Friday, May 28, 2004
All One Show Biz, Part Two (read Part One below)
Note: This isn't really done but I'm putting it up now so no one thinks I've abandoned my self appointed and doubtlessly futile mission to rescue what's left of the dance from us. Promise you I'm going to be faster from here on out.
When I first heard the Itzhak Perlman story I was so tickled that I waltzed up to some underemployed schnook in a turkey suit and yelled "Itzhak says it's all one show biz." The poor guy just stood there bemused while I had intended reassurance. I was a belly dancer, he was a turkey, and Itzhak was a violin virtuoso and we all were engaged in the same activity: performing art in public places. We were kin. So inspiring.
This was way back when I was getting hired to embarrass the boss otherwise known as performing the lunch hour bellygram. Not bad pay, not much art. Despite my intention to entertain dazzlingly most of these dates involved little more giving the female junior staff a tour of my costume after causing some poor man deep upset by merely showing up. By this measure the best boss ever was the one who dived under his desk. A few bosses with more aplomb tried to get a bit of face back by asking me if a) I did that in bed, or b) if that was all I was going to take off. For this I had taken a few years of lessons and cultivated an already dynamite torso.
As for Turkey Boy, I have no way of knowing for sure but in my imagination he'd recently been "don't call us, we'll call you" yet again from something being workshopped in Hoboken. If his profile was typical his credentials included a drama major at, let's say, Northwestern, followed by a couple of years of acting classes. Probably he read the trades daily, hopefully circling possibilities and then waited in lines all over town to drop off his headshots with casting directors. Perhaps he'd had been getting called back just often enough to keep him hopeful.
And Itzhak...well, Itzhak was jetting between the New York and Israel Philharmonics alighting only for recording dates. He was collaborating on film scores. He was all over PBS acting as if violin virtuosi are regular folks like the rest of us. We will not discuss the years of practice, superb training, incredible self-discipline and extraordinary talent it takes to produce a world class soloist.
Then there's the money... I'd go back to my real job with $75 to $125 in my purse from a fifteen minute boss embarrassment. Turkey Boy I'd bet was doing it for minimum wage. And Itzhak? Why ask?
Matters haven't changed for the better over the years. Instead of being exotic belly dancers have become ubiquitous so boss embarrassments have become scarcer but public stunts are more common. Theater people however are still scraping along waiting on tables or doing whatever supports their dreams. And Itzhak is on his way back to Avery Fisher Hall.
"All one show biz," my foot! Nonetheless, it was sweet of Itzhak to say so.
Note: This isn't really done but I'm putting it up now so no one thinks I've abandoned my self appointed and doubtlessly futile mission to rescue what's left of the dance from us. Promise you I'm going to be faster from here on out.
When I first heard the Itzhak Perlman story I was so tickled that I waltzed up to some underemployed schnook in a turkey suit and yelled "Itzhak says it's all one show biz." The poor guy just stood there bemused while I had intended reassurance. I was a belly dancer, he was a turkey, and Itzhak was a violin virtuoso and we all were engaged in the same activity: performing art in public places. We were kin. So inspiring.
This was way back when I was getting hired to embarrass the boss otherwise known as performing the lunch hour bellygram. Not bad pay, not much art. Despite my intention to entertain dazzlingly most of these dates involved little more giving the female junior staff a tour of my costume after causing some poor man deep upset by merely showing up. By this measure the best boss ever was the one who dived under his desk. A few bosses with more aplomb tried to get a bit of face back by asking me if a) I did that in bed, or b) if that was all I was going to take off. For this I had taken a few years of lessons and cultivated an already dynamite torso.
As for Turkey Boy, I have no way of knowing for sure but in my imagination he'd recently been "don't call us, we'll call you" yet again from something being workshopped in Hoboken. If his profile was typical his credentials included a drama major at, let's say, Northwestern, followed by a couple of years of acting classes. Probably he read the trades daily, hopefully circling possibilities and then waited in lines all over town to drop off his headshots with casting directors. Perhaps he'd had been getting called back just often enough to keep him hopeful.
And Itzhak...well, Itzhak was jetting between the New York and Israel Philharmonics alighting only for recording dates. He was collaborating on film scores. He was all over PBS acting as if violin virtuosi are regular folks like the rest of us. We will not discuss the years of practice, superb training, incredible self-discipline and extraordinary talent it takes to produce a world class soloist.
Then there's the money... I'd go back to my real job with $75 to $125 in my purse from a fifteen minute boss embarrassment. Turkey Boy I'd bet was doing it for minimum wage. And Itzhak? Why ask?
Matters haven't changed for the better over the years. Instead of being exotic belly dancers have become ubiquitous so boss embarrassments have become scarcer but public stunts are more common. Theater people however are still scraping along waiting on tables or doing whatever supports their dreams. And Itzhak is on his way back to Avery Fisher Hall.
"All one show biz," my foot! Nonetheless, it was sweet of Itzhak to say so.
Friday, April 23, 2004
Doing a blog or blogging or whatever the unattractive word is for an interesting activity quickly becomes an obligation. I put up this thing announcing that I would soon vent about everything that had annoyed me into leaving the web--I'm sure you've all been checking eagerly waiting for the spew of invective that would surely pour out-- only to realize that writing is more difficult than haranguing buddies on the telephone.
And harangue I did. Those of you who called up to find out what had happened to BDNY know what I mean. Those of you who emailed got an abridged version but invective was not absent. For everyone else, well, let's start with events leading up to the eclipse of Belly Dance NY...
It was around the end of January that this website disappeared. During the two weeks prior to its disappearance several bits of belly dance sewage floated by causing me no end of aggravation. They probably won't sound like much to you but to me, after a couple of years of increasing discontent with the direction the dance scene had been taking, they were just too much.
Let's start with the Graham Norton Show. Remember how cold it was in January? Bone chilling, teeth rattling, sub freezing, instant frostbite, arctic air mass cold Somewhere in the middle of a two week spell of highs below 25ยบ F a woman with an posh accent called from London enthusing that it would be "brilliant" to have some belly dancers standing outside in costume at an identifiably NYC location waving and yelling "Hello from New York! It's the Graham Norton Show!" In other words to make complete asses of themselves on two continents for what she assured me would be little or no money. But it wouldn't take long. The camera person and the producer didn't want to linger outside. Could I please find her some dancers? Really, it didn't matter if they could dance; it would be "brilliant" just to have them wave. To my everlasting shame I made a call to an amateur performance group thinking they might have some fun with it. They were too smart to take the date and I gave up, wincing over having gotten sucked in to this stunt at all. For those of you who don't know but might care, "brilliant" has replaced "smashing".
Meanwhile across town at Macy's a couple of extremely youthful newbies were assisting in the debut of a cosmetic line by wriggling out of context but in full cabaret at the counter. At least I didn't have any part in arranging this and I didn't see it, but I did hear about it from the person who booked the date. She regarded it as a good thing. I muttered something unkind, "side-show" if memory serves, and got off the phone before I lost a friend.
And what else? Oh yes, the great Letterman non-event. This one is too complicated to condense. Suffice it that a lot of people were inconvenienced and wasted irretrievable hours of their lives on something that never happened in which once again dancers were featured as figures of semi fun. The deal was Dave was supposed to enter through them to open the show. The casting call said that appearance mattered more than dance skill but at least here the chosen ones were supposed to be able to dance. And would be paid union scale. Punch line: Dave decided the whole bit was a non-starter.
At this point probably far too many of you are probably asking what I found unpalatable about the above. After all, the dance or at least dancers were getting exposure and as Barnum famously noted, there's no such thing as bad publicity. That's okay: ten years ago I probably would have wondered, what the big deal was myself, Actually it's very simple--the dance and dancers were being treated as a joke at worst and cute bits of T & A at best and no one was complaining. We'll discuss whether belly dance, raqs sharqi, dance oriental, whatever is a high art at another time but for now let's just say that many of us have worked hard to learn how to dance well and devoted significant time to studying music and cultural context. While we may function as public entertainers facilitating other peoples' good times we don't entertain by being ridiculous. A person in a cabaret costume should not evoke the same reaction or expectations as someone wearing baggy pants, a rubber nose, and floppy shoes or someone in pasties and a g-string. And yet, as demonstrated by the three instances above, we clearly do. And what's worse, too many of us gleefully line up for our turn in the unlovely limelight.
Or have I, after 20 years in and around the biz and 8 years of efforting with Belly Dance NY, lost my sense of humor? After all, Itzhak Perlman not only played for the Muppets: He was willing to be a total klutz on a cooking show sloshing scrambled eggs all over his stove. When asked by friends how he, the great Itzhak Perlman, could stoop so low he said, "It's all one show business."
But is it? Stay tuned...
And harangue I did. Those of you who called up to find out what had happened to BDNY know what I mean. Those of you who emailed got an abridged version but invective was not absent. For everyone else, well, let's start with events leading up to the eclipse of Belly Dance NY...
It was around the end of January that this website disappeared. During the two weeks prior to its disappearance several bits of belly dance sewage floated by causing me no end of aggravation. They probably won't sound like much to you but to me, after a couple of years of increasing discontent with the direction the dance scene had been taking, they were just too much.
Let's start with the Graham Norton Show. Remember how cold it was in January? Bone chilling, teeth rattling, sub freezing, instant frostbite, arctic air mass cold Somewhere in the middle of a two week spell of highs below 25ยบ F a woman with an posh accent called from London enthusing that it would be "brilliant" to have some belly dancers standing outside in costume at an identifiably NYC location waving and yelling "Hello from New York! It's the Graham Norton Show!" In other words to make complete asses of themselves on two continents for what she assured me would be little or no money. But it wouldn't take long. The camera person and the producer didn't want to linger outside. Could I please find her some dancers? Really, it didn't matter if they could dance; it would be "brilliant" just to have them wave. To my everlasting shame I made a call to an amateur performance group thinking they might have some fun with it. They were too smart to take the date and I gave up, wincing over having gotten sucked in to this stunt at all. For those of you who don't know but might care, "brilliant" has replaced "smashing".
Meanwhile across town at Macy's a couple of extremely youthful newbies were assisting in the debut of a cosmetic line by wriggling out of context but in full cabaret at the counter. At least I didn't have any part in arranging this and I didn't see it, but I did hear about it from the person who booked the date. She regarded it as a good thing. I muttered something unkind, "side-show" if memory serves, and got off the phone before I lost a friend.
And what else? Oh yes, the great Letterman non-event. This one is too complicated to condense. Suffice it that a lot of people were inconvenienced and wasted irretrievable hours of their lives on something that never happened in which once again dancers were featured as figures of semi fun. The deal was Dave was supposed to enter through them to open the show. The casting call said that appearance mattered more than dance skill but at least here the chosen ones were supposed to be able to dance. And would be paid union scale. Punch line: Dave decided the whole bit was a non-starter.
At this point probably far too many of you are probably asking what I found unpalatable about the above. After all, the dance or at least dancers were getting exposure and as Barnum famously noted, there's no such thing as bad publicity. That's okay: ten years ago I probably would have wondered, what the big deal was myself, Actually it's very simple--the dance and dancers were being treated as a joke at worst and cute bits of T & A at best and no one was complaining. We'll discuss whether belly dance, raqs sharqi, dance oriental, whatever is a high art at another time but for now let's just say that many of us have worked hard to learn how to dance well and devoted significant time to studying music and cultural context. While we may function as public entertainers facilitating other peoples' good times we don't entertain by being ridiculous. A person in a cabaret costume should not evoke the same reaction or expectations as someone wearing baggy pants, a rubber nose, and floppy shoes or someone in pasties and a g-string. And yet, as demonstrated by the three instances above, we clearly do. And what's worse, too many of us gleefully line up for our turn in the unlovely limelight.
Or have I, after 20 years in and around the biz and 8 years of efforting with Belly Dance NY, lost my sense of humor? After all, Itzhak Perlman not only played for the Muppets: He was willing to be a total klutz on a cooking show sloshing scrambled eggs all over his stove. When asked by friends how he, the great Itzhak Perlman, could stoop so low he said, "It's all one show business."
But is it? Stay tuned...
Saturday, April 17, 2004
Hello out there.
I've been going on and on about setting up a Blog on this website and have finally taken the plunge. Why a Blog on Belly Dance NY? Well, as most of you are aware, this website was on hiatus for a couple of months. I disappeared it in the dead of night on Groundhog Day leaving only a cryptic message embedded in a starscape. (This too will be explained but later.) I put it back up on April 11th. Why take it down? And why restore it? I took the site down because I really love dance orientale--It matters to me. And because too much of what was coming at me for the website was foolish and/or ugly and definitely not good for the dance. At least not in my eyes. I felt that to continue doing Belly Dance NY as I had been was simply to abet the trashing of something I care about.
Removing BDNY from the web solved most of my problems about the state of the dance because I didn't have to hear about it anymore. Call it the Ostrich Cure. However, comfortable as being away from it all was burying my head in the sand did nothing to make any situation except my own better. And eventually hiding out stopped working. I've got nearly twenty years in this dance, important, growth-filled, beautiful years and I can't just walk away from that. So I'm back and Belly Dance NY is back.
And now the Blog on Belly Dance NY is here too. This Blog is my gift to me, a reward for putting up with doing Belly Dance NY and a corrective for the editorial neutrality I've imposed on myself in order to handle everyone's postings. I intend to use the Blog to discuss what's going on out there--the good the bad and the deeply indifferent. Yes, because I'm a Libra or because my parents brought me up to play fair, you all will be able to respond. That's why I'm doing a Blog and not just posting an editorial page. Watch for interesting developments.
I've been going on and on about setting up a Blog on this website and have finally taken the plunge. Why a Blog on Belly Dance NY? Well, as most of you are aware, this website was on hiatus for a couple of months. I disappeared it in the dead of night on Groundhog Day leaving only a cryptic message embedded in a starscape. (This too will be explained but later.) I put it back up on April 11th. Why take it down? And why restore it? I took the site down because I really love dance orientale--It matters to me. And because too much of what was coming at me for the website was foolish and/or ugly and definitely not good for the dance. At least not in my eyes. I felt that to continue doing Belly Dance NY as I had been was simply to abet the trashing of something I care about.
Removing BDNY from the web solved most of my problems about the state of the dance because I didn't have to hear about it anymore. Call it the Ostrich Cure. However, comfortable as being away from it all was burying my head in the sand did nothing to make any situation except my own better. And eventually hiding out stopped working. I've got nearly twenty years in this dance, important, growth-filled, beautiful years and I can't just walk away from that. So I'm back and Belly Dance NY is back.
And now the Blog on Belly Dance NY is here too. This Blog is my gift to me, a reward for putting up with doing Belly Dance NY and a corrective for the editorial neutrality I've imposed on myself in order to handle everyone's postings. I intend to use the Blog to discuss what's going on out there--the good the bad and the deeply indifferent. Yes, because I'm a Libra or because my parents brought me up to play fair, you all will be able to respond. That's why I'm doing a Blog and not just posting an editorial page. Watch for interesting developments.
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