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

Greetings!

I love December.  Maybe because I am a December baby and all the holiday excitement makes me happy.  I don’t mind all the hustle and bustle since the magic of the holidays are filled with the reflection of joy in my daughters eyes.  I love the smell of the house with our Christmas tree in it, the smell of freshly baked cookies, and the screams of Isabella each time she sees a newly wrapped gift under the tree.  Her joy is my joy and I’m just happy I can enjoy each day with my family. 

I look back on this year and it has been full of joy.  The school is growing, my students are progressing and Bal Anat and the Suhaila Dance company are expanding.  The feeling is of new growth and excited anticipation of what this next year will bring.  This is also a very creative time for us all since I am planning next year’s session of work and material.  The studio is buzzing.

This years touring of workshops ended with a bang.  I did my last workshop and performance in Toronto Canada and it turned out to be the best workshop to end off the year.  Audra of Cleopatra’s Bazaar was my sponsor and her professionalism, pampering ability, and shear care for detail was truly amazing.  She took care of me, Tiffany and everyone in the workshop with a full heart.  I felt totally spoiled!  Thank you Audra.  You rock!  Between the lunches, snacks, message, dinners, and taking care of me when I was sick… thank you.  I look forward to coming back next year.

Editorial by Suhaila

I had been married for approximately four months.  Andre and I would take walks at the dog park at Point Isabel since it is 5 minutes from our house and right by the water with a view that is breathtaking.  Only in Northern California does some of the most prime real estate belong to a dog park. We made it a daily ritual and it was the time that we spent talking about “stuff”.  Being newly married and the feelings that come up when you think you are starting a new life seem so magical.  Like you can do anything you put your mind to and there are no limits.  So as we were in the middle of the park Andre asked me very casually “What is your dream in this life time”?  Without hesitation I replied, “to raise the level of my dance form and establish a safe place for women to create and develop their dance”. 

Since I have been in this dance form my entire life, my desire to create more started very young.  My mother and I started to choreograph together for the first time when I was approximately 14 years old, in eighth grade.  The music coming to us from the Middle East was different than before. You weren’t just dancing to basic rhythms anymore; the music had changes and levels that were rare to find with the intention for a belly dancer.  Mostly dancers were dancing to “singer music” so this music was revolutionary.  Not many seemed to know what to do to it instinctually.  I had a classic dance background that made me able to hear belly dance music without feeling limited.  When the music changed my dancing started to change within my choreographies and performance because my motivation for movement came from the music.  I knew how it could look if I could express through my body the way I heard the music.  But that was the issue… the fact that I couldn’t do what my mind saw in movement.  I knew what it could look like and how I wanted the music to be represented on my body, I just could not get my body to actually do the movements I was dreaming of.  So that is when my work began.   

Read complete editorial...

Before Our Eyes

by Tiffany Bisconer

The first time I saw Suhaila dance I was amazed at how skillful her performance was.  I sat on the hill by myself at the Black Point Renaissance Pleasure Faire and watched her and her Dance Company perform.  Even with my unknowing eye, I could tell that the movements were different than anything I had ever seen before.  The dancers looked so controlled and sharp, and the movements were isolated and intricate that it caught my interest and the visual burned into my memory.  Before this, never in my life had I ever even thought about belly dancing, but this seemed different, challenging and something inside of me posed the question…wonder if I could do that?  I ran up to one of the dancers after the show and grabbed a flyer.  I carried that flyer with me for a year as I stumbled through my life couch hopping, migrating from apartment to apartment to living in my car, working the perpetual 90 hr work week and in the wee hours of the night painting, writing and playing music to stay sane…. just fighting to survive.  I wanted more out of my life and out of my self.  I was becoming more and more angry and being a punk in the filth city was starting to deteriorate my hope that has always been there as a light that to lead me forward in the rough times.  When I look back on this time in my life I’m still amazed that I am standing here today, properly groomed, with all my hair, and my biggest struggle is scheduling a healthy sleep regimen in between my artistic goals and my business responsibilities.  The best thing I ever did for my self was to follow a whim and take a belly dancing class. 

Read complete article...

Rashid's Old School Corner

An excited student thanked me after class recently, for helping her understand how to rethink her body and internalized movement with a clearer picture.  It felt better physically and intellectually, she said.  “You and Suhaila really know how to break down stuff and teach it with a logical progression.  I was taking from (a local teacher) and was getting really frustrated because every time I would ask her to break down what she did …, she couldn’t.  Finally she suggested, if I wanted technique I should go to Suhaila.  I’m so glad I took her advice.”

I was surprised by her forthcoming and inspired with her thinking about organizing herself in her dance, a long-term topic of interest for me!  What is technique and style in this dance form and what distinguishes the two?  I’ve spent a lot of time and energy pursuing the same question.  To that student, thank you so much for the honesty and I can only hope a class I teach can be that exhilarating for anyone.

When I started thirhhhhhtthhh…something years ago, we baby dancers were looking for the same thing, technique and style.  Coming from the provinces around the Greater Bay Area what we wanted often seemed so distant.  There was that troupe at the Renaissance Faire that really had the best technique and vibe. It was hard getting to “the City” before I was eighteen, ya know for belly dancing lessons… Whatever that was, that was what we wanted.  It was the seventies and the media was gentrifying the sixties.  We were culturally dealing with the same issues we face today.   We were doing what every generation does, looking for the exotic within ourselves.  Maybe feeling a little culturally lost. 

The mystique of Arabia and the Middle East was still approachable before the late seventies.  The answer to the question of our pursuit was clearly defined in Arabic dance.  Our experiences, perceptions were to be had in and around the Arab-American night club and restaurant scenes.  The seventies were sorta the halfway point in the history of the belly dance and Arab-American Clubs in this country.  By then, it was typical to have the majority of dancers performing be Americans.  Some were local, some from afar but all embodying an exoticness that was clearly defined by Arabic music and culture.  The occasional Arabic dancer who came through town reinforced the image and the refinement of our own dance expression.  We really wanted to be her…

Jamila Salimpour (that troupe at the Renn. Faire…) lived the Middle Eastern/American experience which brought her in her own right to an interpretation of the dance.  Her experience had her interwoven within the two cultures.  What we learned from her was conscious imitation of Arabic dance.  We studied Middle Eastern dancers’ individuality and style looking for technique.  If you could dance for Arabs and be accepted, you were “in.”  

Then, as today, there were many exponents and many interpretations of the dance.  However one thing that is distinctly different between then and now is the conscious recognition of Middle Eastern dance as the inspiration for what we called belly dancing.  With a couple of generations now since those earlier days it is easy to understand how history and the difference between technique and style gets lost or forgotten Then like now, if someone couldn’t execute the technique, they might easily dismiss it as, “That’s not my style.” Today the definition is equally as diverse however the interpretation.  There are legitimized “styles” which have taken on a life of their own within American culture.  Maybe we are just experiencing the gentrification of our cultural quest for exoticism.  One is still left to self definition in this tangent of a dance form called American belly dancing.  Today the myriad of interpretation seems to possess an adamant insistence on not being based on Middle Eastern dance forms and not really needing to explore the cultural roots of the dance as a source of inspiration. 

For me, I continue to be inspired by Arabic music and movement and to base my success on how close to the original I can come.  There is still no better thrill for me than to dance for Middle Easterners who appreciate and understand my interpretation.  There are distinctive technical movements and a style in which to present them that is always Middle Eastern for me.  Style was most often described by presentation and attitude.  The dancers interaction and demeanor and how she dressed herself spoke her opinions.  Technique was something only some seemed to possess but it was clearly an ability to isolate and move body parts with a sense of the phenomenal that was distinctively Middle Eastern.

After all these years, with Jamila as my original point of reference, I can still promise with confidence to students that knowing this technique inspired directly from Middle eastern dancers and musicians will enable you to break down anyone else’s style.  As long as I can inspire dancers with my point of reference, I know that I’m teaching both a style and technique which comes from an original source (Arabic culture) and connects with a continuing quest in this culture to find a sensuality that has been ever present in Middle Eastern dance and music.