Foundations of dance

As all my dance students know, from day 1 of dance class, we emphasize, drill and repeat our mantra, which we call the "Foundations of dance".

These are essential elements that make what we do dance. If you're missing any one of them, no matter how many moves you master, how clean your technique is, how gorgeous your body and costume may be, without these foundations, you will not look like a dancer.  However, if you have mastery over the foundations, you can simply just walk and all the eyes will turn towards you.  It's that simple.  It's like building the foundation for a skyscraper.  If the foundation is strong, you may build whatever you want on top of that.  If one pillar is missing from the foundation, the whole structure is doomed to failure.

Please keep in mind that dance is not a linear process. You can't approach dance like a shopping list; checking off moves as you learn them or understand them.  If you do, you will easily be outshone by the dancing Santa doll that people will buy you for Christmas.  Dance is rather a big round pot full of soup.  The soup is made from the foundations of dance.  It provides the delicious base from which you will start making your irresistible dish. Whatever technique, moves or costuming you learn and add, need to be well stirred into that base, or the foundations of dance, in order to create your dance.

So what, you may ask, are those magic ingredients that we all have to seek as dancers?  Before I tell you, I want you to visualize your favorite dancers. Simply see them move with your mind's eye.  Even better, this being the information age, go to the Internet and watch some of their footage.  After watching at least 3 of your top dancers or so, the more different from each other the better, try to write down the common qualities that they all have. Pick different styles if you're agnostic, pick different countries, genders, body types,..etc.  Try to be as diverse as you can in order to get the big picture. Don't read further until you've written down at least 2 qualities that all your favorite dancers have.  C'mon.  I won't go anywhere.  I'll be here when you're done AND you'll have a much deeper and more rewarding experience finding out after you've done your own research.

Ready to proceed?

The first foundation is Posture.

No matter what style of dance you do, a straight posture is the bedrock for any movement art. Whether you're a dancer, martial artist, in a marching band or a cheer leader, your neutral position should have a straight spine from your head to your tailbone.  Imagine that you're a marionette hanging from the ceiling with a string attached to the top of your head. Your body should flow down straight and relaxed from that string.

Elements of a straight posture:

1. Chin up: Your eyes looking at your own eye level with your chin lifted and parallel to the floor.

2. Shoulders down: Realistically, back and down.  In order to find the correct shoulder position, start by pushing both shoulders as far to the front as possible. From there, push the shoulders all the way up. Then all the way back as far as they will go and finally all the way down. When the shoulders are all the way back and down, that's where they should stay.

3. Sternum out: Imagine that your sternum bone, which is the bone between your breasts, is the handle to a gate. Now open that gate by pushing your sternum bone out like opening a door to your heart. In essence, you're lifting the rib cage and opening your chest.

4. Tailbone in: In order to avoid lower back injuries, it is extremely important to point your tailbone straight down at the floor.  There will still be the natural curvature in the small of your back, however, if you imagine your tailbone as a finger, tilt your pelvis in as if pointing that finger to the floor between your feet.  From that position, you may move your pelvis anyway you want as long as you come back to that neutral position.

5. Knees unlocked: Especially in Bellydance, we never lock our knees.  If we lock the knees, we consequently lock the hips.  Many of the hip movements are initiated and sustained from the knees.  Keeping your knees in their natural straight walking position is your neutral stance with your feet underneath your shoulders.

The second foundation is Attitude

As my teacher and one of the most revered Bellydancers of our time, Mona El-Said once said: "To dance is to be in love".  Your facial expressions need to reflect that attitude.

Dance is a celebration of life.  When we dance, we embody the rhythm, the melody, the life force, the energy of being and the divine within us.  Our facial expressions need to reflect aliveness and presence.  Bellydance is primarily a celebratory folk dance that emerged organically from people's festivities. While many cultures use dance to express complex emotions and epic stories, in the Middle East, the most common story people share with dance is that of joy and happiness.  At the very least, the dancer needs to smile.  Not just a plastered emotionless smile, but a bright joyful smile that becomes contagious to anyone watching.

If you are dancing to a song, make sure you understand the lyrics, or at the very least, the general meaning of the song.  Your dance, gestures and facial expressions need to tell the story of the song.  HOWEVER, there is a big caveat: Arabic songs tend to be very emotional and when translated to English, over the top melodramatic.  Middle Eastern people are more forthcoming with their emotions and their linguistic expressions may seem too extreme to the western ear.  Do NOT act out the negative emotions, they are typically used for poetic effect and are NOT meant literally.  You may hear love songs using words like 'kill', 'slaughter', 'torment'...etc.  They are NOT to be taken literally.  Even if the song is sad, talking about a breakup, lost love, longing...etc, you still need to show the smile of resilience and triumph over adversity. Never dance with a poker face, a frown or an emotionless expression.  It looks and feels robotic and contrived.  That is contrary to 'Raks' (Bellydance) which is alive and celebratory.  You want to have a conversation with your eyes. Move your gaze around your audience.  Look at your hand, hip, shoulder (or wherever you want attention) then out at the audience.  Keep the conversation going but don't look at the floor as that kills the conversation and your dance.

Practicing your 'attitude' is easier said than done.  It takes a LOT of effort to seem natural on stage.  All actors know that.  That's why we start practicing our 'smile' from day one of dance class.  Just because you're thinking, or your left brain is engaged, does not mean we have to see that on your face.  Practice acting in dance class.  It will help your performance.

The third foundation is Rhythm

This one should be obvious as a dancer.  But wait.  There are multiple layers to what we mean by rhythm.
The first layer is the obvious count: 1, 2, 3 and 4 which covers 90% of the Middle Eastern music used in dance.  Most pop Arabic rhythms are 4/4 or 2/4 counts.  You can easily hear the pattern if you just close your eyes and let your body feel the beat.  As a dancer, it's much better and more common to phrase your dance using at least 8 counts (i.e. 2 music bars) for each dance phrase to make it more interesting.  No matter how you dance or what style of dance you do, rhythm is your anchor, your backdrop and will dictate your phrasing.
The second layer is the mood of the music.  If you listen to any music, it inspires and invokes certain emotions or moods.  Your dance needs to reflect, magnify and express those moods.  If the music is fast, peppy and full of action, your moves need to be fast, peppy and action packed.  You will want to move around the stage, cover some space and invoke the same mood in your audience.  If the music is soft, dreamy, and melodic, your dance moves should become softer, mellower and more subdued.  Maybe move in a smaller area or dance in place expressing the different melodies in different parts of your body.
As you advance in your dance and your music interpretation, you may want to use syncopation, skip beats or use unusual, innovative techniques in visualizing the music.  However, before you divert into those advance techniques, it's very important to establish that you know your rhythms and understand them THEN AND ONLY THEN, you can innovate. Otherwise, you can easily come across as out of touch with your music.  Not everyone can afford to paint like Picasso.

The forth foundation is Arms

Humans are hardwired to watch each others' hands. With our hands, we can throw objects, attack, point,..etc. so there is a huge survival value to watching where the hands are. That does not change when we watch performers, no matter what else is going on.  I can be completely naked in a church, as soon as I point with my hand, all the eyes will look to where my hand is pointing and ignore everything else. Your arms are that powerful.

I can't over-emphasize the importance of the arms in Raqs (Bellydance). They simply can make or break your dance.  They are the frame that highlights your beauty and enhances your moves.  If you frame the Mona Lisa in a ratty old fraying cardboard frame, it will look worthless.  If you frame the doodling of a 4 year-old child in a beautiful frame, it becomes a work of art.  Your arms have the potential of elevating your dance to supreme art or flushing all your hard work, technique, costuming and everything else down the drain. There are very few things more painful than seeing 'chicken wings' on dancers. We've all seen them; they are those drooping elbows and hands that yell out loud: 'I have no idea what to do with these arms'.

When we study dancer arms in class, the first we do is throw away those anatomical arms that start from the shoulders to the fingertips. We then acquire much more grander, expressive dancer arms which extend from the belly button to infinity.  I know it sounds like superstition but the moment you imagine that your arms are actually extending to infinity, your moves immediately look more elegant and grand.  It works like magic, you just have to believe it and act it out. Your dancer arms are much bigger than life. Let them express the explosion of dance energy from your core, from your center of gravity, from your essence and cover the whole universe with dance energy, joy and beauty. When you reach with your arms, use them to send dance energy to your loved ones in far away places.

So how does that translate to your physical body?

One very important distinction is that your whole torso and upper body will move as you extend your arms. It's not a big move but it's very poignant. You will start to move from your sternum. Your neck will be soft to allow the movement of your head. Imagine and imitate a palm tree swaying in the wind, that will give you the picture of your upper body movement.

What about the anatomical arms themselves?

The anatomical arms in dance will finish the movement, NOT start it. They are soft and smooth like seaweed in the ocean currents. They can be symmetric, asymmetric, up, down, or wherever but they are always flowing and pulsating with life just like seaweed in the ocean WHILE the armpits are open. Imagine that you have to breathe, sometimes yawn through the armpits to keep them open which also lifts your chest.

In Arabic dances, the arms and hands are not as elaborate or structured as in Persian or Indian dances. However, there are very important things to know:

1. No sharp edges: avoid sticking out any joints; no drooping elbows, no sticking wrists or fingers,...etc.
The fingers are relaxed out. In order to avoid making unintentional rude gestures at the audience, stick the middle finger to one of its neighboring fingers while touching your thumb to the base of the middle finger.
Any time you find your elbows lower than your wrists, tilt your arms to point your elbows back. If your elbows have eyes, they should be looking behind you.
The only sharp edge you will see in Middle Eastern dance is the greeting gesture where the hand, facing forward, touches the hair line as in saying 'hello' or acknowledging people around you. A relaxed version of the military salute if you may.

2. No straight lines: Middle eastern dance evolved from people's natural environment and daily experiences.  In nature, there are no straight lines and that is reflected in people's dance. Even when the arms are straight, they are soft and relaxed. Straight lines are abrasive to the Middle Eastern eye and while they may be used for effect or drama, they don't stay straight and the elbows, like the knees, are never locked.

3. The wrist is your heartbeat: One very telling sign between a Middle Eastern trained dancer and a western trained dancer is in the wrists. In the Middle East, the wrist is like a heartbeat, it is constantly moving, ever so subtly and reflects the beat. Watching a dancer with a stiff, non mobile wrist in the Middle East is like watching a dancer without a heartbeat. That does NOT mean hyperactivity. It's like a simple nod every now and then with the wrist.

4. You want to carry your arms from underneath using your lat muscles (the muscles underneath your armpits). I highly recommend strengthening those muscles to achieve elegant arms. Push-ups, lat pulls at the gym or simply using your lat muscles in your daily life helps you achieve beautiful elegant dancer arms.

So there you have it, your dance Mantra:
PARA: Posture, Attitude, Rhythm, and Arms.