RECLAIMING ADAGIO

Author's Note: The following article describes a dance performance that occurred almost a decade ago. It alludes to the author's nostalgia for the classic American cabaret style of belly dance and the contrasts it presents. The story appeared in the January/February 1998 issue of Crescent Moon.

As luck would have it, my husband has a professional conference scheduled at none other than the Disneyland Hotel. Since our house today is without running water, I will accompany him, check in early, and after a good long shower, get reacquainted with the old rides. Depending on my nerves, I might even try out couple of the new ones.

A sterling day it is--with ratio of old to new rides about 12 to 2, and the night is still young. Bert suggests we venture outside the Magic Kingdom to dine at a nearby Orange County restaurant. I wave the entertainment paper, and my suggestion comes as no surprise: Why not a belly dance restaurant? Bert is agreeable, and off we go.

Two years removed from my last public belly dance appearance (a benefit for the North Park Police Department) allows me a most luxurious position: Not being one currently commented upon, I can now serve as a commentator. I know the responsibility this confers and will therefore comment cautiously. Indeed, my comments will be peripheral to a greater story---clues to piece together something like a mystery.

We order salad and hors d'oeuvres, enjoying the live music and anticipating the dancer. Her name need not be known. She is part of this story because she is catalytic to defining the mystery of my discontent.

She is a fledgling dancer--young, pretty, slender--and placed rather too soon in a professional venue. With blissful enthusiasm, she attempts to woo the audience by chatting during her entire performance. Most noticeable is what is lacking: discernible hip movement, fluid slow movement, or rhythmic understanding. She is merely trotting around.

Perhaps this is her first time in public; perhaps she will be next year's virtuoso. Being a consumer rather than a provider of entertainment is expensive, and I always hope for an inspiring performance. I harbor no smug imaginings that I should have been out there instead. Indeed, her salient weakness--the absence of hip movement--was once pointed out to me in the seventies. I was counseled to look inward for possible reasons for such reticence.

No, it is not so much this dancer, but that she has caused me to remember that I miss something in today's belly dance. Even in the performances of highly polished, seasoned dancers.

Flashback to those seventies, 1974 to be exact, and a time and place to look for what I am seeking to recall. I was back in school to learn worldly skills, it having been made clear that my music degree would be non-negotiable in the real world. A disappointment, but then belly dance came along to color my life.

Pasadena, with its large Armenian community, was fermenting with dance activity. A favorite haunt, unromantically (but aptly for its super sandwiches) named Burger Continental, was on South Lake Street. More than twenty years later, it still thrives. Many a new convert to our dance, myself included, would get a start on its balmy stage, at that time placed prominently against the back wall and able to hold three musicians and a dancer. The garden, illuminated with colored lights and a center fountain, was a favorite hangout of Cal Tech students. You did not request your own table when visiting BC, you were happy to get seated at any table, and your new acquaintances became part of the charm of the experience.

But I am losing my thread. The point is that I watched all these dancers and could find no criticism. Was it my youthful illusion? The nirvana of beginner's mind? They all looked wonderful in their chiffon or satin 9-yard skirts, their coins (some, ahead of their time, adorned in beads and rhinestones), their long parted hair or new curly perms, their hippie jewelry. They were part of a heady experience that always included the audience, but where "working the tables" wasn't a primary requirement.

Particularly magical was a dancer I had seen develop as a professional within the first year of her lessons. She was a neighbor of my boyfriend at the time. Now, she both waitressed and danced at BC. She never went national or international, but from the earliest days manifested a facile and enchanting rhythmic accuracy. She was willowy rather than buxom, with the kind of waist-hip definition that made her fast movements seem effortless.

Leaving the raised stage at BC usually happened during the second or sometimes the final beledi, parts three or five, respectively, of the five-part cabaret routine, really six parts if you count the drum solo, seven parts if you count the karsilama often tagged to the end. By then the audience was more than ready for their brief personal visit with the dancer.

Perhaps here is a piece of the puzzle about what I miss in the feeling of today's dance. I miss a segmented, clearly defined cabaret routine, which provided a dramatic backdrop to the dance. I have always felt an affinity to this structure, which reminds me of the movements of a symphony or concerto.  It provided a contextual framework in which dancers, even ones without years of experience, could learn to express themselves.

Back to Burger Continental and the graceful dancer whose movement forms a tableau to my nostalgia. Her slow segments were powerful because they were drawn out, both in the prelude to the veil dance and the chifte telli. She might begin with an agonizingly long freeze (no drinks of water or conversation with the musicians), then the rippling hint of one hand moving, eventually to be coupled with the second hand. Dancing hands eventually circling into snake arms. Chest movements moving on three different planes. Then the hips: languid, slow large circles, eventually evolving little circles on each side, then contained shimmies superimposed. Clearly defined figure eights, first horizontal, then vertical. Rippling camel walks in two directions. Finally, focus on the belly. Each movement introduced in isolation. Broad versions followed by diminutive versions; then patterns mellifluently merging. Round, ancient belly dance. No hurry to get to the lively second beledi. Able to indulge in the slow movements, the dancer could express--pathos.

Winter 1989. I have moved to San Diego and am rediscovering belly dance. I have found a most engaging teacher in La Mesa. She is teaching us sustained chifte telli. We place imaginary vases on our heads and then remove them. She tells that us this is her favorite part of the dance, then invites us to share our version in the dimly lit studio.

Segue to 1993. I have found a restaurant in San Diego's Old Town. It is Greek but has Persian owners. It has taken me over a year to encourage them to obtain licensure and feature me as their dancer. I am proud because I've managed to carve out a new job in the community. The owners are generally gracious and loyal. Sometimes they can be a bit familiar, once suggesting that I change the music in the middle of a piece because they "don't like that one."  I said I couldn't. Or suggesting to "cut out the slow stuff, it's too boring for the audience." Another clue--pressure to subdue Adagio. Just enough pressure, perhaps, to speed up this slow stuff, not express it fully, and thereby achieve the "boringness" which they prophesied.

Pathos, the lifeblood of all art. The Adagio as the lush, spiritually full first movement of a Baroque Sonata, or the heartrending second movement of a Mozart concerto. The lamentation of the ballerina in Swan Lake. And the earthbound intensity of the belly dancer performing a removal of the veil which will bring her airborne. Is it conceivable that such expression has gone out of style?

I understand now. It was Adagio I was seeking, and which absence the young dancer at the unnamed restaurant startled me into remembering. And in remembering, to consider what might be contributing to its disappearance. Not only the dancer is to blame. Capturing an audience from a distance is not greatly encouraged these days.

The times may have changed, but I hope not enough to eradicate Adagio. The seventies, eighties, and nineties together are still younger than our dance. And we are still its gatekeepers.

Other dance articles by Dorothy Barth:

Brava, Boulder!

Bead Crossings