Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Dance Prodigy
Jamila al Wahid was here this weekend. Somra el Nubia sponsored her in a weekend workshop aptly titled "Belly Dance Bootcamp". It certainly was! Monday was a complete day of rest to recoup from it.
I got a chance to pull her aside and ask her some questions about how she does what she does as far as teaching workshops. Her answers really gave me a window to her personality. Jamila is very close to my age, but she admits that she is old school! The masters that she learned from are either dead, retiring, or thinking of retiring. So she started her training really young to say the least! And she has been teaching since she was 16! Whoa! She told me that she often gets put in the Aziza and Shoshanna peer group, but as she told me, she was teaching them, so dancewise, she is NOT in their peer group. Her dance peers are people like Horacio and Beata, Suhaila, etc.
She also told me the business of workshops has changed. Since she is old school, it used to be you were asked to teach workshops by sponsors. I thought that was still how things were. However, she said that these days, most teachers asked sponsors to host them. Teachers call sponsors and ask them if they would like for them to come to their city. She even gave an example of someone offering to teach for free so she could say that she taught at this event and has travelled internationally as a workshop teacher just to pad her resume.
Needless to say, that was a real suprise to everyone that was listening. You could tell that she was a bit upset about folks who haven't paid their dues, but are out there asking sponsors to host them, even if the sponsor has no idea how they teach. She said "These days, it's about something other than the dance". She didn't say what the "something" was, but one could probably easily guess. Is the mantra "Fame first, dance second?"
I'm glad to have had a chance to take class for her, see her perform in person finally, and hear some of her words of wisdom. For me, it's a teacher's wisdom that takes them from great to fantastic, and Jamila is certainly the latter.
I got a chance to pull her aside and ask her some questions about how she does what she does as far as teaching workshops. Her answers really gave me a window to her personality. Jamila is very close to my age, but she admits that she is old school! The masters that she learned from are either dead, retiring, or thinking of retiring. So she started her training really young to say the least! And she has been teaching since she was 16! Whoa! She told me that she often gets put in the Aziza and Shoshanna peer group, but as she told me, she was teaching them, so dancewise, she is NOT in their peer group. Her dance peers are people like Horacio and Beata, Suhaila, etc.
She also told me the business of workshops has changed. Since she is old school, it used to be you were asked to teach workshops by sponsors. I thought that was still how things were. However, she said that these days, most teachers asked sponsors to host them. Teachers call sponsors and ask them if they would like for them to come to their city. She even gave an example of someone offering to teach for free so she could say that she taught at this event and has travelled internationally as a workshop teacher just to pad her resume.
Needless to say, that was a real suprise to everyone that was listening. You could tell that she was a bit upset about folks who haven't paid their dues, but are out there asking sponsors to host them, even if the sponsor has no idea how they teach. She said "These days, it's about something other than the dance". She didn't say what the "something" was, but one could probably easily guess. Is the mantra "Fame first, dance second?"
I'm glad to have had a chance to take class for her, see her perform in person finally, and hear some of her words of wisdom. For me, it's a teacher's wisdom that takes them from great to fantastic, and Jamila is certainly the latter.
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