Shaking and Shimmying
Anyone who’s seen Egyptian action films may be interested to know there will a belly dancing show this weekend.
They should also know that movies aren’t the best source to learn the truth about Middle Eastern dance.
“It’s not a dance of seduction,” Sara Geoking, one of the directors of the student troupe of the USU Middle Eastern Dance Club explained. “That’s typically not the intent. It’s to entertain.”
Goeking and other members of USUMED will be performing in the fifth annual soiree on Saturday at 7:30 in the Caine Lyric Theatre.
Geoking said she and her troupe are used to people going to their shows with the wrong impression.
“I don’t think it will be what people expect,” Holly Swenson, the club treasurer, said. “I think a lot of people either go or don’t go to a soirée or any belly dance show because they assume certain things.”
“Whenever I invite people for their first show, their first words are always ‘Wow, that wasn’t what I expected – that was great.”
Geoking agreed. “People certainly have ideas of what belly dancing is and what the costumes will be like,” she said. “I think when people see it they realize that we’ve prepared a lot more than they expected us to.”
Geoking said she recently did the math and the performing troupe has more than 40 years of experience in Middle Eastern dance between them. “That’s not including the couple that grew up doing ballet, tap and jazz dance, as well,” she said.
Even with such experience, not everyone considers belly dancing real dancing.
“People think you just get up there and shake your butt, shake you’re chest and float around and that’s it,” Swenson said. “But there’s a lot of really refined movements and postures.”
Those who attend the show will see more than one kind of such movements.
Goeking said people going to the soirée can expect to see a wide variety of Middle Eastern dance, including Turkish, Eastern Indian performed by a group from Salt Lake and a sword dance by the local troupe.
Geoking also warns people not to come thinking it will be a quiet performance like a ballet.
“It’s very interactive,” she said. “Dancers like to know the audience is enjoying the show.”
Geoking explained that audience members will often yell “Opa!”, meaning “great”, at the dancers to show their appreciation.
“It’s a party,” Swenson said. “We’re known for having the best audiences in Utah.”
A lot of hours have been put into preparing for this party this weekend.
Goeking said that the group holds three hours a week of class every Monday and each troupe practices for two hours every Friday along with extra practices before competitions and big performances.
Dancers have been practicing the routines they will perform on Saturday for more than seven months.
The USUMED is made up for two groups: Zivah, a troupe of performers who are still learning belly dancing, and Shizadi, performance group that won troupe of the year at a dance competition in Vancouver, Wash., last month.
Both groups will have member performing at the soiree.
Besides performances from Shazadi, Zivah and other Utah dance groups, Saturday’s soiree will feature a big name from the world of belly dancing: Aziza.
Goeking said the artistic director started talking with headliner Aziza more than a year ago and even with such advanced notice, this weekend was the only time she could come, causing the soiree to be held earlier than in other years.
Swenson said she is excited to have the chance to perform with a dancer like Aziza.
“When I first started with the club, I saw of video of Aziza dancing,” she said. “I’d seen other videos before, but Aziza was the first dancer that I was like, ‘Wow, this is something that I can aspire to be.'”
Swenson isn’t the only dancer who wants to be Aziza.
“She’s famous enough that there’s a lot of dancers our there who copy her moves,” Goeking said.
People looking to see Aziza and the other dancers should get to the theater early, as last year’s show sold out.
Tickets are $10 for students, $15 for others.
-steveshinney@cc.usu.edu