domingo, 1 de diciembre de 2013

Your style, my style.....


                             

The word style comes form the latin "Stilus" and it's use in many ways  for diverse occasions; life, fashion, artistic eras, elegance or distiction among others.

In the dance scenery there are many styles, from the ancient ritual dances, to the refinement of Ballet, or the folkloric dances of each country which is a picture in motion of their legacy to the world, it represents the traditions of each culture in this planet, that's why dance is so important! .Each type of dance it's been evolving with time and their performers have found different paths to enrich it and even create a new style or tendency into the dance itself.



Belly dance hasn't left behind in this modern world....the dancing style of the actual performers is not as it used to be,. in this globalized society, BD became very popular in all countries, each country add some special flavour to the raqs sharki, I'm quite sure that nowadays we are more non-arab dancers than arabic origin belly dancers, this is the reason why now we can see such big western influence into belly dance.

                              (On the top, Dina one of the most imitated belly dancers on the world)

However as technology advance and comunicate from one country to the other far away from yours it's fair easy nowadays, tools like youtube, bellydancers.tv, vimeo or facebook are our main plataform to expose our work and get work, but also is an endless source of ideas and sometimes clones.

                                        
                                     
Which are the boundaries to take inspiration of another fellow dancer? Is it right that you admire so much a dancer that you copy all her style???. I have always believed that even you may be an exact copy of your idol, each one is unique and bring into the belly dance something fresh, in my country there's a saying: "Who hit first, hit twice" meaning that the person who made something first than anyone else will have a high impact than a person who made it again later on., this may be true, but what happens when you do it in another place where it's a novelty? Will you show it up as yours or would you inform your audience this is a representation of someone else's work??...

I pop this questions to dancers around the world, to share our opinions, to make our belly dance community much more genuine...the biggest challenge for a BD teacher is not only to give technique of movements and theory but to create a new generation of dancers that are able to use this knowledge and add their personal charisma to the dance, and this, is the most dificult thing to achieve, cause it's much more easy to click on youtube than sit in an empty space thinking about a step not yet created.