What is cultural imperialism?

Sociological Images: What counts as Indian Art?

This article brings up many good points and questions. Even though it's not written about bellydance, I think these concepts are important to consider whenever dealing with a "traditional" "cultural" art form.
Also, it has some images of some sweet paintings!

Labels: authenticity, theory

Today was my last day at my full time job. I chose to quit; I wasn't laid off. I decided to leave my position working as an administrative assistant for a large public university for many reasons, but mostly because my schedule was absolutely eating me alive.
Ever since I graduated from college two years ago I have been struggling to adjust to life as a full-time office worker. I have refused to give up the things I love in my life- namely dance, sleeping, and spending time with my husband. Not cutting back on my dance activities has left me with very little free time. I have two formal troupe practices per week, I teach a class on Monday evenings, and I teach practically all day every weekend on Saturdays. As I'm also unwilling to cut back on my rigorous 8-hour-per-night sleep regimen, this leaves me with not a whole lot of time or energy to do things like eat, clean, bathe, cope with life, or other such things like that-- let alone to spend time developing new skills or learning new stuff.
Although I imagine other people may have found my schedule to be perfectly reasonable and nothing to complain about, I spent two years trying my best to make it work to no avail. I know it's not just my personality. I'm not an invalid, and I don't consider myself to be impaired or disabled, but I do have a chronic health condition- Fibromyalgia Syndrome. I cope with my FMS quite well, I think, but it still affects me, and it limits my ability to endure things like working 6 days a week every week and generally not ever having any downtime.
What I'm looking at now is getting my income from two places: tutoring ESL (which I did during college as well, actually), and teaching bellydance classes. I also hope to start living a hardcore frugal lifestyle to make up for lost income. Of course, my husband also has a job.
It's funny. Less than three years ago I thought (and said, often at length) that I would never want to make bellydance my job, and that I would never want to depend on someone else's income to live. Then again, that was before I underwent a spectacularly humbling job search and then actually entered the workforce, first working a really awful temp job for about a month and then finding a job at the university.
While my university job was relatively stable and certainly tolerable, I had no room for advancement (there was virtually no way I could be promoted or get a raise), and no room in my life to work towards greater goals. Even at 24 years of age, I felt the time slipping out of my fingers with each passing month.
Meanwhile, all this time, I've only gotten more and more involved with bellydance- emotionally, intellectually, financially, and physically- and I can't help but feel, especially with teaching, that the more I work at it the better I get at it. Also, I love it. I feel a deep, monogamous sort of love for it. I fully anticipate that I'll be in love with it for the rest of my life.
Interestingly, the more deeply I fall in love with the dance, the less I am worried about ever becoming a well-known dancer. I feel less of the gnawing need for external validation now than ever before. I just want to be good at it. I want to put my best effort into performing, studying, and teaching. I want to see my students grow and flourish. I really hope that now I'll have the time to do all of that to the best of my ability.
I want to try to make a career of it if I can. I'm hoping to finally finish my ACE Group Fitness Instructor certification and then start looking at getting more involved movement arts or fitness training (maybe Pilates? maybe some sort of dance? I haven't decided yet). I want to bring something really vital and holistic to my students and to the community, and I love learning so I'm going to try to train as much as I can afford.
I might always have to have a side job, and that would be fine by me. I also know that this might just completely make my life go to shit. A side job might not be enough. I might still completely run myself into the ground financially and become destitute. If that happens, I suppose I'll have to choose between moving back in with my parents, becoming a hobo for real, or going back to temping. Until then, I'm going to give it my all and hope for the best.

Labels: changes, life, work

A.
that it is possible to have a great deal of respect for both tradition and fusion/innovation. YES. AT THE SAME TIME.

B.
how nice it would be if everyone could at least entertain the above notion.

I fracking love teaching. It might be my favorite thing about the entire bellydance experience-- as much as I love being in my two/threeish troupes (yay troupes) and performing (and oh believe me I love both of them very much), teaching probably wins.
I've been teaching two ongoing classes in Durham on Saturdays for about a year and a half now. I just went through all my class records and found out just how loyal many of my students have been since the very beginning-- which is to say, SUPER LOYAL. Most of the students who signed up for class in the first session are still around. I don't want to gloat, but I think this is an accomplishment. I like to think these dancers have stayed with me because I'm nice and not an ego freak or whatever, but also because I am always trying to improve my classes and make them more student-centered.
I am lucky enough to be able to start an intermediate class this session because I have enough students that are willing and able to populate it. I wasn't sure this would ever happen, but I am so glad that it did.
I am constantly getting more and more excited about teaching. I am always hunting for resources to make my teaching style and the content of my classes more safe/coherent/helpful/insightful. My students are awesome and have been willing to tolerate this constant experimentation with our class format, which I am super greatful for. They give me good feedback and let me know what works best for them when I ask. Without their input and influence, I don't think I could have progressed as a teacher in the way that I have in the last year. (My students are fantastic, basically.)
I've found that one of the best things that I have ever done for my classes, both for myself as a teacher and for my students, was to start making and keeping really detailed notes. Writing class notes forces me to think more critically about both what I am teaching and how I am presenting the class content. You can't reach everyone, but I want to be able to make my classes accessible for as many people as possible- people with different dance backgrounds (or none whatsoever), different kinds of learners, different ages and fitness levels, whatever. Writing notes (especially beforehand) allows me to evaluate and refine my teaching strategies.
I want to keep my class content constantly evolving. I don't see myself ever having a "format" (not that I am accomplished enough to merit my own format in any case, but maybe I will be after the next few decades if I work at it) because I always want the freedom to make things more ideal. I have the memory of a goldfish, so if I don't write down what I am teaching, I will never remember what I did in previous sessions, let alone be able to go back and wonder what I could have done better.
Keeping notes is a lot of work to begin with, but it's completely, totally, 100% worth it in the end, I swear.
I feel like there is some kind of personal alchemy that happens when people learn how to dance. I can't imagine who I would be if my teachers hadn't opened this world up to me. Until we learn to accept and inhabit our physical selves, we're living as only part of what we really are and discarding the rest. Dance bridges this gap. I love seeing my students begin to be really present and comfortable in their own skin. I am proud and honored to be able to foster this transformation for other people. It gets me through the week at my day job! I'm pretty much always living for Saturdays.
This post isn't supposed to be a plug for my classes. However, if you'd like some of the class infos and deets, it's available on my main website at http://www.sarabeaman.com/classes.html.

Labels: teaching