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Yesterday I attended Yasmina Ramzy's teacher training workshop. It was my second time taking a workshop with her, the first being an Egyptian dance workshop in Moncton, NB several years ago. This workshop was held in the Arabesque Studios in downtown Toronto.
The workshop was fairly small, with about fourteen or fifteen women in attendance. These ranged from longtime teachers to relative novices.
The material covered was quite straight-forward and taught, at least initially, in a lecture format. As the class progressed, we moved onto some practical exercises and then to a question and answer period.
Yasmina has been teaching dance and giving workshops for over twenty-five years. She has taught thousands of students, and this experience puts her in good stead to be teaching teachers. Although she specifically teaches Egyptian dance, her teaching methods can be applied to other varieties of belly dance, as well.
The Good: The most useful part of the workshop was the lab section, where a volunteer did a dance move and her technique was corrected. A novice dancer got up and did a shoulder shimmy, and by way of doing similar dance movements (a shoulder "punch" with a bouncing Saidi walk), was better able to understand the origin points of the shoulder shimmy. At the end of the exercise, her shoulder shimmy was appreciably better.
Yasmina is eager to share her experiences with teaching students, including those with various disabilities. For example, she demonstrated how she instructed a blind woman who went on to become a performer. These anecdotes are useful because they show how teaching methodologies can be modified to help students with special needs.
We covered such topics as:
- posture being the foundation of movement
- the importance of regular drills
- technique correction including looking at the entire body, and not just the working parts
- teaching complex steps by starting at the foundation movements and building way up
- aesthetics and body alignment
- drilling techniques
The Bad: Yasmina holds a strong bias toward Egyptian dance, and her dislike of other dance styles (especially modern and interpretive dance) comes through in the forms of little digs and snide comments. She also claimed that no Arab would appreciate tribal belly dance or tribal music. In my opinion, this is like saying that no Midwest American would appreciate anything that isn't country line dancing.
The Strangely Absent: No mention was made on how to ensure a safe class environment for students (aside from a mention that for elderly students, perhaps backbends are not a good idea). When one workshop attendee asked what she should do in an instance where a student exclaims "Ouch!", she only said to ask if they are ok and then to continue with the lesson. Also, the issue of warm-ups and cool-downs was not touched upon at all.
The Just Plain Strange: During the lab technique, I volunteered to be a guinea pig and did some Mayas. In coaching me, Yasmina told me to stop lifting my heels off the floor. At first I thought she might have been talking about weight changes, but no, she said my heels were going up into the air. As the students beside me attested, my heels were firmly on the floor the entire time. Yet Yasmina was certain I was raising them, then doing them with heels down, then doing them with them lifted again. Very strange....
Over all, I would recommend this workshop to new instructors. However, if you teach a style other than Egyptian folkloric or Egyptian raqs sharqi, you'd better have a thick skin.
The workshop was fairly small, with about fourteen or fifteen women in attendance. These ranged from longtime teachers to relative novices.
The material covered was quite straight-forward and taught, at least initially, in a lecture format. As the class progressed, we moved onto some practical exercises and then to a question and answer period.
Yasmina has been teaching dance and giving workshops for over twenty-five years. She has taught thousands of students, and this experience puts her in good stead to be teaching teachers. Although she specifically teaches Egyptian dance, her teaching methods can be applied to other varieties of belly dance, as well.
The Good: The most useful part of the workshop was the lab section, where a volunteer did a dance move and her technique was corrected. A novice dancer got up and did a shoulder shimmy, and by way of doing similar dance movements (a shoulder "punch" with a bouncing Saidi walk), was better able to understand the origin points of the shoulder shimmy. At the end of the exercise, her shoulder shimmy was appreciably better.
Yasmina is eager to share her experiences with teaching students, including those with various disabilities. For example, she demonstrated how she instructed a blind woman who went on to become a performer. These anecdotes are useful because they show how teaching methodologies can be modified to help students with special needs.
We covered such topics as:
- posture being the foundation of movement
- the importance of regular drills
- technique correction including looking at the entire body, and not just the working parts
- teaching complex steps by starting at the foundation movements and building way up
- aesthetics and body alignment
- drilling techniques
The Bad: Yasmina holds a strong bias toward Egyptian dance, and her dislike of other dance styles (especially modern and interpretive dance) comes through in the forms of little digs and snide comments. She also claimed that no Arab would appreciate tribal belly dance or tribal music. In my opinion, this is like saying that no Midwest American would appreciate anything that isn't country line dancing.
The Strangely Absent: No mention was made on how to ensure a safe class environment for students (aside from a mention that for elderly students, perhaps backbends are not a good idea). When one workshop attendee asked what she should do in an instance where a student exclaims "Ouch!", she only said to ask if they are ok and then to continue with the lesson. Also, the issue of warm-ups and cool-downs was not touched upon at all.
The Just Plain Strange: During the lab technique, I volunteered to be a guinea pig and did some Mayas. In coaching me, Yasmina told me to stop lifting my heels off the floor. At first I thought she might have been talking about weight changes, but no, she said my heels were going up into the air. As the students beside me attested, my heels were firmly on the floor the entire time. Yet Yasmina was certain I was raising them, then doing them with heels down, then doing them with them lifted again. Very strange....
Over all, I would recommend this workshop to new instructors. However, if you teach a style other than Egyptian folkloric or Egyptian raqs sharqi, you'd better have a thick skin.
