Impromptu versus Improvisational:
Know the Difference in Quality
"She turned white as a sheet when she understood that (good bellydancers also) were trained how to improvise performances to live music as well (as opposed to only using choreography with taped music). I confess that on that day, I felt like I raised the bar for respect for belly dancers everywhere.To improvise – nay, improvise well – is challenging and rare in the world of dance. It is a skill at which we excel."
I am not an impromptu dancer. I dance through improvisational style as well as through choreographies. As an accomplished dancer, I have to be able to do perform both styles. However, it is the improvisational style that my audiences love because visually the music plays the notes and the dance expresses it. You see this best in the drum solos. Modern dance has a name for this and refers to this as "structured improvisational".
This is an important skill that is necessary you need to take into consideration when hiring a professional bellydancer for a number of reasons:
1) Flooring - a bellydancer who cannot dance improvisationally will be stumped by the difference in flooring at an event. Is it carpet? It is hardwood? Is it terrazzo? The dancer will have to make split second determinations on whether to wear shoes or not to wear shoes and how her dance (complete with floor slides) will work on the floor she is presented with at the event.
2) Spacing - knowing how to adjust and respond to space can shatter a dancer with only a strict choreography. For example; restaurants have tables, chairs, waiters, busboys, people walking, small spaces to negoatiate. I also have performed at events who went from a 20 x 10 hardwood floor area when I booked the event to an 8x8 raised platform when I arrived. As an experienced dancer, I can respond to differences in spacing and flooring without losing my cool and the dance to go with it!
3) Audience involvement - If the occasion calls for the dancer to perform up high on a stage area, far away from the audience, in these cases a choreography can be enjoyed. In other cases, the dancer has a closer proximity and more interaction with the audience such as a wedding, birthday, or Bar Mitzvah. It is important that a dancer know how to tailor her dance and dance style to the needs and proximity of her audience.
4) Last but not least - Musicality! I have witnessed dancers who fall into two extreems if they are not trained well. One is that they choreograph four steps for every move, and continue executing moves four-steps-after-four-steps regardless of what the music is doing. This ends up looking robotic! We are not a drill team with shimmies here! The other extreme is the dancer who starts a move and then does not complete the move before going to the next, and is a mish-mash of noodle energy that actually feels disturbing and erratic, and still does not capture the music. A lovely trained dancer has musicality and her dance provides visiual expression of the structure of the music and is a pleasure to experience.
I need to make this distinction because it has been called to my attention that lately belly dancers are referring to themselves as “impromptu” dancers. This is most distressing. I myself was trained to improvise. I am not impromptu. These are two vastly different things. From Wikipedia: “Improvisation is the practice of acting, singing, talking and reacting, of making and creating, in the moment and in response to the stimulus of one’s immediate environment and inner feelings.” That is a lovely and spot-on description of what belly dancers do when they perform to live music.
Impromptu, however, (from dictionary.com) means “made or done without previous preparation: an impromptu address to the unexpected crowds”; also “suddenly or hastily prepared or made.” I believe that the majority of dancers who perform to live music are not unprepared. On the contrary, there are usually years of preparation; music, technique, stage presence, costuming…a lot of work goes into your average nightclub show.
Improvisation does not mean haphazard. On the contrary, in music (jazz and Middle-Eastern), there is structure to improvisation. (Not going into it here – ask a musician.) Similarly, we dancers may be “making it up”, in that we are not using choreography, but this does not mean our dance lacks structure. The routine we choose to perform has structure, whether it is the classic American 5-part routine or an Arabic-style routine. The music has structure – rhythm, call-and-response, chorus. Our technique has structure – for example, there are staccato moves for heavily rhythmic music, soft and slinky moves for taqsim and more lyrical pieces.
What is improvised is the vocabulary we choose to use in a given moment, or with a given song. That vocabulary is informed by our experience with the music, with the venue, how we are feeling (or not), and by our immediate environment.
A good example of an impromptu dancer is the person you might get up to dance with you during your performance. This poor soul has no idea what to do. Most likely, they follow you. They have no preparation, no training.
I used to work with an editor who was a former ballerina. In fact, she had been an apprentice in the Boston Ballet. Her career was cut short after a foot injury. I’ll never forget our conversation in which I explained how a typical belly dance performance in a club would go.She turned white as a sheet when she understood that we improvised performances to live music (as opposed to using only previous choreography). I confess that on that day, I felt like I raised the bar for respect for belly dancers everywhere.To improvise – nay, improvise well – is challenging and rare in the world of dance. It is a skill at which we study hard for and excel.
