I hesitated to post this because it wasn't really finished when I performed it & improv is REALLY not my thing. I had a very clear idea of how the dance should go but hadn't quite figured out how to execute some of my complicated ideas, so I had to do a simplified version here. I plan on finishing it complete with all the tricks in my mind! What do you guys think of this rough version, though? Things to work on? I notice my chicken arms for sure!
www.youtube.com/watch
www.youtube.com/watch
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Washington, D.C.
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Re: A work in progress
Thu, April 10, 2008 - 2:37 PMConceptually a beautiful idea, I like it. I think the "work in progress" is worth continuing to work on. Things to consider...
Arms-- You said it yourself, they are a bit low. Once you started using your arms intentionally with the music I found them beautiful, why wait so long into the piece to use them?
Staging-- It didn't appear that you had much room to work with, but I would suggest using what area you do have and changing position a bit more. Even with all the work going on up top, it can get a bit repetitive without moving at all. Even taking the same combination and turning it 90 degrees or tilting it or rotating or just doing a level change can give your audience a different perspective and add a lot of depth and make the combination look different.
Facial Expression and Focus-- Direct your audience to a mood by using your mood and facial expression to communicate with. I have a feeling that you must have a personal connection to this piece of music or you probably wouldn't have chosen it. Try to convey to the audience that emotional connection. Again, with this piece being so stationary it could use some interest which could be helped with facial changes and emoting. Like playing charades. ;)
Facial expressions don't have to be big, obvious and dramatic either; you can just tilt the head and use the eyes to bring the audiences focus to a certain area of the body. The most obvious that we learn as belly dancers , is to glance at your hip when doing hip lifts, or to look up at your hands when doing arm movements. These subtle changes can make a huge impact.
Choreo-- What style of belly dance are you invoking here? The music feels very regal, elegant, sophisticated. The shoulder movements however, seemed a little distracting to me in parts of the music. It may be the combination of the low arms and the shoulders but the combination of the two made me think tribal, but the piece overall doesn't read tribal.
I hope this gives you some ideas,
Melodi -
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Re: A work in progress
Thu, April 10, 2008 - 7:21 PMI re-read my post and realized that I forgot to put in one more thing....When performing those chest drops be sure that you stop at neutral, meaning make sure that you start high and drop to level instead of dropping lower than level. I think it was Jim Boz that put it this way, "Never be less than fabulous" He demonstrated "This is fabulous" holding good solid posture with a lifted neutral chest..."Never be less than fabulous" then he dropped his chest. I don't know why that stuck with me, but it is a really good rule of thumb...Never be less than fabulous.
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Re: A work in progress
Thu, April 10, 2008 - 9:11 PM"What style of belly dance are you invoking here? The music feels very regal, elegant, sophisticated. The shoulder movements however, seemed a little distracting to me in parts of the music. It may be the combination of the low arms and the shoulders but the combination of the two made me think tribal, but the piece overall doesn't read tribal."
Well my style overall is tribal fusion. I do like to use kind of "twitchy" shoulder accents. I had thought that maybe people would mention a "lack of mood" being evoked, but to me, as a musician, Paganini's caprices are all about flashy, show-off violin playing & not necessarily very evocative & I was kind of imagining this to be the dance interpretation of that. Unfortunately I couldn't yet execute all of the movements that the music really dictated to me, so I simplified it for now, but I was really imagining this from an almost purely technical standpoint, which is unusual for me.
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