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Raks Ava day 1:taxim
Aug. 10th, 2015 10:41 amI'm back from Leuven and four days of dance with Ava Fleming. It was exhausting but so worth it. Artemisia hires her because she wants to offer in depth instruction to her students: beginners and advanced alike. The four days were not filled with extensive drilling of choreography, but with exploring different concepts and nuances in oriental dance.
Our first day was spent on an Ava style warm up, which was quite useful in both warming up and gently getting the body used to her internal style of layering abdominal and ribcage contractions on basic bd moves. It creates an overall clean look, but with more depth. I can see why the tribal fusion girls like her, it's very muscular. We then proceeded into listening to taxims and different variations and explanations on what the purpose of a taxim is.
'For Western audiences, they can only handle so much of stillness and taxim. Use maximal one minute for those audiences, or use props to keep them interested. Like sword, veil, fanveils, floorwork,etc.for Arabic audience you can go full out, to up and about five to seven minutes of taxim'
She showed us different ways of taxim interpretation and then got cracking on dancing to taxim ourselves. Ava has a really relaxed teaching style, she's a very analytical dancer. We danced in solo's, in groups amd showed the result to each other. She taught two short combinations that work well and can be added when needed, which was nice. After class I walked back to the hotel (it's a 30 minute walk) and had a short nap. Sophie and I walked to the place for the inspirational talk with Ava. About ten people attended as others had families and other obligations. Our group was seventeen people in total.
The inspirational speech was great. She opened with the question 'why do you dance and what are your goals?'. While listening to all the answers I realized that I was completely happy with where I am now as a dancer. Okay, some of it might be lregnancy hormones, but after fifteen years I no longer care what the audience thinks of me. I dance because it makes me happy, and by teaching and performing I make other people happy. I go for quality in both teaching and performing and though it might not be shocking or worthy of international fame, it is pretty good. That was super nice to realize and I just kept on smiling the rest of the week.
Ava herself is currently thinking about what she wants in dance, because as far as achievements go she's done it all. Own a studio, run a company, international travel... Her motivational sounded a bit like 'the Secret' which I totally disagree with. Just because you think of what you want the universe will make it come true, that type of thinking. With a bit of nuance I can agree that by not desperately wanting stuff, oddly enough things start happening for you. After applying for the theater project in 2010, my troupe membership of DDD naturally came out of it, as did the next theater production and the one we're working on right now.
Interesting enough, when this question was asked nine years ago at raks, many people had dreams of making it in the international scene. Now, most of the dancers were less ambitious, focusing more on the long term enjoyment of dance. Ee talked a bit about how the industry of dances very demanding. It was a good talk.
Unfortunately I woke up in the middle of the night because my pelvic floor felt like it was dropping two floors down. I've heard of it (the ligaments that hold the uterus are stretching to accomodate for the baby) but it still was very uncomfortable and hard to walk to the bathroom. It was gone in the morning (phew!). One day down, three more to go.
Our first day was spent on an Ava style warm up, which was quite useful in both warming up and gently getting the body used to her internal style of layering abdominal and ribcage contractions on basic bd moves. It creates an overall clean look, but with more depth. I can see why the tribal fusion girls like her, it's very muscular. We then proceeded into listening to taxims and different variations and explanations on what the purpose of a taxim is.
'For Western audiences, they can only handle so much of stillness and taxim. Use maximal one minute for those audiences, or use props to keep them interested. Like sword, veil, fanveils, floorwork,etc.for Arabic audience you can go full out, to up and about five to seven minutes of taxim'
She showed us different ways of taxim interpretation and then got cracking on dancing to taxim ourselves. Ava has a really relaxed teaching style, she's a very analytical dancer. We danced in solo's, in groups amd showed the result to each other. She taught two short combinations that work well and can be added when needed, which was nice. After class I walked back to the hotel (it's a 30 minute walk) and had a short nap. Sophie and I walked to the place for the inspirational talk with Ava. About ten people attended as others had families and other obligations. Our group was seventeen people in total.
The inspirational speech was great. She opened with the question 'why do you dance and what are your goals?'. While listening to all the answers I realized that I was completely happy with where I am now as a dancer. Okay, some of it might be lregnancy hormones, but after fifteen years I no longer care what the audience thinks of me. I dance because it makes me happy, and by teaching and performing I make other people happy. I go for quality in both teaching and performing and though it might not be shocking or worthy of international fame, it is pretty good. That was super nice to realize and I just kept on smiling the rest of the week.
Ava herself is currently thinking about what she wants in dance, because as far as achievements go she's done it all. Own a studio, run a company, international travel... Her motivational sounded a bit like 'the Secret' which I totally disagree with. Just because you think of what you want the universe will make it come true, that type of thinking. With a bit of nuance I can agree that by not desperately wanting stuff, oddly enough things start happening for you. After applying for the theater project in 2010, my troupe membership of DDD naturally came out of it, as did the next theater production and the one we're working on right now.
Interesting enough, when this question was asked nine years ago at raks, many people had dreams of making it in the international scene. Now, most of the dancers were less ambitious, focusing more on the long term enjoyment of dance. Ee talked a bit about how the industry of dances very demanding. It was a good talk.
Unfortunately I woke up in the middle of the night because my pelvic floor felt like it was dropping two floors down. I've heard of it (the ligaments that hold the uterus are stretching to accomodate for the baby) but it still was very uncomfortable and hard to walk to the bathroom. It was gone in the morning (phew!). One day down, three more to go.
