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Language of Song and Dance

© Shira

"Dance is music made visible."

- George Balanchine, 1993

Whether you're a ballerina performing to music from an Italian opera, a flamenco dancer performing to Spanish songs, or an Oriental dance artist (belly dancer) using Middle Eastern songs, it can be very helpful to have at least a little knowledge of the song and what its lyrics mean. How can you interpret the song effectively if you don't know what it's about?

A while back, I went to several musicians who play music for Middle Eastern dance, and asked each one a single question: "If you could give one piece of advice to dancers with respect to working with live music, what would it be?" I was expecting to receive a variety of great tips that I could incorporate into an article on working with musicians, but instead they all gave exactly the same answer:

Listen to the music! Dance to the music!

Obviously, musicians feel there is all too common a problem with dancers failing to do this. It's challenging for novice dancers to familiarize themselves with Middle Eastern rhythms and select moves that are compatible with the melodies. But there's another level of dancing to the music that even many professional dancers fail to address: interpreting the lyrics.

If you stick around the Middle Eastern dance scene long enough, you'll see even professional dancers committing some of the following errors:

• Wrong Music for the Occasion. When hired to perform at an Arabic wedding celebration, the dancer picks her favorite Arabic song, Lisah Faker, because she loves the music. The problem is, this song about a failed relationship is saying, "Do you think my heart will still trust you, or one word will bring back what used to be? In my heart, all my days were spent in tears... that was my life!" This is not exactly suitable wedding music!
• Offending Muslims. It has happened more than once: a performer decides to do an artsy-fartsy interpretive dance to the Muslim call to prayer. Sometimes the dancer knows the chant is holy and just doesn't care enough to show respect. Other times the dancer doesn't even realize what the words are saying. Either way, she becomes indignant when several audience members get up and stalk out of her show in anger.
• Wrong Mood for the Song. Imagine a dancer writhing seductively with come-hither moves or dancing joyfully to the Turkish song Bir Demet Yasemen, a sad song that says "A bunch of jasmine is the only memory of our love. There is no end to separation, there is no end to my heart's grief." Anybody who speaks Turkish would probably think such a dancer is completely clueless!

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