What teachers don´t tell you about Emotion in Egyptian Dance
Emotion and Egyptian Dance come in one single package.
I´d say there´s no Egyptian Dance without emotion. True, mask-free, raw, coming-from-within emotion.
As I work on a new Online Course for Joana Saahirah´s Online Dance School, focused on Love, I reflect on what it means to feel - in Egyptian Dance and in Life - and how we can express emotion in a clear, powerful, meaningful way.
There are techniques, tips, and tricks. Opening of chakras, postures, projections, and lines. And, then, there´s something teachers don´t tell you, one of the many things I´ve learned through direct experience, performing, first in Egypt and then around the world.
It´s uncomfortable (as it often happens with truth), challenging, and perhaps a turn-off if you believe Egyptian Dance is resumed to steps and choreographies, but, I assure you, it´s THE THING you need to know.
We need to know.
Drum roll, please.
In order to create a truly emotional dance piece (and life), one that comes from the heart and touches the heart of other people, you need to keep your heart open. Not in theory, not when you're little, but for real, throughout life.
So many of us have closed our hearts due to disappointments, betrayals, the past that keeps lingering within. Our job, as Oriental Dancers and, I´d add, as Human Beings, is to reopen our heart and make sure it remains that way.
What´s an open heart?
- It´s the heart of a child, the child within, the one that never dies, no matter how old we get;
- It´s the heart that has forgiven, though not forgotten, past losses and pain;
- It´s the heart of honesty, one that reveals itself through each of our movements;
- It´s the heart of a person who hasn´t become cynical, sarcastic; who hasn´t lost her/his faith in love, kindness, beauty, light;
- It´s the heart of a dancer who refuses to compete and instead chooses to CONNECT, to express, to reach out, to communicate through her emotional world;
- It´s the heart of someone who knows her/his inner world is gorgeous and, therefore, worth sharing;
- It´s the heart of someone who´ll easily say "I love you", "forgive me", "I need you", "We´re human, after all"; someone who hugs, laughs, and cries easily;
- It´s the heart of a vulnerable person who shows up as they are, unarmed, raw, honest, no masks or pretensions; someone who carries their chest on their hands and kindly shares it with the world.
Is this open-hearted state, easy? Nope. It´s the hardest thing a person can do while living in our fabulous, imperfect, and sometimes savage world.
Here´s the question, though: is this open-hearted state essential to my dance?
The answer is YES.
Even more important: is this open-hearted state essential to my life?
The answer is a thousand times YES.
I know this is not a shortcut or a trick you can memorize. Most of the truly important things in Egyptian Dance and in Life aren´t.
This is a proposal of PERSONAL EVOLUTION, the one Egyptian Dance invites you to do.
I hope you accept the invitation.
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