Dancing Isis Dance!

Posts Tagged ‘Women’

This is what some of the women had to say about the last retreat:

Beautiful Maria the last couple of days flash back in my mind I smile and giggle with delight . . . and at your beauty. I bow down in honour & appreciation for what magic you have sparked in me by being you and sharing it. Thank you AT

I still feel the ongoing joys and peace of that weekend and especially of connecting in such a special way with such amazing women. (Very like the image of the card I pulled on the first evening: the three dancing fates. I remember saying there was so much music and harmony in that image.) It continues to feed a small sacred sanctuary within me: my home, my springboard for dancing, enjoying good food, connecting with an open heart, living with all the messy, noisy, loving, peaceful vigour which is being without boundaries. Thank you!! NM

What a beautiful few weeks since the retreat . . . I am exploding with creativity and possibilities Thankyou to all of you,
Love and sunshine and hugs C

I feel so blessed to have met you all and to have shared such a beautiful time with you! I came back feeling sooo refreshed and ready to look for new possibilities and to get more out of life than I have before. It was so special being with people who are like-minded and I felt that every woman I met connected with me, especially during our dancing! What a wonderful and liberating experience it was. Thank you all for your kindness and sharing your beautiful spirits with me!

Lots of love DD

For 15 years I have had a varied and colourful relationship with the MED community. It has brought out the best and the worst in me. Writing the Newsletter made me confront myself. Opening myself up and saying, well, here I am:  This is me. I’m going to tell you things I think, do, say.  I’m going to promote what I do and who I am.

A group of my close women friends (not involved in MED) are nicknamed after inanimate objects.  Mine is “Can Opener”. I like to get things out in the open, not something many people are comfortable with – not even me.

This industry is governed predominantly by women. With such a strong female base we could embrace the notion of operating our businesses in a less linear, go-getter, patriarchal manner. Many of us are trying, but alas I understand within the parameters of Western society we have a long way to go.

When women first come to this dance they find sanctuary in private women’s business. They talk, play, dance and dress up. A Sisterhood is formed. This happens primarily amongst students, the teacher may or may not be a part of it.  She may generate the sisterhood or it may be self-generating. Organically it blossoms week after week.  This sisterhood can be found in cities, towns and  rural communities all over the Western World.  In a rural town this can be the only outlet a woman has, away from her family and work. This can go on for years, especially for the student with no aspiration to become a professional dancer or women in rural areas. Some groups become so close that if one leaves, they all leave and remain friends.

As the dancer moves up the professional ladder and becomes a teacher and entertainer this sisterhood becomes more fraught with difficulty.  A teacher can maintain her sisterhood with her students.  However, in the outside world (with her peers and contemporaries), ego, money, status, power, jealousy can and does get in the way.

This industry, with a 95%** female content has the opportunity to develop the power of the feminine far beyond any other industry on this planet.

Thousands of women all over the world empowering each other.  A Matriarchy of strong women who use their intuition to guide them, who understand that the law of nature is cyclic and winding as sure as the moon is full every 28 days and the tides ebb and flow and our menstrual cycles occur.

I confess I am an idealist. We, as so many women in business, have the opportunity to change the face of success in this patriarchal world.  As teachers we can use the power of this dance, which in essence is so in tune with the rhythm of nature – more so than any other dance.

I have a teaching curriculum with a linear structure, but I allow my lines to curve somewhere along the way, then they grow other lines that end in spirals. And why not, this is a dance based on spirals after all. Accepting and allowing things to happen in cycles is not easy.  Let the movement find its way, organically, naturally.  Let the dance be, without the teacher getting in the way. To allow the natural grace of our body to happen.  After all dance, like any other art form, is intuitive, inspirational.

In this world that has become so caught up with the external, we have the opportunity for us women to guide other women back to our true nature.

Everyone wants something external, they want to feel they are achieving because they have learnt 10 moves in one lesson.  There is nothing wrong with that – but these moves should be subtle and organic and flow from one to the other. This is how I teach my students; I want them to discover their dance by knowing first their bodies, and then by letting the dance happen. The women who love my Mariaisms are very wonderful, brave, insightful women and a pleasure to teach and to be with. I don’t call things a lift or a shift or a flick because if I do, that is what they become and that is what they look like, all on the outside and nothing happening internally or emotionally. 

This is not a judgement of teachers that use these terms, I am just sharing what I know.

I put heaps of time and energy into advertising for a workshop.  I accept that one day you can have a full house and the next time no one books.  Is it because it is not well advertised?  Is it over- exposure?  Is it my competitors?  Or is it simply  because it is not the right universal time?  The planet Mercury is retrograde at the moment (that means in Solar Sidereal time it is going backwards).  Mercury rules communication.  Every day there is some problem to do with communication. I can’t wait till the 2nd of May when it goes forward again.  What to do? Stop, have a holiday until then? We can’t.   Our linear way of life won’t let us and everything today is about communication.  So I have to accept this and absorb it into my life.  This belief has deepened my acceptance of outcome. When I plan a workshop I often have a gut feeling about whether it will go ahead or not. Sometimes this gut feeling is tainted with fear of failure or fear of jeopardy, and I feel like just crawl into a hole and forget all about it. Every time I write this newsletter, is like going in a quest. What I do is try to move past all of that stuff in my head and get the feeling right. And then other times  everything falls into place, everything flows.  I’ve become more courageous with planning workshops, putting the work in and accepting the outcome.

I have recently become a MEDNET (Middle Eastern Dance Network) committee member. This is a big decision – to join a group of women from different tribes. To become a part of decision-making for an

organisation whose fundamental aim is to provide a network for its members and to work for the good of the whole MED community in Melbourne/Victoria. A committee meeting can be seen as very linear with all the protocol of a meeting. But it can also be seen as a ritual. Linear is not all bad anyway, it’s just overrated.

This is it folks, as you can see there is a subscription form on the last page and up and coming local regional and interstate workshops, along with where Yalla! is playing.

There are individuals and groups and organisations that I have reciprocal arrangements with, they are listed in the box below and also a note to those who have made contributions in the past 2 years.

The choice is yours.

May the Goddess be with you in the spiral dance of life

Many Blessings
Maria

* Mariaism was a term recently coined buy a friend when I was giving him some ideas with how to deal with his dislocated shoulder, which lead to a discussion about my teaching methods which he named Mariaisms.
 
** 95% is my random guess at the ratio of women to men in this industry. It is not a definite figure.

Written for the Spiralling New a Dancing Isis Dance Publication ©

Initially I’d been a little apprehensive, aware that part of the workshop involved performing in front of my peers (actually people I hold in high regard) and teaching them a dance technique. Having participated in a few of Maria’s gatherings in the past, I recalled the safe, non-judgemental space she creates and knew that this would be a valuable experience for me personally and as a dancer/teacher. I let go of my fear of intimidation and embraced the anticipation.

We were an intimate group of eight and with very different styles of dance and ideas (something to celebrate) and as I’d hoped, Maria’s calm, vibrant ways had us quite relaxed. Informative discussion and exchange of ideas flowed. Movement awareness increased as we studied skeletons and physically related them to our own bodies. Maria’s knowledge of anatomy and movement is enlightening. Learning about such things as Alexander Technique immediately freed areas in my body. She has the ability to take you within your dance and within your self where you can experience the internal source of each movement rather than the external outcome. Maria admits that this can be very challenging and is sometimes confronting, but to those who are open to accepting it and willing to work to integrate it, it is amazing. It changes all aspects of your dance experience.

Although this virtually means I’ll have to unlearn so much of what I’m already familiar and comfortable with, I can clearly see the truth in it when I watch Maria dance. Someone commented that her dance holds all the elements – Her feet are connected to the Earth like tree roots and fire is in her belly. Her dance flows like water and she radiates through the air. My desire has altered from “I want to look like that”, to “I want to feel like that”. If only I could wake up tomorrow and be so within my core and my breath, radiating outwards in my dance. For me this will take time, work and commitment to make it my own, although in ways it has been manifesting in me for some time.

My turn to dance came late on the first afternoon by which time we’d all become quite comfortable amongst each other and I wasn’t feeling at all concerned about dancing in front of the women sharing this journey with me. The music commenced and suddenly I experienced a severe attack of nervousness. No matter how calm my head was with the whole idea, my body certainly wasn’t and I began to shake and feel completely uncoordinated. I didn’t enjoy my performance at all. The final beat couldn’t come fast enough. Immediately after each of us danced we were asked how we felt. I felt like vomiting! (This was purely my experience. We all felt differently after performing.) Feeling this way had completely thrown me as I usually don’t have nervousness about me at all while I dance. As I began to verbalise my experience I realised that I don’t consider myself a performer. I’m completely uncomfortable with being the centre of attention. When I dance publicly I am very much of the mind that I’m dancing with people. Even though essentially they are spectators, I feel that they are sharing in the celebration of the dance. Perhaps this is why I feel connected to the Tribal, Gypsy aspects of belly dance rather than the Cabaret style. (Which I also admire.) I cherish the gathering of women in a sacred space, the experience of self discovery and growth, the sharing of a life journey which occurs when women come together to share this dance. As a teacher, to witness a woman blossom from inwardness to self acceptance, then self appreciation and beyond. It is such a catalyst. But that is a whole other story…

As we began to teach each other movements it became apparent that collectively, as a group of teachers, we had pretty well all been taught and were teaching ‘externally’. This still appeared beautiful but didn’t encompass the essence of Middle Eastern Dance. It wasn’t being expressed from within and after an education in the difference it was apparent. Maria gently coaxed us away from what we all felt comfortable with as our own personal dance and had us experimenting with different ideas and open minds. An opportunity to explore our own dance style with the aim of improving the quality of our way of being. Maria along with others is concerned that if Middle Eastern Dance continues to be taught the way it so often is these days, as a Western ‘external’ activity, it will lose the very essence of what draws us to it in the first place. It’s very much about being and not doing. Just thought I’d also mention that for days after the workshop I experienced a great sense of clarity and centredness. Lovely!

Lisa Craigen, Barwon Heads

Sumemr School