Another of my self-set dance challenges for 2011 was to perform solo Khaleegy, choreographed by me, for other dancer (the scariest audience!!). I had done a bit of group Khaleegy before, doing other people’s choreographies and attended plenty of workshops over the years, but an entire song of Khaleegy to a discerning audience is a scary prospect I have been considering but chickening out of for years.

Khaleegy isn’t belly dance. It is a folk (sort of) style from the gulf region (‘khaleej’ refers to the gulf area in arabic). Every country and region has its own specific style, but bellydancers tend to do a generic mish mash (or ‘fusion’ heh) of the most well known moves. The costume is a large tent like dress, and as well as the typical ‘limping’ footwork it invovles a lot of shoudlers, hair and arms and no hip moves.

Anyway, I think all i needed was the right song. I found a great version of ‘Naweelak’ on a CD from Outi of Cairo, Outi helpfully even provides a full translation here.

Here is my third public performance of this piece. It’s still work in progress but happy with how it is going so far. I think I can say I’ve achieved that thing on my list of dance challenges!

Untitled from Zafirah Dance on Vimeo.

eta: for the geeky types like me, here is the original song:

Its interesting to note how differently Outi’s egyptian orchestra relate the melody to the rhythmn and the heavyness of the drums, to the original that kind of floats over the top. I suspect my khaleegy dance not only has a ‘english’ accent but also an ‘egyptian’ one. I’ve heard that the egyptian dancers are known for doing khaleegy more (“too”) heavy and energetic (that’s not quite the right word, use energy differently perhaps) for the gulf people’s tastes . . . .