Maram

Speaking of Etab, do you know of any videos online of her? I'd like to see how she does it with short hair, and how short her hair is.

Aisha Azar

Dear Maram,
I do not personally know of any videos of her, but there must be something. She had a television show some 20 years ago or so. We have people on here who might know about that. I will ask Gypsy to join this conversation.
Regards,
A'isha

Mark_Balahadia

A'isha has seen me do both Ra's Khaleeji and Iraqi Kawaliya, both involving tons of hair stuff. My hair is shorter now but I still can do the movements although it looks a little different. The movement of the head is more important anyway, the hair just follows along!

I have a good friend, Kamilia (DC dancer who seems to be on the forum now!) who does great Khaleeji. Her hair isn't too long, a little shorter than her shoulders and she does GREAT Khaleeji.

The problem with Khaleeji done by foreigners is they lack "the feeling" needed to perform it properly. There are certainly steps and movements you must follow but there's more to Khaleeji than just following a choreography. Most people I see making an attempt don't seem to get this "feeling" and the performance suffers. It's hard to explain but hopefully A'isha and Kamilia can chime in!!!

In fact, I believe from what I've seen already in the US at least, there are only an handful of people capable of teaching real, authentic Khaleeji. Everyone else unfortunately butchers it completely...

__________________
badde 3eish!!! www.markbalahadia.com

Kashmir

No - better to go with your own short hair than covering it. That would be totally against the whole point of it! In the piece my students did, each pair did a duet which used their strengths. Those with long hair tossed it, but those who didn't chose something else - such as displaying the dresses or shoulder rolls with a shimmy.

Aisha Azar

Dear Mark,
I think the problem is that many people have never seen it done authentically but believe that the Nagwa Fouad version on the Samy Farag video is "real" and that the BDSS versions are also real. Most everything that is done here is too big, concentrates on gallumping around the stage and throwing the hair like mad. Holding the dress in all kinds of weird, exaggerated ways also seems acceptable. The Gulf guys I know said that they laugh their heads off when they see the Egyptian dancers trying to dance Gulf dance.
Another issue is that there are many versions of he dance, from very sedate traditional style Samri of Kuwait to the very modern Khawliya styles of Iraq, to a lot of stuff in between. Nejdi Hadith is a couples dance, the UAE women have styles that are different from the Qatari girls, etc. What they all seem to have in common is that movement is not big, or overblown or out of control, or choreographed except in a very few cases where it is being presented for some state or other event.... and even then choreogaphy is not the general rule from what I can tell.
Regards,
A'isha

gypsy8522

It is possible to dance khaleegi with either short or long hair. Long hair is a plus but it's not a must.
If you look at the male khaleegi dancers many of them can dance very well, a lot of times they dance even better than the women. And these are men who don't have more than two inches of hair if any, and they usually cover their head with a traditional scarf anyway.

It's always nice to have long hair when doing Khaleegi dances, but that's not all there is to it. It's true most foreign dancers think it's all about the hair, I guess because it's all they can see.... ie. that's what is most visible to them. I have seen quite a few on youtube cheezy choreographies that look like they've been rehearsed 1,000 times accompanied with endless hair tossing. Unfortunately, that's not how real women/men from the arabian gulf dance. I know that in khaleegi music each drum beat/rhythm has a name, and the native people know these rhythms by heart.

Marya

Gypsy,

Are the "hair tossing" movements done anyway, even with short hair? By that I mean leaning forward and facing slightly to one side or the other and pulsing with the rhythm. I was practicing khalegi last night and there are some places in the music where I just wanted to do those movements that would ordinarily be accented by long hair even though my hair is very short.

gypsy8522

A'isha,

Here's the Etab in space video. It's kinda embarassing. She's great but those dancers in the background oh my, so hideous! They are definately 100% Egyptian, especially the men and their infamous ***hand gestures** this is SO Egyptian "interpretation" of Saudi dance!! Funny.

gypsy8522

the girls chosen to get up and dance in this clip have short hair and they still swing their heads/hair



no hair tossing movements in this video, even though both women have long hair.

Lydia dubai

I realy dont know enough about all other country style khaleegy i only talk about ,,nash,, i dont know much about the kuwaity and saoudy way of dancing,so i can not realy comment on those styles of khaleegy perhaps i did not explain it properly,i only think of uae khaleegy..lol.... if people ask...but i do know that the local people from the UAE say that if they go to cairo to clubs they are laughing about the way the dancers presenting the khaleegy,So i geuss there is still a lot of misunderstanding how and how not to do it...have a nice day everybody,Lydia