Musicality & Technique
Homework

Homework:

Improvisation Exercises and Notes

There is no replacement to an understanding of your music when you are improvising, understanding the music both in your mind and with your body.

Learn to Identify Musical Phrasing and its Count Patterns
Arabic belly dance music typically breaks itself down into patterns of 2,4,8, 16 and 32. If you listen to your favorite piece of Oriental dance music and count it out, you will typically find the musical phrases fill 8 or 16 or 32 counts with occasion segways or accents of 2 or 4. This makes the music relatively predictable and allows you to build your dance habits around these kinds of counts. If you delve into some of the more complicated classical or regional pieces, you might run into different phrasing, like 10s for example in pieces using the Samai rhythm or 6s like you'd find in Morroccan, Persian or Iraqi music. If you delve into Turkish music you can expect a lot of music that bases it's musical phrasing around 9s and 7s as wells as multiples of 8. The more you learn about different music, its counts, rhythms and regions, the easier it gets to dance to anything well.

Getting Comfortable with Rhythms
Going beyond just being able to count out and identify the rhythms you find in belly dance is important. You need to be able to dance to each rhythm in a way that acknowledges a rhythm's individual attributes. It is important to start to identify where in the music you might hear particular rhythm, like malfoof or fast ayyub in an entrance and a maksum just following an entrance, a wahda kabir or chiftetelli in a taksim and so on. You will also want to start to identify if there is a regional or cultural reference, like the Saidi rhythm's association with the Said region of Egypt and it's horse and assaya dances and fights, or the the Khaliji rhythm with the gulf and women's thobe nashaal dances, or a slow building Ayyub with the Zaar ritual and so on. This is an ever ongoing process. The more you learn about your rhythms, the greater arsenal of movement and character references you have to respond to them when you are dancing to a band.

Getting Default Movements into Muscle Memory
Finding a fall back or thinking move that you can rely upon as you build your dance on the go in an improvisational situation is a really nice tool to use. I highly recommend finding a fall back move or moves for your most common rhythms used for belly dance. If you want to take this a step further, you can start to build fallback combinations as well.

---homework--- go through an entire rhythm CD, practicing one fall back movement for each rhythm. Don't forget to include in your training, posture, arm placement or movement and body angle to make sure your fall back move is always an attractive one.

This week we are listening to Alf Leyla we Layla for our improvisational work in class next week. Take some time to count out the phrasing and see if you can identify the rhythms used.

Connecting Dynamic Staging to Your Music
How you use the stage is very connected to what the music is giving you.

Last week we played with Aziza. Aziza is a very famous entrance piece, first danced to by Naima Akef in a classic Egyptian film "Aziza". We discussed how we use the beginning of any entrance to mark out our space and greet our audience. Naturally Naima does none of this but instead just works her way down a set of stairs. It is good to keep in mind that things often happen a little differently in the movies than they would in a more typical nightclub setting. But this also can be put in the category of artistic liscence. The second thing we discussed was changing the dynamic of our movements to reflect changing dynamics in the music. Naima does this beautifully, always responding to the shift between the 4/4 rhythm Maksum and the 2/4 rhythm Malfuf and then the dramatic shift into Masmoudi Saghir (Baladi). Notice if Naima has any fallback moves for each rhythm. It is never a bad idea to steal a fallback move for any given rhythm from a famous dancer like Naima. Notice how she uses her stage space as well. See how she interacts with her musicians. See how she places her self in upstage position (relative the the camera) to work her way forward when the balady starts, see how, even though her space is small, she travels a little more during the malfuf. See how she moves very rhythmically, but more or less travels very little during the maksum. Notice how she knows and hits all the accents.

NEW STUFF

This week we are listening to Leylet Hob! Also spelled Leilet Hob sometimes.
I'm encouraging each of you to go deeper into your rhythms. This week instead of just determining a default move for the rhythms on your CD:

1 - I'm recommending you get comfortable physically interpreting the rhythm with your body, really paying close attention to making the Dums readable on your body, use feet and hips extensively, but don't be afraid to extend that further into the body.

2- Look for context. Does the rhythm fit with a region like Khaliji or Saidi, does it fit at a certain place in your Oriental routine, like a Malfuf or Wahda Kebira? Allow that to effect what default moves you work on for each rhythm.

3-Hit common rhythms first, then expand outward

4- Look at what the stars do. You hear my opinion a lot in class, but you don't need to take my word for it. Take a look at one of your favorite dancers default moves. See how they interpret each rhythm, then absorb some of that into your own vocabulary. I do not require original invention. I recommend stealing moves from the best!