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State of the Art: Middle Eastern Dance by Lori Clark

In the DC area now, one finds the phenomenon of the large ‘Middle Eastern Dance’ school run on the business model established by private, for-profit ballet schools. Middle Eastern dance schools play upon harem-mother-goddess fantasies of adult students. One has to give credit for business savvy, but what is being sacrificed in terms of art and ethics? In a bid to take over the local market, unskilled student dancers have been sent out on behalf of the studio to perform for fees that are either shockingly below the going rate or, which is worse, free. More often than not, these students are not up to professional standards in technique or experience. In many cases, they have only studied for six months to a year. Often, these unqualified dancers are also teaching in the studio themselves. This encourages amateurism and undercuts the fees of professional performers, while it damages the artistic integrity of the dance form.

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The Dance of Isadora Duncan by Valerie Durham

The dance of Isadora Duncan is a crafted study and artistic rendering of the human soul. Isadora said that her legs expressed the rhythm, and her upper body the melody. But what Isadora can rightfully be credited with is taking modern dance from a notion, to a place of respect amongst the fine art forms. More than any other artist she brought dance to a place of respect beside literature, painting, music, poetry, and sculpture. Her visit to Russia in 1904 had a catalyzing effect on the formation of the Ballet Russes, and Isadora's use of music, movement flow, staging and costuming inspired Fokine's ideas as he began that great company. She managed the realignment of dance in the art world through several methods....

Asides

• I just read this in reading up about Sean Curran......... Tony: What made you want to do The Fire Island Dance Festival this year? Sean Curran: I was at the very first DRA meeting at Hernando Cortez' apartment--which I guess is now ten years ago. At the time, I was dancing with the Bill T. Jones / Arnie Zane Dance Company and several company members had died. Arnie had died. I had two roommates who hadn't died at the time, but were sick. And so it had quite an impact. I believe that artists are activists in a way, being an artist is a political statement, especially in our society. And as artists, one of our jobs is to be a changer. Art does a lot of jobs for us, it can hold a mirror up to society, but it can also help change it. And I just thought being an activist and an artist was part of my mission. #
• I was just following some thoughts around the web and came across this, which to me bears on the feature post (above) by Judith Hanna, and prior posts I've written on the same subject. Here it is, from Virginia Woolf: "When a subject is highly controversial — and any question about sex is that — one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold. One can only give one's audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker." #
• I was reading ArtsJournal.com just now and saw this from the Guardian (Uk): "Neither the Royal Ballet nor the English National Ballet currently employs a single black ballerina. The path to ballet stardom is generally easier for black men than women: black men are considered well built for lifts and pas de deux work. Just 10 dancers in the Royal Ballet's 98-strong company are not white - of those, only four are black, and all of them, like Acosta, are male. At ENB, just eight out of 71 dancers are not white. Only one is black, and he is also male." You can see the whole article here. It reminded me of the Bourgeon article looking at the difference between the treatment of men and women as choreographers. You can see that here -Rob #