Review of Pauline Qu’s “Beginning Tribal Style Workshop 2”
At The Imperial Rooms, Matlock, Sunday, October 05, 2008
by Connie Hurd
Trisha and I had a fast-paced, fun-filled time at Pauline’s Tribal Style Workshop! The entire workshop was accompanied by Asif and his 3 tabla players who drummed at Pauline’s commands. Pauline began with wonderful warm-ups, and then revised some basic dance posture and tribal moves which she had taught at her Workshop 1: the Arabic and the Egyptian. She revised how to do these steps and taught us the signals the lead dancer uses to signal her troupe that she is going to go into these steps. She then taught us the Arabic Dip, which is based on a very definite movement of the feet accompanied by graceful dip which involves sweeping the extended arm down, around and up again, whilst dipping down with knees bent. We learned to do the Resham Ka step, the tribal Maya and Taxeem, tribal snake arms and seaweed arms, the Arc Turn, tribal shimmies, and the dramatic combination of the tribal torso rotation and the tribal camel walk.
Pauline’s teaching style was easy to follow and she regularly allowed for questions. She gave us lesson notes before the workshop began so note-takers such as I didn’t have to keep pulling out of dance practice to jot things down! She combined teaching the steps with teaching us the tribal style of dancing in small groups of three, with the dancer in the front taking the lead. After we had learned three steps, Pauline taught us to improvise using those three steps and their signals in our small groups. She taught us how to signal when we were giving the lead over to someone else and off we went, dancing to the drums, all in sync with each other, looking graceful and together, doing just the three steps and their variations that we had learned. (She even demonstrated how her Arabic calls signal the drummers to give us a fast or slow beat!) Pauline then added more steps to our repertoire, and we practiced them all together, then by “improvising” in our groups. (Unlike Raqs Sharqi improvising, in Tribal “improv,” we all know the combinations we are going to use and just take the lead for a little while, and are dancing in a group, so do not feel “on the spot”.) The grand finale was when she taught us to dance with a chorus line of dancers in a semi-circle, and with a center group within the semi-circle. What a joyous feeling to be dancing in sync with ten dancers all together, with different dancers spontaneously taking the lead, all of us looking for all the world like we had choreographed this dance, but improvising using the steps and signals Pauline had taught us. Oh, yes, some of us “went wrong” from time to time, but it wasn’t really noticeable and the whole experience was somehow not only uplifting, but also soul-satisfying.
If you haven’t tried tribal, give it a go at least once! You might fall in love with it as I have, or you might just have a great time trying something new and having a laugh because Pauline is entertaining and fun!
At The Imperial Rooms, Matlock, Sunday, October 05, 2008
by Connie Hurd
Trisha and I had a fast-paced, fun-filled time at Pauline’s Tribal Style Workshop! The entire workshop was accompanied by Asif and his 3 tabla players who drummed at Pauline’s commands. Pauline began with wonderful warm-ups, and then revised some basic dance posture and tribal moves which she had taught at her Workshop 1: the Arabic and the Egyptian. She revised how to do these steps and taught us the signals the lead dancer uses to signal her troupe that she is going to go into these steps. She then taught us the Arabic Dip, which is based on a very definite movement of the feet accompanied by graceful dip which involves sweeping the extended arm down, around and up again, whilst dipping down with knees bent. We learned to do the Resham Ka step, the tribal Maya and Taxeem, tribal snake arms and seaweed arms, the Arc Turn, tribal shimmies, and the dramatic combination of the tribal torso rotation and the tribal camel walk.
Pauline’s teaching style was easy to follow and she regularly allowed for questions. She gave us lesson notes before the workshop began so note-takers such as I didn’t have to keep pulling out of dance practice to jot things down! She combined teaching the steps with teaching us the tribal style of dancing in small groups of three, with the dancer in the front taking the lead. After we had learned three steps, Pauline taught us to improvise using those three steps and their signals in our small groups. She taught us how to signal when we were giving the lead over to someone else and off we went, dancing to the drums, all in sync with each other, looking graceful and together, doing just the three steps and their variations that we had learned. (She even demonstrated how her Arabic calls signal the drummers to give us a fast or slow beat!) Pauline then added more steps to our repertoire, and we practiced them all together, then by “improvising” in our groups. (Unlike Raqs Sharqi improvising, in Tribal “improv,” we all know the combinations we are going to use and just take the lead for a little while, and are dancing in a group, so do not feel “on the spot”.) The grand finale was when she taught us to dance with a chorus line of dancers in a semi-circle, and with a center group within the semi-circle. What a joyous feeling to be dancing in sync with ten dancers all together, with different dancers spontaneously taking the lead, all of us looking for all the world like we had choreographed this dance, but improvising using the steps and signals Pauline had taught us. Oh, yes, some of us “went wrong” from time to time, but it wasn’t really noticeable and the whole experience was somehow not only uplifting, but also soul-satisfying.
If you haven’t tried tribal, give it a go at least once! You might fall in love with it as I have, or you might just have a great time trying something new and having a laugh because Pauline is entertaining and fun!
