Spotlight Dancer/Troupe
Dee

Hello Yasmina & everyone – thank you for giving me this brief piece of the spotlight, especially coming from Australia. My name is Dee & I’d love to talk about this dance for a moment & how it found me.

I am owner & director of Tribal Blossoms – the first tribal-only Bellydance group in Brisbane, and I thrive on skilling my girls on improvisation only with great respect towards this dance & its heritage. However I didn’t start with tribal, for me my journey to Bellydance actually started with a love of Swing dance. How’s that work – well after seeing the film Swingers (& falling madly in love with Vince Vaughan) I found myself obsessed with anything to do with swing, I loved the music, the clothes, the movement, and when I finally found a teacher in Brisbane that taught the lindy-hop I begged my boyfriend of the time to go with me – and he agreed! But…come every Wednesday night when I asked if we were going, he came up with excuse after excuse not to. So I tucked away my little bag of disappointment, and when later on I found myself alone again I decided I had no one to hold me back this time from dancing, I was planning a trip to the Middle East and thought I’d love to be able to Bellydance while I was there….so I went off to my first cabaret class and never looked back.

I loved the feeling of dancing by myself, for myself, with no one to affect if I could dance (which I find astounding now as being a Tribal dancer I live for dancing with others – its interesting how the wheel turns) and so I continued my cabaret studies, dabbling in classes in Flamenco & Bollywood along the way and hearing rumours and seeing footage of this other style being ATS. For me it came alive to me when I was attending the 2004 Sydney Middle Eastern Dance festival as a performer with my teacher, we were backstage and all of a sudden Ghawazi Caravan arrived, this amazing tribal troupe from the Blue Mountains. They looked like creatures from another world amongst all the sequins and sparkles, they had spikes and metal, and when I saw them perform my soul just lifted….hence the beginning of my tribal love affair.

In 2005 Ghawazi Caravan came to Brisbane for workshops in tribal and I found the workshops started to piece the language together for me…in a little over a year I found myself latching onto this style quickly and still hungry for more. I was in the Qld Ballet theatre as a child, and I find my lifetime of being in tights actually has given me a great gift to grasp dance concepts quickly….not sure if anyone else finds the same. All of a sudden Tribal Bellydance opened a whole world of interaction, communication and flavour to my dance. I was dancing with a troupe that also embraced the tribal style, but with a direction towards choreography, and I found myself yearning for improvisation and away from what I personally perceive as the shackles of choreography.

November 2005 Alaine Haddon-Casey arrived from Gypsy Trail Dance Company for a workshop on integrated moves, and here I knew I found my mentor….a fellow Tribal sister who’d been traveling to the US and held fast to improvisation within her dance. Alaine was an absolute inspiration & encouraging source to me at a time when I was considering my next step in my dance journey. She introduced moves that blew me away and I take a lot of my class instruction from her own approach & guidance – I was thrilled in December 2006 to receive Certification in her style at level one! This workshop was also fantastic for me to expand my tribal network….I danced with an amazing woman called Nina from North Qld and discovered one of the true gifts of this dance – a fellow Amazon woman like me we could dance in sync, having never danced before or even met each other previously…for any tribal dancer to travel and experience this is just beautiful. So I picked up more bodies in the tribal family, who’ve been great sources for my questions as to tackle different aspects of teaching. 

And now I look back at the year that was 2006…I started my tribal classes and saw them spread from one night a week, to various locations and up to three nights! I was honoured to be asked to perform at the Academy of Middle Eastern Dance’s extravaganza – an annual event that highlights invited guests across South East Queensland – I gathered my tribal sisters from North Qld, Tasmania, Perth, and Central Qld and in our debut we showed what improvised Tribal can look like, even speaking different “accents”.

I’ve had a massive year of learning – meeting the “greats” Carolena & Paulette via workshops held across the country, traveling to North Qld to meet Jeff & Paulette and being blown away yet again by this different and yet wonderful approach to Tribal Bellydance. I’ve also been proud to invite my teachers & mentors to my town – Alaine & Nina have both taught workshops with great response & advanced our learning! I’ve also been asked to teach Tribal workshops in regional areas around Brisbane and have been astounded at the response, I love sharing this dance and seeing it catch on to the attendees….hoping it affects them in all ways like it does me!

But I'm a humble girl, and I’m truly awed by the ladies who’ve joined me this year, who’ve supported me and share my dance space - they are my inspiration first and last. I have three levels of class, as I try to offer a different class for those who do wish to perform with the tribe, and others who just enjoy the dancing with a group of women – I cant wait to see them all moving in 2007 & my heart fills with pride when I hear them getting together to practice for this or that event. I’m proud to do improvisation and I try to create the safe space for each of my girls so they don’t fear the movement, whilst we appear at community & public events for me the dance is not foremost about performing, it’s the magic of reading someone’s body and being surprised with the answer…it’s the connection that means nothing else matters.

And so I find myself weary but happy – 2007 will be big in terms of Tribal Blossoms as we build on what we have learned before, make friends with old moves & bring new influences to the class. Tribal Bellydance is an amazing journey, and once converted I find it hard to look back. All I wanted was someone to dance improvisation with me, now I have 12 ladies who will lead and follow me, so that’s been the best gift ever. 

To contact Dee
Website: http://www.angelfire.com/planet/tribalblossoms/blossoms1.html
Email:  tribalblossoms@optusnet.com.au 


Pics:

Picture 2 - is a pic from my cabaret bellydance days…..eeek!

Picture 3 – Dee performing sword dance at Chalk Hotel in 2006

Picture 4 –  photo from our debut performance at AMED extravaganza

Picture 5 - Dee & Paulette in Innisfail (with Nina cropped eeek)

Picture 6 – Dee with tribal blossoms tribe (Gay, Julie & Colleen)

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