East Coast
Visionary Belly Dancing Caravan Tour
2003

Show Details
Delilah and Sirocco have been working for years across America's night club circuit performing the lost art of the 7 part cabaret belly dance routine. Though, at the time, the dance form was not articulated, it was repeated everywhere across the country. Dancers learned the dance as traditional artisans learn the ropes; by working close to the masters before them. Dance is a metaphor for life! The intuitive dance is a right brain act. It was not choreographed in the western sense but was mapped out as a journey. A journey through time and space, with your body as the vessel and the rhythm; the life force of the dance.

These routines/journeys would start out with the dancer dressed in a typical belly dance costume of bra and belt over a full skirt and draped in a diaphanous veil. She would enter the stage and begin with...#1 The first dance section is really a dance of greeting. She meets her audience and invites them to join her on her dance journey. It’s up to her skill of persuasion how many audience members will accompany her. #2 The unveiling into a mystical and magical veil dance. The process evokes the mysteries of the feminine realm and then the veil expands into wings and the dance takes on ethereal dimensions. We feel a since of the soul in flight! #3 The dancer employs more techniques because her body is more warned up, energy is extended through the body, and the endorphins are changing her plateaus of physical endurance and consciousness. Because her body is more visible, the body language of the isolated body parts are heard more clearly. The audience falls spell bound on the dancing path! Speed, agility, adrenalin pumping, the dancer becomes more adept. #4 A decent to the floor. A place people have been praying and making love for centuries. A communion between instruments and earthy souls takes place. Then the feminine consciousness rises up from inside the stillness of that place. Breathless, the audience follows along these internal landscapes. #5 Now the dancer ascends up off the floor to loftier realms and the energy is again quickened and made ready for the event ahead. #6 The drum gets hot, it begs attention and the dancer and drummer unite. They play, they dance, they tease each other, they get wet. Nothing is set. It is all improvised and in the present moment. They will spend themselves and then take a bow. #7 The promise to return. The dancer thanks her partners in this dance; the musicians, the light man, her audience and does it all again the next night or the next set.

Like the sun, the moon, the satellites we revolve, we repeat, come close together and spin away. The 7 part cabaret belly dance routine is a metaphor for an age old drama. In addition, its parts can be symbolically connected to the wheel of the year, the dance of seasons and journey of our life. In this way the night club belly dancer becomes a timeless priestess, a guide and sage.

The 7 part routine was instinctive and very successful before our world changed, around 1980, and we all started running toward the nano second. Factors of influence, too numerous to go into detail, changed our access to the full 7 part belly dance performance; the club scene changed due to a demographic shifts (caused by the earlier invention of the birth control pill), access to home video, increased availability to 100’s of TV stations, computers, cell phones and answering machines. We live techno-hectic lives compared to the day of old, where there was uninterrupted time for sipping tea and watching feluccas sail down the Nile. Our attention span has changed and our society is demanding short sound bites more every day.

However the 7 part cabaret dance is, and shall always be a human ritual of transformation for dancer and audience alike. It is becoming a lost art because it is dependent on natural chemistry; heart beat, blood flow, adrenalin, breath, and emotional spontaneity, which take organic time, not digital time. It is very different from the memorization or paint by number choreographies brought to us by ballet technology. Both have their merit, but the improvised dance that was often 30-55 minutes long, and was once seen as par for the course, is rarely witnessed in todays modern world.

Now you will have a chance to see it . . . LIVE and WILD. Saturday and Sunday's show will be completely unique in form and costumes. The musicians and dancer, so seasoned that they may even add or subtract dance sections following their own whims and comunicato of the moment. The dancer may say stay, the musician may say go, or come here. This kind of repour only comes among exceptional artists and intimate audiences.
Delilah and Sirocco with be joined by Laura Rose and other guest dancers.

Buy tickets and register on-line
www.joyofmotion.org

AND

• THE SUNDAYS WASHINTON DC Bellydance Workshop at the
"Joy of Motion Dance Center " is SOLD OUT!

HOWEVER
A SMALLER BELLYDANCE WORKSHOP HAS OPENED UP FOR NASHWA'S TROUPE, BUT OTHERS MAY COME IF INTERESTED!
*Saturday October 25th
11:00 AM- 1:00 AM at a different location
call Mina 202-537-6855

$45

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