My SITA Chapter 7: Solo Improvised Dance at Bellydance Showcase

I finally did my SITA performance at Cypress Raks, a bellydance showcase for local dancers. I'd done my work. I’d studied, watched, listened, practiced. I performed for my friends, at a local senior center, and at the open floor opportunities at festivals and showcases. Each performance improved my ability to improvise a balanced and entertaining solo. And even though there were a few moments leading up to this performance when I hoped I'd accidentally drop a cast-iron skillet on my foot, mostly I was excited about it. I knew what I had to do. I had to make sure I was listening and responding to the music, take time to feel my space, remember that I have some technique that I can rely on, and interact with the audience.

I spent the day primping, reviewing the DVD Secrets of the Stage Volume 3, and watching NCAAW basketball (where you can see many fantastic athletic improvisations). Once again I found Secrets of the Stage very inspiring and helpful. Amira’s performance is just simple and graceful and beautiful. Nanna performs a wonderful style that I've ever seen before; it may be something of her own. Its flat-footed and bouncy and I have become completely charmed by its folky style. And Shoshanna, with that curvy, hourglass figure just feeling thru her space ecstatically. I felt ready.

I headed down to the Cypress Lounge, located in downtown Santa Cruz. The place was formerly and more famously known as the Javah House, which was, at least during my time at graduate school, the place to drink coffee, meet TAs, or study. The current owners have maintained the locale’s very friendly, open atmosphere. Its somewhat cavernous architecture helps this as well. For this event they pushed the dinner tables back into several long rows opening up a good size space. There was also space along the front of the counter facing several luxurious lounging couches arranged for good viewing. There was no shortage of space in any direction so it was also a good stage for dancing with veil or Isis wings. Next to a small passage that leads to the restrooms, they set up a wooden screen where the dancers could change and have a place to wait before or after their performance.

I was third in a very diverse lineup. Tatseena and Zurah Malika, cabaret-style soloists, opened. I was followed by the amazing Raks Araby, a modern, urban style with Crystal, Amber, and Jessica. Then came Rebecca and Julia who performed with veils, Tribal Moon (American Tribal Style), and finally our hostess, Aruba, who finished the evening. As I sat on a barstool watching the other soloists, I scoped out the space. My eye caught the corner of one of the couches and I thought, Well that's just a prop waiting to be leaned on. It called for something luxurious and sultry. I saw too, that the wooden screen by the performer’s area had potential for something playful.

For my music I decided to use Bela Fleck’s Flight of the Cosmic Hippo, a light and very playful jazz piece with banjo and harmonica. I had been bellydancing for about a year when I first heard this music and knew instantly that I wanted to dance to it; I just had to figure out how. At that time I didn't have enough technique or confidence to attempt it, but my time had come. And even after so many years, the music is still so much fun. It appeals to the ham in me and expresses humor, a characteristic that is very important to me and my heritage.

I'm not sure I could describe what I did. I was dancing so I wasn't really trying to remember anything, plus I enjoyed a little 420 and a glass of wine before I went on. One of my strengths is my musicality. I like to respond to the music, mimicking it in my body in some way. It feels right to me to parallel the sounds that the musicians are making. This audience seemed to appreciate my ability to hit a percussive moment with a hip pop or to undulate to the melody.

The moment I put my hand on the couch I heard people making complimentary oohs and ahhs. So I knew I could play with that as much as I wanted and I did. I stretched out along the curved arm, reclined, threw in a little hand floreo in the air. As the music wound down I headed for the wooden screen, executed some flirtatious looks, and exited with a vaudeville-like disappearance behind the screen.

Afterwards, I sat behind the wooden screen with my performance left out on the floor and the audience applauding and the next group getting ready to go on, and I felt overwhelmed with joy and pleasure and satisfaction. I'd really, really let myself go; I went for it and I did it and tears came to my eyes.

Later I told Aruba (and everyone else I spoke to) that it was one of the best performance experiences of my life and that I was totally hooked. I can't wait to try it again and I promise that I will out there at every opportunity. I feel like I am only at the beginning, that I have so much to develop, so much more that I can learn to do. And it's a really a wonderful thing to be in my late 50s looking forward to developing myself as a dancer instead of back at what I once did. It was all quite liberating.

My SITA* Chapter 6: Presentation of Self or Who Am I When I’m Dancing?

Borrowing the model from my martial arts study (aikido), I’ve decided to think of SITA as a practice rather than something one masters. It seems to require a knowledge of self, and like most martial arts today, supports a kinesthetic inquiry into self knowledge. I am not suggesting that bellydance is the same as the Japanese budo: paths toward self-realization thru corporeal discipline. But for me, right now, in this time and place, the kinesthetic study of SITA is causing me to turn my attention on my sense of who I am. And perhaps by treating it like budo, and by seeking that mystical union of mind, body, and self in action, I can discover, cultivate, and present a fuller sense of me thru my dance.

In order to improvise intelligently within the tradition of SITA, I need to be knowledgeable of the dance vocabulary. I’ve been a student of bellydance since 2001 (with frequent breaks due to joint injuries). I began with American Tribal Style but quickly explored other varieties bellydance including Tunisian and Egyptian SITA. And having studied all kinds of dance over the course of 50 years, I’m pretty confident that I embody sufficient technical information. But, in order to access that knowledge, I need to get out of my own way, and that’s all about Self.

This where I, me, my body, and my self become all muddled together. I am afraid my body will betray me, either by not remembering how to move or by revealing my self to all the world. I have this strange notion that no-one really knows who I am and that, based on the principle that “movement never lies,” when I dance I am revealed. And I worry that I have nothing to offer. But bellydancer Bahaia advises that you must find confidence from within. Present who you are remembering that you have something to share and remind yourself that your dance is good enough. In order to perform SITA, I must learn to trust myself and embrace the possibility of revelation. And if I treat this whole process as a kinesthetic exploration of who I am when I’m dancing, maybe I can get out of my own way and let the dance lead me to self knowledge.

*SITA Solo Improvised dance featuring Torso Articulations

My SITA: Chapter 1. Improvisation in Uncertain Times

I’m a 57 year-old woman and have been unemployed for the better part of two years. So when I revisited the idea of performing a solo, improvised bellydance, I thought, Hell, if not now, when? And I resolved to dance in public to an audience of my friends before I turn 58.

My past experiences with improvised dance are not among my fondest memories. In the 1980s, I was a modern dancer training in some old school forms (Graham, Humphrey, Limon). Within the modern dance community, I explored improvisational dance and performed for a time with Truda Kaschmann, a student of the German expressionist dance. Generally, I found improv uncomfortable; sometimes I just plain hated it. I liked my dance steps to be predictable, the way I liked my life.

But that was eons ago and I am in a very different reality today. I can no longer imagine my own future. My body has morphed, my career plans busted, and the entire world economy is in free-fall. I have no idea what might happen next and no way to plan. So it seems appropriate that I want to reflect all that uncertainty in dance. Part of my desire to perform SITA is to learn to trust and embrace that unknown.

SITA stands for Solo Improvised dance grounded in Torso Articulations. It was coined by Iranian dance scholar Anthony Shay to designate a genre of dance widely practiced throughout North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Mediterranean which emphasizes the skillful articulation of the torso—the shoulders, chest, belly, and pelvis.

Unlike the abstract improvisations of the 80s, SITA is grounded in specific steps, movements, and styles. It provides a basic vocabulary from which to draw for choreography or improv. Both require rehearsal, in one case to memorize and in the other to be open to discovery.