Constructing Self and Community through Improvisational Tribal Style Bellydance
February 14, 2012
at 12pm
Kaufman studio, 214
Improvisational Tribal Style Bellydance is a form of bellydance practiced around the world today that started in the US in the early 21st century. This dance is evidence that the transnational practice of bellydance continues to promise personal transformation and a sense of community for its practitioners. In the experience of dancing this structured improvisational form, the dancers put themselves in a situation where the possibility of falling out of unison with one other is confronted repeatedly by the group. They manage to maintain their group integrity, the choreography, and their relationships to one another, out of which a sense of community is formed and strengthened again and again. I argue that the experience of dancing this form helps to construct a particularly secure and responsive self. Come to witness a live group demonstration, short video presentation of interviews, and snippets of my research. Please offer your thoughts, connections, and questions for further exploration.
April Rose is working toward her Masters degree in Culture, Performance, and Dance at UCLA?s World Arts and Cultures|Dance Department, where she has also earned a BA in Dance. Her research explores the many permutations of bellydance practice in the post-1960?s US: in specific, bellydance as a practice that enacts a tension between the potential for personal transformation and social transgression and its tendency to fail in fully reaching that potential.
April took a leave of absence in 2010/2011 to tour internationally with The Bellydance Superstars and was been a performing member of UNMATA for 5 years. April Rose began Egyptian/American Cabaret (or Raqs Sharqi) bellydance as a child. She was lucky enough to be immersed in the practice as an adolescent at a time when its underground, punk rock, queer, and 90?s-feminist tendencies had just begun to emerge. She currently travels abroad on a near monthly basis to teach, speak, and perform at bellydance conferences and teaches three nights a week in LA. Her life is dedicated simultaneously to bringing into bellydance the theoretical, historical, and compositional knowledge she has gained in WAC and to making people understand the potential bellydance has for thoughtful self expression, community formation, and the challenging of social convention.
www.aprilrosedance.com
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