I feel sorry for those of you who missed the Sausan workshop this past weekend. Jaleh managed to drag this incredible teacher away from both her restaurant and dance academy in San Francisco to teach a very intensive weekend up here in the Northwest. She crammed six months of classes into two four hour sessions. For those of us not able to commute to San Francisco weekly for six months, she offers a one week session.

At the beginning of Saturday's workshop, Sausan explained her "Egyptian Code", her philosophy and her style. Her aim is to preserve the classic Egyptian style of dancing, the style you see in the old movies. Sausan refers to such Egyptian greats like Samia Gamal, Taheya Karioka, Na'eema Akef, Nagua Fouad, and Fifi Abdou like old friends, demonstrating at a drop of a hip their various signature moves.

The first half of the workshop focused on the upper body movements, which is the core of classic Egyptian style belly dancing. The first rule of the Code, and the most important, is "Dance from the heart", specifically the chest. She turned every one in the workshop into human metronomes by the end of the first half, lifting our chests on the first and third beat.

Take a moment and practice that. Put on your favorite 4/4 song and do chest lifts on the first and third beats. Got it? Now, keep that rhythm and walk around your room. (It helped me to think of the scene from that Gene Wilder-Richard Pryor movie where they're being led into the jail. "That's right, we bad" they lied. Get that attitude going.) Once you get that down, add the basic moves you've learned. Dance around. You'll find that using the chest lifts brings a bouncy feeling to the dance.

There, I've given you a tiny sampling of what we learned at this intensive workshop. You're welcome.

The second part of the Saturday workshop worked on the lower body movements. We did grapevines, side steps, and something Sausan called an Egyptian shimmy, still with the bobbing bosom. Sausan also pointed out where the beats are in the rhythms - good transition times, when to undulate up and when to undulate down.

Sausan taught a choreography at the Sunday workshop. By the end of the four hour sweat-fest, the handful of lucky participants performed a classical Egyptian dance to a ten minute song. While Egyptian dance doesn't need to be choreographed -- like all forms of belly dance, once you know the building blocks, you can build a fabulous dance as you go -- it really helped me to have something I could practice the Code at home. With this beautiful routine, Sausan covered everything she taught the day before, plus more.

Throughout the entire weekend, which included a fun evening out at Mamounia with half of the Saturday participants, Sausan was friendly, open, upbeat (ha! my little joke there) and free with information. She countered the usual workshop stress of "oh my god, i can't do this!" with the permission to relax and let our brains process the information.

If you are interested in learning the classic Egyptian style or just looking to bring a sense of lightness and joy into your dance, I can not recommend highly enough Sausan. Since I'm not sure when she'll come back, I think you should take the week-long session. For more information, go to her website at http://www.sausanacademy.com/

Thank you, Sausan, for sharing your knowledge, and thank you, Jaleh, for bringing her to West Seattle.

-Janice

Hi Sausan,
I so enjoyed your lesson this past Saturday! There were so many thoughts going thru my head on the druve home and throughout the reast of the weekend. They were more on the line of connect the dots and other peoples' struggles.

I was imagining how it must have been for you when the realization hit you just what the Egyptians are doing. I can imagine your excitement.
I remember when I first saw the Egyptians in 1995 on videos. My mouth hung open and my eyes stretched to the ceiling. I was blown away. I still feel that excitement for me. Most of the other videos have since been sold off except for the dancers who learned the 1950-1980 style (American—the stuff that Dahlena, Jeneani, Alexandra King (her early days for sure), Serena, Anahid Sofian etc…..

The key is non-balletic. There are some well meaning teachers out there who say that it is a good basis to development of strength. And grace. Grrr. And poise. Grrrrrr….

All of these exist within the dance already.

Of the discreditors, it's a shame that these women don't trust the fact that you wouldn't just come out with some bs after waiting 25 to teach! BTW, I so think that is responsible. I know that they just don't want people to watch videos and call themselves bellydancers,oriental dancers,middleeastern dancers, etc etc….

In my lofty opinion, mis-information comes thru teachers spending waaaaayyyyyy to much time trying to make Occidental dancers feel comfortable with themselves and trying to explain this great dance to them.

I can understand the attempts to make it safe because Occidentals don't move in this way. BTW, I'm not referring to all Westerners. I personally come from people who have danced all their lives. Dancing at home. Doesn't mean that I know this dance, its just that I can relate to why they dance.

I didn't come to this dance to find myself, to love myself, to appreciate the goddess, the universe, etc…..

I already knew all this.

Anyhoo, there many facets to this foreign dance form and those ladies on Med-dance do not know them all.

Over the years, I've learned many pieces and you've helped to connect the dots, weave a lot of those pieces together. Especially, those pieces I knew on a unconscious level. Oh wait a minute…. Lol…..sub-conscious level.

Of course you know I could go on and on and on…I got those long-winded genes after all. J

For the Light of the Dance,
Lani