Hafez and I was not allowed to upload it. It was live musicians. They song will never be played the same. But I was never allowed to share that.

Figure out if they are likely to approve the way that you perform the song

I am making their song more famous! But I do understand because I am a choreographer. Sometimes the meaning of a song or choreography changes with a performance. But some people want a specific idea or concept that they do not want represented in another way.

There is a video of a Mahraghanat performance that is banned only in Egypt. You can watch that video everywhere else in the world. It is banned only in Egypt.

Start by just shifting your weight all the way to your toes, and then to your heels. Your entire body starts feeling the weight shifting and connection with the floor and earth.

Then bring your upper body all the way forward, and feel the weight shift. Then bring your upper body back, and feel the weight shift. Keep your tailbone down. Move your body, but in place.

Then the upper body goes front, weight is in toes. Upper body goes back, and your hips go to the front. And so on.

Weight in your toes, then weight in your heels.

When I rode a camel in Egypt, I found that this is the movement of the camel. Step by step, slowly, connecting with the rhythm of the camel and moving like that. I did full body undulations while riding a camel. It was a eureka moment.

There are many ways to do the camel dance move. You can engage your muscles. But you can also do it naturally.

You were the star in a great video “Baladi”, where you are dancing in front of a fresh fruit and vegetable stand in a market. The words on the signs were in Spanish, and the actors were dressed up like they would have been in a market in Egypt. You were making connections between markets in Puerto Rico and markets in Cairo. It helped me realize some of the similarities in the markets I have been drawn to all over the world as well. The colors, textures, socializing, life, the delight of finding what you are looking for. Tell us more about your inspiration to make the video. 

I wanted to mix and connect both Puerto Rico and Egypt. I wanted to support the farmers in Puerto Rico and to speak Egyptian Arabic in the video. After I made the video, my friends in Puerto Rico wanted to go to the market in the video. So I was supporting the local people. And all of the people in the video are my friends. I dressed them in my costumes. Even my Mom was in the video.

It was connecting and supporting my people. The videographer. The photographer Monzeeki.

https://youtu.be/VQW2uIdR80s

Get some leaves of hoja de recao and put it in your beans. It has a great flavor. I learned this from my grandparents in Puerto Rico. “Hoja de recao” or culantro is similar to coriander, but the leaves are longer.

And from Middle East, I love the spice mix za’atar. I mix it with yogurt, oil, on beans, with bread.

https://www.tastymediterraneo.com/zaatar-manouche-flat-bread-with-herbs/

It is very important to keep your body safe. Safety pins can hurt you. They can come open while you are performing. Even expensive safety pins. There are not more safety pins in my life!

And safety pins can damage your costume. Costumes are valuable. We spend a lot of money on them. We spend a lot of time and money on performances.

You learn how to carry your personality. You even learn how to walk. How to share who you are. When you share who you are, you will be able to connect with people more.

I just recently featured Jillina in this podcast in episode #61, and I see that you won the People’s Choice Award at the Bellydance Evolution event in Australia. What did that experience teach you about dance? 

This was one of the first times that I traveled to perform outside of the US. I pulled a Puerto Rican flag out of my costume.

https://youtu.be/HTJ3g0zsVn0?t=153

Jillina shows us how complete a dancer can be. She is very important as a role model. Her program Paso por Paso (Paso x Paso) supported the belly dance community in Central America.

https://youtu.be/tRMERsnvxvY

Even if it’s just part of your shower, try cold water. It makes me feel good. My skin looks good. Younger.