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You are the next dancer in a show—large or small, it doesn’t matter. Your palms get sweaty. Your mouth goes dry. You feel sick to your stomach. Your knees feel wobbly. You have a sudden urge to go to the bathroom (and perhaps not come out!). Stage fright is a common ailment for performers new and seasoned. But it doesn’t have to cripple your performance or ruin the joy you derive from dancing. Here are a few techniques I’ve learned over the years to alleviate stage fright.

BE PREPARED Whether you’re improvising or performing a choreography, if you are confident in what you are presenting, you’ll be less inclined to panic beforehand. This means knowing your music inside and out. A good way to train your ear to recognize every nuance in the music is to start it in random places and try to decipher where in the song you are. If you’ve choreographed your dance, this will also help you learn to match your moves to the music rather than remembering the choreography as one long string. Decide what you want the audience to feel when they see your dance and concentrate on that while you’re backstage instead of thinking of your teacher sitting in the front row.

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Flexibility First
Everyday movement does not really require that we move our upper body separately from our lower body. However, as belly dancers, such isolation is not only beneficial, it is crucial! To gain this isolation, you must practice, practice, practice. But you must also stretch, stretch, stretch. The muscles which help or hinder your isolation are primarily the obliques (the muscles along the side of your torso) the psoas (connecting your pelvis to your torso) and the hip flexors. Stretch one arm over your head, leaning over (but keeping your chest straight—i.e., not twisting it forward or back). You should feel a nice long stretch along your ribs and even down across your hips. There are many variations of this stretch—find one you like and that seems to give you a nice long stretch. (Better yet, do all the variations. You’d be surprised how they build on one another.) Now keep your chest lifted and slide your hips to one side. Really push it out there—feel the stretch across your hip bone. Use hip circles and loose shimmies to warm up your hips and your side muscles. Do these stretches EVERY DAY! When these muscles are long and flexible, they allow you to move your hips without involving the upper body and vice versa.

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There is nothing so exhilarating as dancing to a live drummer. While you can plan and choreograph with a recorded drum solo, nothing can substitute the high-impact energy of having a live drum beside you while you shimmy and pop! In my experience, such performances are almost always improvisational. In other words, while your drum song may have a general framework, the piece is going to come straight out of the drummers imagination. The moves, as a result, must flow readily from yours! To perform your best in such a situation, here are some important tips.

Warm up-to be on your toes, literally and figuratively, you must be warmed up! The drummer will flex and stretch his hands-you must flex and stretch your body. The most important stretch I do prior to a performance is the side-lean which stretches all of the muscles along your torso and hips. There are many variations of this stretch and I do them all: before I put on my costume, once my costume is on, in the wings waiting to enter the stage.

There are some basic drum solo techniques which I covered more extensively in my “How to Nail Your Drum Solo” article and workshop. Let’s review them briefly.

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While there’s no cure for nerves or stage fright, there are some important elements you can use when putting together your performance, whether its your first one or your 100th.

Your entrance is, of course, important because it will set the tone of your performance-it will tell the audience if your dance is going to be playful or serious. However, the audience is going to spend the first several moments not watching your dancing-they’re going to be studying your costume, listening to the music, and settling in to enjoy a show. So start out slowly. It really doesn’t matter if you begin on stage or enter to music, just take your time.

Next, define your performance space by traveling around it. This applies whether you’re dancing on a stage or in a small restaurant. Now choose your stage placement. Center stage is the strongest visual point on the stage, so utilize it. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t use other areas of your venue, but use it for your dynamic moves.

Most importantly, know your music. Whether or not you decide to choreography your piece, the audience will be able to tell if you are one with the music. Furthermore, the music will tell you how to dance-when to travel, and when to stay in place.

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I’ve heard the term “fusion” bandied about for quite some time, and it seems that there are a couple of interpretations with very different meanings.

The pairing of Middle Eastern Dance moves to non-Middle Eastern music is one example. Flamenco or Spanish-style music is often used and the progression to this pairing is quite logical, given the ties of Moorish Spain to the Middle East . Many bands who play Middle Eastern music have also fused their rhythms to Spanish-style songs (listen to Gypsy Caravan’s Migration track 11 and Moon Over Cairo’s Amayaguena). The result is certainly pleasing and allows for a wealth of interpretive movements.

There is also the pairing of belly dance moves to North African music such as Algerian and Tunisian. Then there is the fusion of the styles of Middle Eastern dance within the regions of Middle Eastern music. For example, Egyptian movements performed to Turkish music. I used to dance with a Jordanian drummer who didn’t like that I used music from Mezdeke (Turkish), even though he approved of my dancing. Likewise, I spoke with a Lebanese dancer who thought her movements were vastly superior to the Egyptian style of dance even though she used Egyptian music. Along the lines of this definition (although it could be argued that this is yet a third definition of fusion), is the pairing of Raqs Sharqi moves to Raqs Balady music and vice versa.

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Drums have always called to me on both a primal and creative level. However, as I have taught over the years, I’ve learned that not everybody feels the same calling to drums and drum solos as I do, so I broke down my approach to drum solos that I hope will help others. Just for fun, I used an acronym: SHIMMY FEST.

These letters stand for the following tips:

SHARP:
You must be able to move your body percussively, so you’ll need to develop the basic dance techniques to do so. Work on Locks, Pops, Drops, and Stops. For example, practice your hip shimmies in the soft, relaxed style, working only through the knees. Then tighten your glutes, your quadriceps, even your abs when you move from side to side. This will give you crisp, punctuating hip movements. You should see the difference in your hip wrap: coins or beads will vibrate when doing soft shimmies, but should flip up when doing sharps. Both the pelvis and chest allow for pops and drops that are perfect for hitting accents. Besides the usual sharp movements, however, try breaking down a normally smooth movement. For example, I like to take a chest undulation and articulate it into four crisp points (front, arch, roll down position 1, roll down position 2). I’ll also begin a chest undulation, but when I reach the pinnacle of the circle (arch), I’ll finish with a decisive chest drop. You can also articulate your snake arms, making them appear almost robotic in their movement. Start with one shoulder and lift it sharply. The shoulder will drop as you bring the elbow up and then drop it, dropping the hand straight down at the same time. Now flick the hand back up. Reverse the action on the other arm.

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In the May/June 2003 edition of Zaghareet, I wrote an article called “How to Dance WITH the Music,” because I had seen so many students struggle with how to deliver an effective performance when they were unsure of how to break down their music. I recently received a letter from a dancer asking me to further explain what I meant by this phrase, beyond the technical aspect of breaking the music down into counts and phrases. I realized that reading how to listen to music is a bit of a challenge. It is difficult to talk about music without actually being able to hear examples and see demonstrations, isn’t it?

To recap that earlier article, I said that the most important element of a performance is your ability to hear—and as a result, allow the audience to see—the music. A dancer who does not hear her music I refer to as “dancing OVER the music,” which means that while her moves and technique might be flawless, they do not at all reflect the song she is dancing to. She could be dancing to any old piece of music instead of interpreting a specific song for the audience.

So how do you make sure that the audience is seeing the connection between the music and you?

When you first start to listen to your music, you’re probably just trying to decide if you like the piece or not. The tempo (speed of the music), the melody (the tune) and the overall emotion of the song will affect you. When you find that piece of music that speaks to your heart or your hips, listen to it over and over and over until you can sing it in your head—in other words, you know what is coming up next. This will be the biggest step in dancing WITH the music: simply knowing what it is going to do next.

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Have you ever attended a belly dance show with great anticipation, so anxious to see the headlining performer, steal some hot new moves from her, gain inspiration from her smooth professionalism? Have you ever been utterly disappointed by that performance? Perhaps she had a bad night. Perhaps the altitude was affecting her. Perhaps she was exhausted from teaching all day. Or, PERHAPS SHE SIMPLY WASN’T DANCING TO THE MUSIC!

Now the disappointing headliner may usually dance with the music and perhaps she really was having a bad night. Most professional dancers only attain that status by being superb performers and a superb performer WILL dance to the music. But I have encountered dancers who were too lazy, busy, or confident to take the time to really listen to their music when preparing their dance. (I plead occasional guilt to the first two cases.) I have heard advanced/professional dancers MANY times brag that they only picked out their music that morning and never practiced with it. (Can you imagine? Yikes!)

The most important element of a performance is your ability to hear—and as a result, allow the audience to see—the music. The painful phenomenon of a dancer who does not hear her music, I refer to as “dancing OVER the music.” What this means is that, while her moves and technique might be beautiful, she could be dancing to Om Khalthoum or Puddle of Mud, so unconnected is her performance to her music. And I have seen beginning or inexperienced dancers so completely become their music that the audience was utterly enthralled, completely unaware that she only knew four moves! It takes extra effort to leam your music and dance accordingly, but it is well worth it.

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And if you do choreograph, how do you remember it all?

“I always do the same moves over and over when I dance!”
” I get nervous and forget everything I was going to do!”

Sound familiar? It seems all dancers reach a point where they can see a beautifully executed dance in their mind’s eye. They practice and practice; they know the music; they have a large repertoire of moves. Yet when the lights go out and the music comes on, their mind freezes. The adrenaline kicks in, blocking that huge vocabulary of moves from reaching the hips, the feet, the arms! The ¾ shimmy goes into overdrive, filling spots in the music that were supposed to be slow and floaty with lots of graceful turns. Though your friends and family tell you it was a good performance (and truly, it probably was), you’re not happy with it because you didn’t say what you had intended in all those hours of practice. Sigh.

If this is a familiar scenario for you, it’s probably time to actually choreograph you next performance. I know, I know. You’ve learned six choreographies at various workshops and they just don’t work for you because a) it’s to hard to remember those moves, b) the moves were beyond your skill, or c) the whole choreography thing is just too confining. You prefer to let the music tell you what to do and you allow the energy of the audience to affect your dancing. Let me quote a pop psychologist here: “How’s that workin’ for ya?” The same actions will generally reap the same effects. Change your actions and you can change the result.
Beyond this, there are many other reasons to choreography your dance. Choreograhy allows you to polish your moves. Once your piece is together, you don’t waste valuable practice time coming up with new combinations. You can rewind your music over and over until you get that three-step-turn with a body ripple and chest pop and know that it goes in exactly the right spot of music.

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\\ tags: Choreograph

Who is intimidated by the thought of choreography? Who gets nauseous at the prospect of coming up with enough different moves to fill a five-minute piece of music? Who positively retches at having to then MEMORIZE all those moves? Who believes choreography is anathema to the beauty and spontaneity of this dance form? Just as I suspected.

Now, who has ever complained that when they get out there to perform, they find themselves doing the same moves, over and over? Who has ever worried that they were boring or that they were bored with their own dancing? Again, just as I suspected.

Choreography is the solution to the latter complaints and it is not truly the evil beast of the former. Even if you are a die-hard improvisational dancer, choreography can make you a better dancer. Why? Choreography forces you to really listen to your music. Whether you count your beats, or simply note the changing phrases (or both), when you are preparing to choreograph a piece, you must break down your song and know it inside and out. Listening to the CD in the car three times before you perform it is, obviously, not going to cut it. Choreography allows you to challenge yourself to master a new move instead of allowing muscle memory to rely on the moves you have already perfected. Choreography allows you to consider details (like arm placement, line of sight, angle of movement) that you might otherwise forget. But enough of why I think you should choreograph (if you’ve read this far, clearly you’re considering it). Let’s address how to approach it.

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\\ tags: Choreograph