Can someone Re-LiveJounral, like we ReTweet? And can we RLJ ourselves?

I am building up some content over here on Blogger, and thought I would grab some recent posts from my LiveJournal that might be of interest here, where I plan to talk mostly about dance (that is the PLAN anyway). So here it is:

Asharah posted in her journal lastyear last year about "honesty" in dancing. And it just got me postin', so I thought I would post a bit over here.

I see a lot of contrived performances--in aesthetic and execution. I see a lot of inauthentic dancers. Dancers who are not being their authentic selves on stage. They are clawing and grasping at trying to be or do the next big thing. I remember one gal at a workshop I taught not too long ago saying she was going to take a hula class because she was excited about the possibilities of fusing it with her bellydance, but then she found out Unmata was already pretty famous for that, so she was going to try and find something else to study to fuse. I was stunned into silence.

That, to me, is the quintessential problem these days: reverse engineering fusion. So many dancers are shoehorning things into bellydance just to try and be new and different--rather than pursuing your bliss and letting that fusion organically flow in the process. The best of all worlds of classical or fusion bellydance forms is when someone is just dancing their own being and that which grows out of their experiences organically. Isn't that what we are always saying is a primary root of bellydance as we know it? Honestly and openly revealing something of ourselves in the dance, rather than trying to gauge what will get the best reaction or the most buzz, and chasing after that? Is not "dancing our stories" the very essence of bellydance?

This is part of why my troupe has taken a very conscious step back from the entire tribal "scene" in the last year. We were frankly exhausted with the frantic "lookatmeeee!"/"wannabeeee!" energy that flows through it so much any more. We really missed that familial warmth, the genuine baring of souls through dance, the meeting of like-minds, unaffected groove behind the community that drew us to it in the first place. We wanted to get back to our own roots and remind ourselves what we stand for, what we dance for, and what we want to communicate in our work; separate from the grasping expectations of tribal audiences who lately seem too easily bored and jaded by anything that has "been done". We didn't want to stay on that train of constantly trying to go to the creative well, and becoming artistically contrived when the genuine inspiration dried up.

So we slowed down, and it feels good. Really good. And our work feels more honest, more pure. We honestly haven't had any big new things come of it yet. We are on our own creative schedule. We turned our energy inward toward one another and the voice we want to speak with. We have been honing our most basic technique and revisiting our foundations to make ourselves stronger overall. And when we come back out "on the scene", if we have something new and amazing to show for it, great. And if not, we can at least be assured we are stronger, better, and being true to ourselves.

Asharah also posted a link to a blog post by Amy of Kallisti Tribal which explores her thoughts on "Fusion, Performance, and Skill," which I really enjoyed. Hope you do, too!

I was musing to my husband recently about musical choices, and how our troupe went from a good mix of folkloric and funky, to straight up funky, and is now trying to bring back in some of that folkloric. I compared funky music to dessert--you would have this really great yummy sweet unexpected thing to cap off the "meat" of the performance. He agreed and said that with the use of primarily funky music in recent years, our sets had maybe become a little one-dimensional. "It's like all you're giving them (the audience) any more is dessert!" And we all know what happens when we eat too much dessert. We get sick of it!
I know when Chris agrees, I am onto something. Heh He has a keen eye, and is not critical without constructive feedback.

This is definitely what I have been feeling in watching bellydance performances these days, as well. From haflas to festivals, it seems everyone wants to jump right to dessert, and is skipping out on the equally delicious, but far more hearty, main course. All night we are fed sweets after sweets after sweets, and it gets artistically nauseating before too long. And one starts to crave a nice juicy steak, hold the whip cream please!!

And there is something else to the dessert analogy: "additives and preservatives". So many of these sweet desserts are made up of artificial sweeteners and coloring. So little organic, natural expression is coming through. Everyone wants to clown it up so much, hoping to bury the chemical taste of contrived art under a heavy scoop of confetti and laughter. Why are we all so eager to jump to the easy sell, instead of getting to the root of the dance and just sharing it from our hearts? I think a lot of artists are truly afraid of being "boring"--and jaded audiences sure can be dismissive if they see anything that looks even remotely like something they have seen before. Blame it on television, blips and boops, the daily one-upmanship of the media.

I know I am victim of this mentality at times. Just the other day I was talking with some fellow dancers about how we often hesitate to adopt "yet another FatChance move" into our vocabulary, because we don't want to look too much like them or be compared to them constantly. Of course we want to speak with our own voice, and not appear to be banking on the work of another artist. Yet I have always felt that choosing NOT to do something because someone else is doing it can be just as limiting as choosing to DO something because someone else is doing it. In either case, we are allowing someone else's choices affect our own. We are locking ourselves off from artistic possibilities that are open to us, out of what? Fear? Jealousy? What is really at the base of these choices? Why can't we be humble in the face of others' great art, and if it is offered to us and we love it, why not embrace it? Conversely, if we are given something and it doesn't feel quite right, we should just as enthusiastically change that which needs changing to suit our true expression. And ultimately these questions should be asked! Is this new idea really "me" (or "us")? Am I doing this for attention/fame, or because it resonates with some integral part of my being? Why am I itching for change so much, when what I am doing and creating now is still beautiful and relevant and entertaining? Were the changes I have made in the past god choices, or do they need reevaluation?

I am rambling...

So I feel good in the music shift I have been making in my classes, and now pushing for in troupe. Everyone seems on board with the direction, and it feels really good to me. I think with our shift in costuming in the last year or so, as well, some more folky music really suits the aesthetic, and yet the modern twist/edge we put on it all is a nice surprise and keeps us contemporary for our genre. Getting back to the "classics" musically has also been inspiring to me in movement and choreography, which has felt a little stale recently and thus I have not been creating very much. I look forward to some nice juicy "steaks" topped off with the well-placed "sundae" in the coming year. :)