I got back from the Theatrical Oriental Dance Festival on Monday night absolutely exhausted. It was non-stop dance and fun the whole weekend. I reunited with old friends, met belly dancers I've been Facebook friends with for years, but never met in person, and made some new dance friends. There is so much to tell you about.
Opening Night Informal
The event was held on Friday night at Mesopotamia, a Kurdish restaurant in Cape Town's CBD. Beverli Al-Masrah (the organiser fro TODF) dances there every night, so it was only fitting that we would all go watch her dance, and join in of course.
Beverli danced with multiple props including tabla, double veils, candelabra, zills and double sword. She encourages audience participation so by the end everyone was up and dancing.
Towards the end of the evening Sandra Danse joined in on the dance floor. We were also treated to Sandra and her husband, Mickael Jamal, performing tarab.
The whole evening was very pleasant with delicious food, great dancing and fantastic company.
Workshops
The workshops started on Friday afternoon and ran till Sunday afternoon. There were up to 5 different workshops happening at one time, which meant choosing was hard and unfortunately numbers were low in many of the workshops. I do believe the low numbers were mostly due to a lack of support, but having so many workshops at one time did also contribute.
The workshops were diverse. There was definitely something for everyone in most genres. Classical oriental, cabaret, oriental fusion, tribal fusion and ATS.
I attended a pilates workshop and a technique workshop with Maya Gaorry on Saturday morning. I found these workshops extremely informative and beneficial, and I love Maya's teaching style.
On Sunday I did 7 hours worth of workshops (I'm crazy). I started with Nix (Soma Fusion) workshop of layers and weight changes. It was a tribal fusion workshop, but I really do believe it was beneficial for all belly dancers, regardless of what kind of belly dance they do.
After Nix's workshop, I did Marissa Cuenoud's (Soma Fusion) Tribal Top Up. While I'm not a tribal dancer I think you can learn a lot from working in various different dance styles (I've even done a dancehall workshop before). Unfortunately, I was so tired from a series of late nights, lots of physical activity and the previous 3 hour workshop that I struggled to focus, but I still learnt some new things.
I finished the day off with Sandra's workshop on improvisation. She started by telling us we are all improvising incorrectly and then slowly and thoroughly explained her method of improvising to tarab. It was all very interesting.
The Fringe Program
The fringe program gave everyone the opportunity to perform at the festival. All of our dances (6 in total) fitted into the short space of 2 hours. This meant we had some 5 minute quick changes, which (I must brag) we managed just fine, with a minute or 2 to spare.
I wasn't able to watch much of the fringe program due to my busy schedule of workshops and performing. The few dances I watched from backstage and the audience, were quite interesting and all the dancers I saw danced well.
Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take photos and the photographer only took 2 photos of Melanie's solo and 1 bad one of our zill trio.
Photographer: Marina Photography
There is nothing from my solo or our group dance.
However, there are a lot of me dancing "Yearning" which we learnt at Purple Belly Bus. Here are just 2...
Photographer: Marina Photography
There were very few people in the audience. Most of the dancers would dance and then run off to their next workshop and the city of Cape Town didn't really support this festival.
Flash Mob
This wasn't so much a flash mob as a public photoshoot. We were bussed to the fountain in Adderly Street where we had our photos taken. It was cold, but we did get some nice group shots of the performers.
The Gala
Saturday night was the Gala Show. This show was exclusively for the dancers giving workshops at the festival to showcase their talent. The 2 main attractions were Maya Gaorry and Sandra Danse. Both performed 2 beautiful pieces each, showing their delicate and yet powerful techniques. The night ended with Mickael Jamal joining Sandra for another tarab.
I must make special mention for some of the other performers who were absolutely astounding.
Firstly, Elisabeth Wilhelm, who had a beautiful love/hate relationship with her veil. It was very emotional and she portrayed the story in the dance so well.
Soma Fusion also did a great group piece. Their synchronicity and intricate floor patterns were very impressive. It was constantly changing, but the "togetherness" of the dancers made it look like 1 being twisting and undulating.
Then of course there was the Drum Solo Queen of South Africa ... Thelma Rose. She is not only an amazing dancer technically, she also commands the crowd from the moment she steps on stage. She definitely got the loudest screams and applause of the evening.
Something that wasn't great about the gala was the lack of audience. It basically consisted of the fringe performers and a few family members. This was not due to a lack of advertising. Hopefully, next year more people will come along to support all the belly dancers performing in the festival.
Hafla
On Sunday night we had hafla at the Al-Masrah Studio in Sea Point. I had a lot of fun dancing with the other dancers, chatting and eating pizza. One of my highlights of the festival came from that night when Maya Gaorry and I were playing zills while we were dancing with 2 other student dancers. Such a lovely end to the festival.
I was surprised to see very few of the people that had taken part in the festival at the hafla. As far I can remember it was only the dancers that had travelled to the festival that were there. My guess is that the Capetonians were getting ready for work the next day.
People I Met
Here are the selfies I took with other dancers:
Senta Duffield of Maya Dance Company in Durban, South Africa
Lizelle Vermaak of Zahara Moon Bellydance in St Lucia, South Africa
Maya Gaorry from Trieste, Italy
Thelma Rose from Johannesburg, South Africa
Ramya Kumar and Hildah Namunyola of Zambelly in Lusaka, Zambia
Marissa Cuenoud of Soma Fusion Belly Dance Company in Cape Town, South Africa
Sandra Danse of Académie danse orientale de Nice cote d'azur in Nice, France
Overall it was a great experience and I look forward to it again next year. Thank you Beverli for all your hard work and dedication in giving us this festival.