Welcome to Suhaila Unveiled, the official e-newsletter for Suhaila Salimpour, and the Suhaila Salimpour School of Dance.

Greetings

Suhaila with Gina and Sabriye, 1st Level 3 Certified Dancers

First I want to thank everyone for all the support after the January newsletter. I am consistently humbled by all the support from this community I have grown up in. Thank you!

I have to say that I am extremely excited and proud to present my first Level 3 certified students. Congratulations to Sabriye and Gina. To say I’m proud is an understatement! These two dancers have worked hard and completed the required Level 3 material. Seeing my certification program evolve is a dream come true, and I’m grateful to the students that believe in me and work hard to move forward.

We are preparing for another weeklong Level 3. The anticipation is huge for this level of workshop and between the reading list, choreographies, and homework this workshop changes one’s life. I love working at this level since it is really where I develop an artist -- mind, body, and soul. Also at this workshop, we are honored to have special guest instructors: master teacher Fahti Al Jarrah for music and Dr. Patrick Tribble for anatomy and injury prevention. Also, a Level 4 Choreography Weeklong Workshop is scheduled for December 2008 to help students in the certification program begin working on the required material for Level 4 certification . . . we are moving right along.

Suhaila and Amy Sigil of Unmata

In addition to the Level 4 Choreography Weeklong Workshop mentioned above, we have two more exciting workshop offerings. In September 2008, we are introducing the Jamila Salimpour Belly Dance format certification program with a Jamila Format Level 1 workshop. Jamila Format Level 2 and Teaching Certificate testing will be available in March 2009. Also, in June, we have a Choreography Collective workshop scheduled. This weeklong will include my technique as well as complete choreographies from at least five different instructors all with different stylings. More details on these workshops will be available in the next few weeks.

I am excited to introduce the new Repertoire Ensemble presented by Suhaila Salimpour this year, and we will debut this group on Saturday afternoon at Rakkasah West. This new group of dancers will be performing choreographies from artists including Rashid, Amy Sigil (Unmata), and myself. The Repertoire Ensemble is a fantastic group of dancers that are dedicated to continuing their studies and evolving as artists.

Jim Helman working on Reflections CD

Last but not least I’m happy to announce the release of Reflections, a new percussion CD featuring master Israeli drummer, Bishara Naddaf. We are also releasing our Dark Veil single, a heavy metal and Arabic fusion song featured as our opening song at Rakkasah West 2006. It’s hot! These CDs will be available in March and our featured items at Rakkasah West.

See you there!
Suhaila

Editorial by Suhaila®

Jamila and Yousef Kouyoumdjian Baghdad Cabaret, San Francisco

In the early 70’s, Jamila Salimpour, my mom, was the first to organize and create a belly dance weeklong workshop. Mom first held her workshops in her San Francisco studio on Broadway, but they soon grew too large and were held at a hotel. This move of the workshop to hotels brought about the format we now know as “Belly Dance Festivals”, the first being her “Workshop and Play at Baghdad by the Bay”.

These workshops and festivals were a grand experience. Most were held at the incredibly beautiful Belleview Hotel, a San Francisco landmark built in the 1920’s. The art deco design of the hotel complemented our “oriental” decoration of the grand ballroom. Vendors lined the walls, and chairs were in the middle of the room for watching the nonstop performances from 11am until 8pm. All the dancers in my mother’s festivals had to audition so, even though there were performers for nine straight hours, the quality was very high. It was difficult to leave your chair but, eventually, once numb butt set in, it really didn’t matter how fantastic a dancer was – it was time to shop.

The real dance experience followed in the weeklong workshop after the Festival. Jamila or one of her students taught Jamila Salimpour technique in the mornings. These morning sessions were structured to guide and drive the students through her entire format in one week. Each afternoon, a different teacher was brought in to teach choreography, and students left with a booklet of 3 or 4 different choreographies. These choreographies were diverse with different movement styles. Students received invaluable training that was full of substance in a time when not much training was available.

Occasionally, my mother would hear of someone using her format to teach when the student returned home from the weeklong. It wasn’t that my mother minded them trying to incorporate what they had learned, but it was the desire to use the words “I teach Jamila Salimpour Format” that confused her. She was also very confused why someone would think taking one workshop (or even 2 or 3 years of classes) would entitle someone to say they knew her format. She would say “why don’t they allow me to say who knows and can teach my format”.

Jamila Studio Photo by Philip Harland

In the early 70’s, she began to tell me that she wanted to certify her students that she felt could teach her format. One concern that kept my mother from beginning her certification program was how does a teacher ensure her students evolve and grow through the years as the teacher does. My mother is 81 and is still creating, choreographing and developing combinations daily; even though she wrote her format years ago, she is still evolving and growing as a teacher. If you certify once and have no requirements for continued learning and education, how will the student truly be able to say they teach a format that evolves if the student hasn’t been to class in a year? So, as I was developing my certification program and remembering my mother’s concerns, we realized that required CECs (Continuing Education Credits) every year for each level of certification was a necessity. And, as my mother has watched my certification program evolve, she has once again begun to feel the need to certify in her format. So it is with great excitement that I present to the world my mother’s certification program to begin in 2008. Jamila Salimpour’s format is the inspiration and foundation for ATS as well as many troupes, festivals, workshops, standards and costuming. For me, other than being my mom and an amazing woman, it was the Jamila Salimpour Format that inspires my every creative moment even to this day. If you are a belly dancer today in this world you have been touched by Jamila Salimpour Format. Now, you can take advantage of this incredible opportunity to learn this influential and longstanding format from the source.

The Next Generation Takes Root

by Rashid

Premier male belly dancer of the original belly dance troupe, Bal Anat, RASHID is an early pioneer from America’s first tribal movement in belly dance. A consummate artist, RASHID is a traditionalist with a mastery of the Classical Middle Eastern Dance vocabulary. Under the tutelage of Jamila Salimpour, he immersed himself in Arabic dance at the tender age of 16. Possessing a developed understanding of & respect for ethnic dance, RASHID pursued ME dance as a performer, anthropologist & historian.

My friends and I created a routine of coming to classes in the city by any means we could. Before BART, Greyhound buses and borrowed cars were the options. My VW bug died shortly after that first trip to Broadway and hauling us up that last block of Kearny Street with 5 people in it. BART did make things much more independent for me by age 18. I’d graduated high school mid-year with enough credits and attended junior college studying theater arts. The summer of ’74 I turned 18 and moved from home to share a place with friends from high school doing the same. I worked as a life guard and part time custodian to pay the bills and get me to classes. I had a momentum built and was quickly defining myself as a young adult artist in the community. I had fingers in many pies; the community theater, set design and costumes, painting and pottery, yoga and did I mention nude modeling for the life drawing classes at the J.C.C. My 26 year old girl friend turned me on to that. The dancing fit right in and exotique’ soon took over.

Jamila recognized my cymbal playing pretty much right away. Running 9’s was a cinch from the beginning. At a point not long after starting classes (6-8mo.?) she asked me to stand on stage and play cymbals with Bal Anat. Like I said, no… I was so proud to be an apprentice.

I remember coming to the studio on an odd week night and slipping up the dark staircase to the studio. I felt very “star-struck” being so up close to all the characters from the Faire in variations of ethnic and hip 70’s wear instead of assuit and Ottoman coats. Aida was running around with tattoos on her face since she did wear them in the clubs and silk flowers in her hair. Don, the Ouled Nail was approachable. We became good friends. I met Darioush at that first rehearsal. He was one of Jamila’s first tray dancers. There are other stories there…

This was gratification both, in a personal sense, becoming part of something I’d wanted so much and the contemporary expression of these “exotic urban, hippy bedouins”, Babylonians from the Bay Area. All reinforced what I wanted in self-definition. I was poised to say bah-bye to my suburban roots.

Somewhere between summer of 1974 and fall 1975, the political dramas occurred between the Pattersons of the Renn Faire and the ethnic performers they “employed” to embellish the “Gypsy Caravan Stage” and other corners of the fairgrounds. Each performer of Bal Anat was given $6 in food coupons per day as compensation for the days shows, all three. The rift began with a request for a backstage porta-potty and ended with a suggestion from the Pattersons for names of all artists who felt they should have improved work conditions and a raise. Everyone on the list including Bal Anat, was fired from the Faire. No more Flamenco, no more Baratnatyam, and no more Bal Anat, at the Faire. I didn’t get to play in the barrel, but I still had the apple I dove in for…

Life continued at the Broadway studio, and the clubs downstairs still provided the pulse for our rhythm. I think it’s important to remember here that ethnic or tribal interpretation was still connected to Arabic culture for American dancers like us. It took guts to get up in front of Arabs and perform their dance to their music. You’d hope to God you new what your favorite song was about, a couple of words at least. What you did had to be presented as authentically, ethnically correct. Sometimes you were interpreting the lowest cast of people in an eastern culture but that didn’t matter. You were proud of that. American viewers were politely invited to witness our exoticness. If they didn’t quite understand, it didn’t matter. That actually pushed you closer to your own exotic goals. It was always really cool if Americans thought you didn’t speak English. Goal met!

Even the fantasy variations had to be acceptable on some level as they translated into something circus-like or souk-like, for Arabs. Jamila’s influence kept us researching our interpretations, even when they were far-fetched, within historic context and from the Arabic culture. I think some of the European romanticism we used was palatable to Arabs, or at least entertaining. In one way we didn’t mind that they viewed us as prostitutes and gypsies. Some of us were both! Being called “sharmutah” held a certain ring similar to, “Power to the People.”

You could say the ethnic thing developed at the fairgrounds easily transferred to the streets and local cafes of the Bay Area. Walking down the street became an opportunity for flowing garments and kholed eyes. We had our “north bay thang” going. We performed at Rosebud’s Ice Cream Parlor in Benicia, Middle Eastern restaurants in Napa and Solano counties, the Yountville Winery. Jamila still had a local scene in the east bay with places like Live Oak Park Faire and other annual venues. Bal Anat’s momentum was not lost, just rerouted.

In class we began meeting other dancers and new friends, some of whom I am still in touch with. These other folks were doing the same things we were doing with our dance; patterning ourselves after Bal Anat each with a little variation. Somewhere there too, the Kashlama trio broke up. I was asked by the remaining dancer, Maggie if I wanted to learn the dance. You know that happened and then also my friend, Judy, entered the picture. We needed a trio for Kashlama. Judy was a close friend, roommate, came to class with me each time and was a really good dancer. She and I quickly learned the Kashlama routine. Maggie lived up north too (Napa?) close enough to make it work and our north bay troupe received an upgrade with now a third Jamila student in the mix. We asked Jamila if it would be alright to perform the Kash outside of Bal Anat since we were the three company members. She said yes. She new we were loyal.

Street fairs were a cultural response to the times, locally. Neighborhood communities would trot out the booths and crafts and setup the parks for weekend events. Grass roots music and occasional celebrity performances entertained everyone. The counter-culture’s influential juices flowed from San Francisco at the time, creating inspirational opportunities for fantasy and the exotic. The recent experiences at Berkeley University in the 1960’s had redefined our daily lives and sense of purpose. Fisherman’s Wharf, the Haight, the Castro soon became routine locations for performances of all kind. Not particular bars or restaurants but street corners and alcoves near prominent store fronts became quite acceptable. Aida and her sister were the first belly dancers to perform outdoors like this at Fisherman’s Wharf. They rolled out a rug and play simplified music, sometimes just a drum. It was never a problem drawing a crowd.

We performed our own rendition of this up north in parks and fairs. We always brought the ethnic thing into a cabaret performance with the costume and music. The American crowds in local Middle Eastern restaurant s expected the exotic along with the restaurant atmosphere. Variations on the theme were often accepted as authentic. We strove for the quality of dance we witnessed in the clubs but there was still something offensive about beaded bras and belts, something we had to accommodate later (more stories).

So the full performance involvement we’d had at the Renn Faire simply transferred into our lifestyles. We blended who we were and what we did. We no longer had an annual season of Renn Faire lifestyle each fall for 6-8 weeks, so we took it all back to little niches in Bay Area communities and lived it 24/7, 365. Jamila would call (from the land line) when she had a gig and we would be back happily with the matrix. Otherwise we’d be on our own somewhere, representin’, honing our craft in our community and, I’m sure as others did, developing a reputation for being “those belly dancers”…

Next….weekends in the city,
Saturday class, Sunday on the streets

Perspective

by P. Kitiera Morehead

Kitiera is Level 2 certified in Suhaila’s format. To read more about Kitiera, visit www.kitera.net.

Kitiera at Montero's

As I closed the book, “Princess” by Jean Sassoon, I took a deep breath and let the tears roll down my cheeks. So many conflicting emotions were struggling for my full attention, but all I could think was, “What am I doing in this art form, a white American woman…. What can I possibly know or understand or have to say through my dance, about this culture?”

When I was first learning belly dance, my teacher concentrated on choreographies, on “steps.” We studied ancient Egyptian mythology, basic geography of the Middle East, and the handful of region-specific dances that my instructor knew. When we performed, it was in shows for other American bellydancers, in parades and nursing homes, at holiday festivals, and at the fair. We never danced for Middle Eastern audiences. I was not taught to consider life in the Middle East as applicable to my dance, especially not current events. It was all “over there.”

For the longest time, I tried to get onstage and “feel something.” Now I wonder, how could I? What could I possibly have to say, how could I possibly interpret Middle Eastern music, without the weight of cultural knowledge behind me? Now in my level 3 studies in Suhaila’s format, this question weighs heavily on me, as we are encouraged to come from a place of authenticity and try to gain personal perspective. We are learning to become true artists with something to say, and not just another dancer in a pretty costume. In my quest to learn more about Middle Eastern culture, especially Arab culture, what I find increasingly depresses me and makes me question my decision to be a belly dancer.

I ask myself, “Why am I doing this?” So many women in the Arab world are repressed and subjugated… and so many Arabs don’t value their own art form! Dancers are looked upon as loose women, and low-class, even though dance itself is an important part of any celebration. The people are going through so much upheaval, so much political and religious turmoil… and I am so disconnected from it. I feel tremendous empathy for these people, but I have no way of walking in their shoes or sharing their burdens. So why do I dance?

Kitiera and Isabella at Rakkasah East

An event happened recently that gave me some perspective on these thoughts. I received a phone call that my favorite cousin had attempted suicide. As I contemplated my cousin’s life, her beauty, and her pain, I realized that I wanted to dance for her… because she couldn’t. She deserved to be standing on stage, a powerful artist, and instead she was lying, emotionally broken, on a hospital bed. Born out of that desire to dance in her stead, I finally realized why I stand on stage!

I dance for all of them, the millions of women in every culture who are not able to express themselves. Through my artistic expression I reach out to them. I dance because it is the small way in which I am able to give of myself back to humanity. I have a voice, and though that voice may sometimes be screaming or crying, it can be heard and felt through my dance. Through my own research and connection to the cultural context of my chosen art form, I can inspire others to take an interest in what’s happening outside of their everyday lives… and as a white American woman, my involvement in this art gives me the chance to be a bridge between my culture and the one I am trying to understand.

Knowing why I stand on stage gives me incredible energy. I am grounded and I have something to say. I dance in balance… and my dance has meaning.

Check out this fusion clip on YouTube.com.  Would you consider this work creative or artistic? To provide your comments, please send an email to suhaila@TheRealSuhaila.com and put "Inspiration Point" in the subject.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO10s_HK6d0

Bring Suhaila to your event!  
Suhaila and the Suhaila Dance Company travel all over the country and the world performing and teaching workshops.  For availability and booking information, contact Suhaila at suhaila@TheRealSuhaila.com.

Classes

• Suhaila Salimpour Format Belly Dance,
• Jamila Salimpour Format Belly Dance
• Folkloric Fusion
• Dance Movement
• Choreography

Classes offered Monday through Saturday.  

For a complete class lisiting, visit our website for our new schedule.

Suhaila Salimpour -- P.O. Box 8612 -- Landscape Station -- Berkeley, CA  94707 510-526-4344

suhaila@TheRealSuhaila.com

www.TheRealSuhaila.com

www.smartcart.com/Suhaila  

If you enjoyed this issue of Suhaila Unveiled, please forward it to your friends!