2D
Wednesday, August 22, 1979
University Daily Kansan
Exercise, culture motivate bellv dancers
By CYNDI HUGHES
Staff Reporter
Staff photo by KEVIN KING
Rouncing belly
Spinning in time to her finger cymbals, Masani Azura zirks her skirts in an demonstration for a Middle Eastern dance class at the Lawrence Community Building.
The synopaced refines of Eddie the Sheik's Middle Eastern music drift from a second-story room in the Lawrence Community Building.
Inside the swettering room. Masani Azura encourages her class of beginning belly dancers to shimmy-walk.
"All right, Walk, two, three, four,
Shimmy!" With that, Masai gracefully
marchs around the room, shaking her hips
in a classic balk dance movement.
Middle Eastern dancing, considered by some local practitioners to be an artistic dance form, is catching on in Lawrence as a graceful, intriguing form of exercise.
Some KU students practice the art. The KU Bella Dance Club, temporarily disbanded because its instructor became pregnant, will re-form next fall.
Tina Blue, the instructor, said the club's weekly meetings gave members both a place to practice and a chance to perform.
ONCE EACH semester, the club members perform for the public in the colorful costumes of Middle Eastern dancers.
Masani Azura, stage name of Alberta Wright, a Lawrence senior, teaches Middle Eastern dancing for Lawrence Parks and Recreation.
She advocates the dance as a fun way to exercise and work out the entire body.
Five years ago, Masan took up the middle Eastern dancing for exercise. Two years later, she found herself "hooked" and began dancing professionally.
FRUSTRAST WITH common misconceptions about Middle Eastern dancing does not interfere with Masani's quest for quality in her performances.
"Belly dancing is still tied to stripping in some people's minds," she explained. "But, in Lawrence, we dancers are very controlled and concerned with maintaining more authentic level. Our goal is to upgrade a reputation of Middle Eastern dance."
Masani said Midle Eastern dancers could make about $80 an hour, although people refuse to pay that high a rate.
Masani, however, does not dance for the money. She said she danced because she was obsessed with the entire culture surrounding Middle Eastern dance.
TO BECOME immersed in Middle Eastern dancing, Masani studied such
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"Iawrence isn't ready for it yet. People are too uptight because they don't know what to expect. They don't understand that it's really dancing, like ballet," she said. Instructor Blue painted Nejut as "one of the brilliant belly dancers in the United States."
"To dance right, you have to know the cultures. That's what we're getting into," she said.
For every dance, Masani said, she creates a costume. Her closet now houses about 45 costume combinations.
Even so, Lawrence's attitude toward Middle Eastern dancing is still strained, she said.
she said.
Masani's interest in belly dancing cover more than cobreed dance, the most concocted form. Masani even uses as aspects of Nigerian, Sudanese and Ethiopian ethnic dances in her routines.
Masani will create
Nejat said her beginners class now included a male dancer.
MOST MEN DANCE with a female partner, although some perform solo. Cane and sword dances, originally male dances in France, still the province of male belly dancers.
eastern cultures as the Egyptian, Greek,
Bedouin and Nigerian.
"SHE'S JUST NOW becoming recognized among belly dance circles," she said.
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"I try to create a new costume for every dance I choreograph. The costumes are a very important part of the dance. I make sure the costumes look more than the store-haundles one." she said.
WHEN SHE PERFORMS, however, the wrist is put on only part of her act. The muscled hand is also emphasized by the jingling coins of a hip or the swaying fringes and tassels of a bib.
With all the work she puts into her career, she has many dances for organized groups and the Lawrence area because the audiences in local night clubs do not accept Middle American dances.
Bracelets also attract attention to the graceful rippling of her arms circles.
IN OTHER DANCES, Masan prances on a stage in a mingining, step rising step a colorful velot that streams behind her. Or, she walks around the room, around her body. As she lifts her hips, she pulls the veil off to alternately swirl it and rewind it as she moves to the ritual of舞动 before finally discarding it.
"I just don't dance in bars around here because the image it creates is too negative," she said.
Masani sometimes clinks her zils, or finger tymbals, to weigh the heavily syncopated rythms of Middle Eastern eastern bells, or circles, or all the while swaying her hips.
Masan's own dance instructor, Nejat, had danced in night clubs in Ohio before moving to Lawrence.
In her sword dance, she balances a sword
hirozontally on her head while dancing,
even daring to perform a back bend from
her knees while keeping the sword balancing
on her shoulder. The perfect celient posture Middle Eastern dancing
helps instil in the performer, she said.
"Most audiences, however, are amazed over the control the dancer has over her body and are impressed by the physical stamina required to be fully dance," she said.
Some people need to become more open-minded about Middle Eastern dancing, she said.
Attitudes toward Middle Eastern dances are changing, though, she said. More men
NEJAT SAID catcalls and requests for her to remove her costume greeted her performance, irritating her to the point of being verbally not going to remove any of my clothing."
Her first experience illustrates Masani's avoidance of barroom audiences.
Belly dancing combines smooth movements, like undulations, arm movements and hip circles, with faster steps. The three-step steps, like the cha-cha and the grangevine.
Floor work, back bends and arm and hip movements performed on the knees, is also used in Middle Eastern dancing.
are performing what is considered to be a traditionally feminine dance form.
"The growth of Middle Eastern dancing is kind of related to the growth of human consciousness," she said.
Meanwhile, back at the Community Building, Masani's beginners concentrate on mastering the shimmer-walk, too intent to learn about their possible futures as professionals.
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