shanmonster | Review of the Aziza Workshop in Saint John, NB, Canada

I attended the Aziza workshop sponsored by Maisha in Saint John at the Gothic Arches this past weekend. I wasn't able to attend the Saturday sessions, but I did make the evening performance. There were seventeen performances in total. Eight of them incorporated veilwork, which I suppose was appropriate enough considering the Sunday workshop would deal with veil combinations. Still, I felt it was a bit too much of the same sort of thing. Personally, I'd like to have seen a bigger variety of dance styles.

Although the dance styles were mostly of the same sort, there was a huge span in skill. Performers ranged from novices to professionals. It was the stage debut of at least one dancer (eg. Carol Ferris rendition of "Miserlou"), and the most recent in an illustrious career for others (eg. Aziza).

For me, the standout dances were performed by the following:

Zahara of Tay Creek. She wore a gorgeous, asymmetrical turquoise and gold Egyptian costume. Her stage presence has improved dramatically over the past year or so. She's become much more facially animated, and paired with her excellent technical skills, it's bumped up the quality of her dancing enormously. Zahara has a large style of dancing, and her arm movements were particularly expressive.
Laura of Halifax. She danced an Indian fusion piece in a gorgeous saffron and red sari. The mudras in her dance were beautiful, and her serene facial expressions added to the grace of her piece.
Belindance of Halifax. Their second choreography was the most interesting group performance of the night. Their choreography made excellent use of stillness and assymetrical placement.
Aziza of Montreal. She did two captivating performances with intricate layering and consummate control. At one point during her first performance ("Veils of Light"), she did a shimmy layered over and undulation, and then somehow, managed to isolate her pectorals on top of it all to dramatic effect. I need to learn how to do that! Her second performance is the absolute best performance I've seen to date. Aziza has taken her place at the top of my list of favourite performers. She has an ultra-feminine style of dance with plenty of sass, and she has the best stage presence I've ever seen for any sort of performance, dance or otherwise.

The next day was the workshop. I went to the vending area first, and purchased a sparkly net hip scarf from Andrea of Babylon Breeze. Her merchandise is very high quality, and excellently priced. The velvet of her hipscarves is the real deal, and not the cheap shaved velour commonly seen elsewhere. If I'd had the cash, I'd be the proud owner of a glam black and silver bedlah, but I be po'!

To warm up before the workshop, I went out onto the dance floor and broke out my poi. I was dancing away with them when Maisha came up to me and introduced me to Aziza. "May I try?" asked Aziza.

"Sure!" I said, and handed them to her.

She looked at them with a puzzled expression. I totally misread the expression and said, "You can start off pretending they're like a skipping rope."

"Oh, no, no," she said. "I know how to use them. They're just a bit different from mine."

And then she started to do all sorts of stuff with them I'd never before seen. Bonus! I'd had no idea she is also a fire dancer. Later on, I found another fire dancer in the group. Lorien of Maine dances with fire clubs, and she showed me a couple of things, too. I hadn't anticipated learning poi tricks at the dance workshop.

Then the workshop began, and I got to feel two-left-footed. I just suck at learning combinations, although I can improvise easily. I'm determined to get the veil combinations down that Aziza taught, though. I hear she has a veil DVD through IAMED. Although the veil isn't my prop of choice, I need to track her DVD down, because her combinations are that darned nifty! I have to keep drilling on them, because I've been ordered by Sephira of Moncton to share what I learned at the workshop. I guess I know what I'll be practicing on my breaks at work, hmm?

I'm particularly fond of a movement called The Helicopter, Veil Juggling, The Burrito, and of a combination Aziza learned from Badawia which is just perfect for framing abdominal work.

After lunch, we covered several travelling combinations: Amir, Momo, the Thinking Combination (so called because you do it while thinking what next to do), and one other whose name escapes me.

Aziza's philosophy on improvisational dancing is quite different from mine, and made me look at dance in a new way. This in itself was worth the cost of the workshop to me. I like her ideas about mapping out a stage, coming up with a design to dance, and of naming portions of a stage after combinations. I'd gladly attend another of her workshops, and would recommend them to anyone looking to learn interesting new combinations.