Language of Song and Dance

Most of us want the people who see our shows to hire us to do additional ones in the future. We want the audience members to come talk to us afterward and tell us our performances were great. We want to be treated as wonderful star performers.

But not enough of us think about delivering a dance performance that will truly convey the feeling of the song and leave a favorable impression with any audience members who speak the language. As a beginning student of Oriental dance, I used to ask my teachers what the lyrics were saying in the songs they used in class, and I was astonished that many of my teachers didn't know and didn't care.

How can we express the song through movement if we don't know what it's about? How can we avoid doing something completely stupid like the examples I above if we don't have this basic understanding of our music? And how can we be credible as teachers if we can't give intelligent guidance to our students?

And yet many professional dancers make no effort whatsoever to learn anything about the music they use. They don't read the liner notes on the CD's. They don't search the web for lyrics translation help. They don't buy any of the books that are available out there with translations for song lyrics. Resources do exist, but many dancers don't know about them and don't even care.

Why Not Learn a Little Turkish or Arabic?

If there's an Arabic or Turkish enclave in your community, why not learn a few expressions in their language? Learn how to say "Hello", or "Thank you." Ethnic audiences will respect you more if you know a little about their language.

It's not a bad idea to learn some of the insult words, too, just in case someone calls you one of them. I heard a story about a dancer who knew no Arabic at all, but used to dance regularly in an Arabic restaurant. One night after her show, she was speaking with a man in the audience and, with a large smile on his face, he told her she was a ___, filling in an Arabic word. Seeing his smile, she thought she had been complimented, so she smiled sweetly, said thank you, and went on her way. Later, she told someone else what he had said, and they

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