The Ankle Biter @ Quibbling.net

I learned something kind of interesting today.

Well, maybe I’m the only one who finds it interesting.

Anyway, ever since Beledi ended I’ve been obsessively listening to Sting’s “Desert Rose.” I think it’s because of this weird mental-choreography habit I have- I always think about music in terms of how I would dance to it. And now I actually have some idea of how to dance to this particular song, so it’s been stuck in my head for weeks.

So in order to be able to at least properly sing along with it, I dug up the lyrics to it today. But then I poked around a bit- on Sting’s website there’s a very interesting collection of his comments from various interviews and such things about the songs- anecdotes about recording them, insights into their content, etc. The story of “Desert Rose” is pretty cool.

He had written the English lyrics to the song and a sort of Arab-influenced melody, but it’s hard to make English lyrics sound right against that kind of musical backdrop, and he had been listening to one of Cheb Mami’s albums for a few months, so he asked Mami to sing with him on the song in Arabic. Mami is probably the second-biggest Rai artist, and as it turns out, speaks not a word of English. Sting speaks not a word of Arabic. I guess they both speak French- Mami is very well-known in France, and being Algerian he probably speaks excellent French.

Anyway, without telling him what the song is about at all, Sting asks Mami to improvise some Arabic lyrics for the song, and he does. They record the song, each having no clue what the other one is singing about.

So then Sting says, “So, what’s that about, anyway?” Mami kind of shrugs, and says, “It’s about longing, I guess.” Which is, of course, exactly what the English lyrics are about.

It’s interesting how music and vocal tone can convey so much in the complete absence of common language, music video, or Jaguar commercial.

Incidentally, a couple of translations of the Arabic lyrics can be found here.

What a great idea. One of these would be great for beledi. Shoulder shimmies, while giving the dancer a “freebie,” in the words of my teacher, are really uncomfortable.

Beledi was brutal tonight. I am sitting here in my chair, actually feeling my muscles tighten and get sore.

I am hitting the Dance Wall. This is the wall that I have encountered every time I have taken a new dance class. It’s the awkward bit at the beginning where I’m still spending more time thinking about what I am trying to do rather than actually doing it. The muscle memory hasn’t kicked in yet, I guess.

When I danced in high school, I went through it for a couple of weeks, and then everything just started to click and I developed into a passable dancer. Because swing is so similar to the styles I was already familiar with, I only beat my head against the dance wall for maybe half an hour or so.

In every other style I’ve studied, arm movements, for example, exist only to balance what the rest of the body is doing. And since what the rest of the body is doing isn’t terribly natural and often rather gravity-defying, the feet support the legs, which flow into the hips, which tilt both the legs and torso, which dictates the flow of your arms. It’s all one smooth package. There’s a lot of variety in what you can do, but some movements of one body part simply preclude certain movements of the other parts. Pas-de-bouree, for example, requires one of a couple types of arm movement and precludes others. So once your figure out what you want one part to be doing, there is a reasonably limited set of things the rest of your parts can be doing.

Not so with beledi. It’s a dance of isolation, which means that your feet move more or less independently of your hips, which move entirely independently of your rib cage, which really has very little influence over what your arms are doing. Some combinations look better than others, but ultimately, it’s a crazy mix-and-match of unrelated movements.

And so I am sore, and a bit frustrated. But I’m pretty encouraged by the fact that I’ve always broken through the wall before.

So the second beledi class was last night. It was harder this time. Not impossible, but harder. I’m having a little trouble with the same things I struggled with when I started dancing in high school- keeping track of the steps, making sure my weight is shifted at the right time, etc. It’s an unfamiliar style, but it’s like any other kind of dance- I’ll get used to it.

I think, though, that once this class is over I’m going to investigate classes taught in a proper studio, rather than an elementary school multipurpose room. There are several reasons that dance studios are designed the way they are.

- A sprung wood floor is the safest way to absorb the shock of impact. That’s why basketball courts aren’t linoleum. Humans don’t naturally bounce, so you need the floor to have just a little give in it to protect your legs as you dance.

- The barre is invaluable for helping to stretch out properly.

- Mirrors, mirrors, mirrors. It’s hard to know if your technique is correct or not if you can’t see what you look like while you’re practicing. This is especially true when you are new to a form and don’t know how it’s supposed to feel yet.

I can’t afford a house, much less a house with a studio in the basement, so I’ve got to find a new place to study.

So, tonight was my first belly dancing class. Except that I am no longer allowed to call it “belly dancing,” because the belly does not dance. It’s called “beledi.” And Dena, my teacher, will scold me if I call it belly dancing. So beledi it is.

Speaking of Dena, she’s this cute little apple-shaped Egyptian grandma type with an outrageous accent. The class makeup is kind of weird- a bunch of little teenage girls, and two women who are older than me.

Someday, I’m going to be really good at this. Not right now, probably not even soon. But eventually.

But I’ve gotta get back to doing my old workouts from high school dance class. My stamina is gone. Blah.