Belly Dance Performance Palmers Green Festival, North London

photo credit: Palmers Green Festival, North London

London Arabic Live Music Event: The Arab Quarterly

Last month, I went to The Arab Quarterly, a live Arabic music and dance show organised by Melanie Norman and Chalf Hassan of The Arab Quarter Band.

It was a real treat as there aren't many Belly Dance events in London (and mostly probably outside of the Middle East) where you can listen to live music nowadays. 

Being Turkish I grew up listening to live music at parties, weddings and at Turkish School. I kind of figured that it was the norm until I started to learn Belly Dancing.

Strange right?

Held in the Islington Assembly Hall, home to many live music events, The Arab Quarterly is a splendid mix of different dance styles and passionate music of The Arab Quarter Band. The venue adds a touch of old school glamour, a feeling of what it was like back in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s to dress up, go to a music hall to watch live bands and enjoy the music in the moment.

Some may argue that we've lost that sense of being in the moment and that we view everything through our smart phones even when we're there in person watching a performance. The Arab Quarterly brings back these feelings of capturing the moment and sucks you in to the sounds and colours of the musicians and performers.

The Arab Quarter Band is central to the activity of The Arab Quarterly and is lead by Chalf Hassan. These gifted and professional musicians bring between them an extraordinarily rich heritage of decades of Arab music making, a vast repertoire, and expertise.

Having just returned from Istanbul where live music is common and all around, it was a great evening which reminded me of my recent trip.

Well done to all performers they were great and so different, which made for a good variety. One thing you're guaranteed to get with Belly Dancers is beautiful costumes, and beautiful they all were.

Overall, the night flew by and I was thoroughly entertained. If you're in London and love Middle Eastern music this event is definitely for you. Congratulations to all those involved in the organisation of this wonderful event. It's got grandeur, class, live Arabic music, a great line up of dancers and a bar. What more could you want!

Find out more about The Arab Quarterly live music event: http://www.arabquarter.co.uk/store/index.html

NEW VIDEO: Sword dance at Tarazade Festival, Istanbul

Merhabalar!

Here is my performance from the Tarazade Festival of Oriental Dance in Istanbul. Thank you to Bahri Yilmaz for the videography. Great job!

As a Dancer it can be very scary to put your work up on YouTube. It is the encouragement and support of others which helps me to showcase my love for this beautiful art form.

I hope that you like it :).

Belly Dancing in Istanbul, Turkey

I had the absolute pleasure of visiting Istanbul for my second time last week to perform and train with star teachers and artists at Tarazade Oriental Festival, Istanbul.

Many of my favourite artists such as Sema Yildiz, Aziza, Marta Korzun and Didem were performing and teaching.

I have followed them on YouTube for a while now and to see them perform in person was humbling and a true honour. I was blown away by their live performances.

During the festival I fell in love with all teachers, each and every one became my favourite. Their knowledge, technique and love for the dance have really inspired and injected a new lease of life into my dance. They are a credit to their hard work and I felt very lucky to have all these artists under one roof.

As always, I have fallen further in love with belly dance and can't wait to practice all I have learned about my own dance style as well as others.

I feel it is important to try different styles to find out what you like and what sort of dancer you are. Dance is an expression of yourself and only you can tell your story.

This trip has definitely confirmed to me that I am a Turkish and Theatrical Fusion Artist. I'm afraid that I can't deny it or hide it folks :).

Here are a few pics from the festival.

Marvellous Marta Korzun

my room mate Queenie

The icon that is Sema Yildiz

The gentleman Mayodi

The beautiful Hale Sultan

Delightful Delanna

Professor Hassan Khalil

Top 5 tips for working in a belly dance theatre show

Belly dance theatre is still quite a new concept in the UK. Many other dance disciplines have been producing theatre shows for a while now and with experience comes knowledge. 

Fresh from the UK tour of Aladdin, here are my top 5 tips for belly dancers and fusion artists working in belly dance theatre shows.

1. Don't take yourself seriously - Depending on how much creative control you have, spend the time developing your character and don't be afraid to make a fool of yourself or take your self too seriously. I was lucky, I had full control over deciding who I wanted my character to be and I really thought about what my character would add to the show. For me, I wanted to add the comedy element so I had to think about how I could incorporate that with belly dance.
2. Rest - When you're training hard, you need to rest in between rehearsals, shows and other commitments that you have. I was dancing 7 days a week teaching classes or performing, which caused fatigue and foot stress resulting in poor technique and pain. You need at least 1 day off in the week to recover and at least 8 hours of sleep per night.
3. Be open minded - Even if you don't learn a new style of dance in a theatre production, you will always learn something new, even if it's learning what you don't like, you will learn something. A great example is that 5 of the muses in the Aladdin show were tribal dancers and they had to learn shabbi and oriental routines.
4. Eat well - Long rehearsals mean long hours and rushing from 1 place to the next. Some days I even had chicken masala for breakfast to give me the energy that I needed to last the day. It's good to be organised and have protein bars, nuts, water (and chocolate) on you just in case you get caught out.
5. Warm up and cool down - it's important not to be lazy when it comes to warming up properly and cooling down. When you're in rehearsals, a lot of time is spent sitting around even after you've warmed up properly, which is the easiest way to get an injury. Keep the body warm with leg warmers, scarf and layers.

If you've been in a show or are currently rehearsing for one, please leave your comments below as I'd love to hear your experience and any tips or advice that you may have.

Inside Info: What It Was Like Touring With Aladdin, The Classic Tale Told Through Dance

The Tour - Oxford, Manchester and London
Last month I toured England for the Performance Mastery production of the well known story, Aladdin. Myself and sixteen highly competent and well established dancers in different styles such as Oriental, Folk, Egyptian, Turkish, Tribal and Fusion performed three tour dates in Oxford, Manchester, and London over two weekends.

After months of hard work, blood, sweat and tears to produce a unique belly dance show of a high standard, we kicked off our tour with the opening night in Oxford. Having not performed in Oxford before, I wasn't sure how the audience would react, but to my delight the show was received very well with outstanding reviews. The cast including myself were chuffed with the response, especially as everyone had been working their socks off for the past eight months. However, the highlight of Oxford was not the actual performance but the shenanigans on return journey home. Certain members of the cast (eh-hem) couldn't sleep on the way back to London. Instead the we burst into song, singing our hearts out on the minibus with our renditions of Abba classics, Disney anthems, 90s hits, the Spice Girls and more. I'm sure the driver got us back to London in record time because of our 'fabulous' singing and you'll be pleased to hear that we're not auditioning for the X-Factor anytime soon.

The following weekend we hit Manchester and London with the former taking place on the Saturday night. After a five hour drive and some good pub grub we were ready for our second performance. The Manchester audience did not disappoint, they were energetic and really encouraging, clapping, cheering and even booing at the Sorcerer. On our return, some of the dancers didn't get home until 5.30am on Sunday morning only to perform later that day for our London showing. Ahhhh, the rock star life, it's all glamour.

The experience and reviews
The tour was an experience that I will never forget and to have the opportunity to close the tour in my home town of London was incredible. I had family, friends and my own students in the audience so the pressure was definitely on. In the last couple of weeks leading up to the London show all I could think was, would I impress my students? Would my family feel proud and let me off for not being around for the last eight months? Well, I was kind of in the bad books for having missed Mother's Day, my nieces 1st birthday etc.

The main struggle that I encountered as an artist was that after working on something for a long while, I lost all sense of how it looked, felt and translated as a story. Thankfully, all of my doubts were smashed during the tour as the reviews were incredible, I had a great response towards my character which was a huge weight off my shoulders (see the reviews below).

The aftermath
Normally, after I perform, I tend to be on a real high but after Aladdin I just felt numb, the buzz didn't settle in until the next day. After which, I couldn't concentrate for the entire week following the tour. All that effort, months of rehearsals, working with dancers I hadn't met before, making friends, playing a character and developing that character, getting in to the zone, and trying to get inside the head of your character. When it was all over, it felt very strange going from full speed intense training to zero.

Overall, being cast in Aladdin as Sorcerers Assistant is one that I will never forget and will cherish. I have always enjoyed performing belly dance styles on stage.  Why should belly dance only be confined to restaurants? There is so much beauty and creativity that can go into making a belly dance theatre show. The best thing to come out of the tour was the friendships, which is one of the reasons I started taking dance lesson in the first place, so it's nice to see that this element hasn't been lost over the years.

Read some of the reviews on the Aladdin website: http://aladdindance.weebly.com/blog

Read some reviews about my character:

''Tev you are an absolute superstar☆☆ phenomenal performance! You were captivating and I loved spending so time with you dancing laughing and singing with you xx Thank you xx''

''It was lovely working with you. You are a genuinely lovely person to know and work with, an amazing talented dancer and an inspiration. Thank you! x''

''Tevec, Your performance was a tour de force...loved it!''

''Tevec Ibrahim you were brilliant tonight - the way you bought the mischief making character out was fantastic. Enjoyed it so much xxx''

''Congratulations on an excellent performance xx''

''You were amazing!!''

''You were simply amazing Tevec Ibrahim x''


Location:London

Feed Your Mind & Banish Those Winter Blues

It gets to this time of year where our New Year hopes and resolutions begin to fizzle out and the rainy days all merge into one.  Christmas and New Year seem like a long time ago and Spring feels like a lifetime away. I have to be honest and say that this is one of my least favourite times of the year.  It's cold, it seems like there's not much to look forward to and we want to hibernate until it's warm and sunny.  Couple this with rushing around and being busy at work, we tend to lose that sense of feeling alive and relationship with our senses.

Being a dance artist I always get a huge rush of emotions and adrenaline before, during and after my performances but it wasn't always like that.  I worked in the same company for almost 6 years where towards the end I was doing things on auto-pilot knowing the job inside out, same thing, different day with no opportunity for growth.  I wasn't thinking for myself and I wasn't really living, I was stuck in a rut and just passing time.  It was only once I handed in my notice to live my dream of being a professional dancer that I felt like I had been plunged out of the mundane and started viewing everything in HD vision.  For the first time since I was a teenager I had felt alive and suddenly all the colours of the world were brighter.  My senses, smell, touch, vision, taste and hearing, were awoken.

Now, I'm not saying give up your day job but what I would like for you to think of what makes you feel alive?  Is it spending time with your family, completing a 15 mile run at your personal best, travelling the world or helping those less fortunate?
I would like for you to spend 5 minutes tapping into these feelings and then try to hold onto them.  These are the kind of highs that drink or drugs can't buy.  You can exercise your mind and take control so that you banish those 'so-called' winter blues.
 
For me, dance transformed my life building my confidence and allowing me to take time out of my busy day to concentrate on me and forget about my worries.  I find Belly dance, in particular, to be sensual and allows me to spend time getting to know my body, the same goes for my students; I see them understanding how to do things they never thought they could, whilst challenging themselves.  We are often told to do things but if you don't question and understand why then what's the point.  With out this knowledge how can you feed your mind and grow as a person?  Belly dance heightens your senses allowing you to embrace your femininity in a way that works for you.

In light of this, I am running Sensual Sunday a one-off fitness inspired taster session combining sense-heightening dances, Belly Dance with Aerobics and Latin fusion.  These sessions aim for participants to work a sweat, feel alive and dance all while having fun. More more info see: Sensual Sunday

I will leave you on this quote which the Ancient Greek Philosopher Aristotle put simply:

'The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival'
Aristotle