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Book List for Belly Dancers
Below is a reading list for belly dancers that I’ve compiled based on books I’ve enjoyed and reviews from my colleagues. I will be working my way through the books I have not read, adding more when I hear of them, and reviewing them when I finish. If you have a book you’d like to recommend, please add it as a comment!
Psychology of Dance by Jim Taylor & Ceci Taylor - Techniques & exercises to help dancers overcome mental obstacles. This one I finished and found to be really helpful in helping to set goals and manage insecurities and stage fright.
Serpent of the Nile: Women and Dance in the Arab World by Wendy Buonaventura history of female solo dancing in the Middle East. This was a great book that every belly dancer should read with lots of illustrations, too.
The Voice of Egypt by Virginia Danielson Umm Kulthum, Arabic Song, and Egyptian Society in the Twentieth Century- I’m reading this now.
Egyptian Music Appreciation by George Dimitri Sawa Comes with music CDs
Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron- A 12-week program to help remove blocks that impeed on your creativity
“A Trade Like Any Other:” Female Singers & Dancers in Egypt by Karin van Nieuwkerk
Blood Memory by Martha Graham – An autobiography about Martha Graham’s life as famous contemporary dancer
The Cairo Trilogy: Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, Sugar Street by Naguib Mahfouz - An epic trilogy of colonial Egypt
Wombs and Alien Spirits: Women, Men, and the Zar Cult in Northern Sudan by Janice Patricia Boddy - Book about the “zar” cult in northern Sudan
Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society by Lila Abu-Lughod – Bedouin behavior, male and female roles
For more info about the author, Mellilah, please visit www.mellilah.com
Dance for the love of it and forget the rest!
“The good Lord gave you a body that can stand most anything. It’s your mind you have to convince.”
- Vincent Lombardi
My dear friend, fellow dancer, mentor, ….asked me the other day, “Why do you dance?” I know why I dance. I dance because it’s my way of expressing that which I cannot put into words. My body moves in a way that I’ve now claimed as my own, a gracefulness and fluidness I may never have found had it not been for belly dance. I feel feminine, sexy… beautiful. The music and movements bring about joy, love, tenderness, bittersweet pain, and ecstasy. For me, dance is healing; it’s my elixir. The music moves me like no other, and although I may need to work on more balance in my life, when I’m not performing, all I really want to do is watch a good belly dance show. Then why fret about it so much?
I find myself constantly striving to learn this or that… disappointed when I see how much is still left to master. Searching for that end in sight in terms of “mastery,” not to compete with others but to compete with myself. But the reality is that it’s the journey I love. It’s not about the end result…it’s about the music, sensations, the love of it.
My advice for myself and those reading: Don’t give dance too much importance. Release yourself completely and utterly, forgetting about any expectations from yourself and others, and just dance because you love it. Don’t give those with negative energy even a second thought, remove them completely. Practice technique, listen to your music over and over again, practice transitions and where to do certain moves, but then throw it all out the window and just dance, in both practice and performance. That’s what I’ll be doing!
I’ll let you know how it goes… to be continued.
Hello world!
Thanks for visiting my blog! I lost my entire blog the other day, but luckily, I saved a back-up of all of my articles so I could reload them! www.mellilah.com
