Rakkasah East Festival 2010, the 11th year of this annual festival in Somerset, New Jersey celebrates a blossoming friendship community of East and West coast dancers and musicians. The festival is the East coast version of the 30 year old Rakkasah West Festival tradition in California. This art form of dance is in constantly flux and now includes many different influences in costuming and performance.
It was fascinating to observe the new trends in performance, costumes, and dance styling at this year’s festival: Rainbow colors, Fan veils, Feather fans, Silk veils, Isis Wings, and contemporary costuming designs. A predominant costuming style for dance troupes was similar costume designs with each dancer wearing different colors to personalize their costuming providing a rainbow effect when troupes performed. Flowers and feathers adorned costumes and headpieces. Silk veils dyed to match costumes, or in brilliant contrasting colors were popular and created height and flow in performance. Some troupes performed excellent choreography wearing dancewear usually worn in class – the basic wrap top, dance pants and hip wrap.
Festivals are always fun because of the community support and sharing. Likely attending a Middle Eastern dance festival first, two who met at Rakkasah East festival were married onstage. She, a dancer in a golden beaded dress, and he, a musician wearing his family’s traditional Scottish tartan plaid, were both festival volunteers who met after the passing of their spouses. Their wedding reception started on stage as the audience began celebrating the marriage by throwing money on the stage as they danced their first dance.
Anka Kusu troupe of New Jersey wore beautiful costumes combining harem pants and skirts with Turkish Ottoman style long vests and fringed belts with yarn decoration.
“Bliss” of New Jersey danced with the passion you can see in her image.
Dorothea of Massachusetts danced in a costume that incorporated cabaret glitz of long sleeves, beaded chiffon belt, and skirt paired with a folkloric silk blouson top and a large gold necklace of striking design.
The Serpent’s Secret troupe from New York led by Rakkasah teacher Elisheva mixes urban with traditional Orientale dance.
Another famous crowd pleaser was a special performance by Isis of Texas who wowed us with her fiery personae and her 4-sword performance.
Kelebek of New Jersey was and danced as a beautiful tribal butterfly complete with butterfly wings costume.
Latifa’s Banat Al Beledi of Maryland performed several traditional Egyptian pieces wearing beautiful beaded galabeyah’s, and also flowing ruffled dresses for a spectacular water jug dance.
A touching performance by Rakkasah teacher Naheda and her husband Guenter of Germany told the story of a doll-maker whose doll comes to life and, through his love of her dancing, she becomes human – and ends in the great love of the century as she dances to the music from the movie “Titanic”.
Sera Solstice (dancing at 8 months pregnant) filled the stage with a huge tribal troupe with a sinuous style with an urban street edge.
Shaula of New Jersey, in a fantastic performance image, displayed black and white butterfly wings to match the polka-dot edging on her skirt.
Shushanna of PA shows you can channel the famous Egyptian Raqs Sharqi stars and treated us to a very authentic show that was musical and followed the maqams (it’s too bad we can only see an image and not view her entire show).
8-2-05 Rakkasah West Festival 2005 Page 3-Sat & Sun, photos by GS Volunteers including: Jasmine, Lynette, Michelle, Monica, Sandra, Susie, Zaheea, and probably more! Festival date- March 2005, Richmond, California, One page left!
Thanks to all the photographers and volunteers whol help make this happen. We still need a few names to go with faces!
Dalia Carella, Eva Cernik, Suhaila Dance Company, Ma’Shuqa, Parri and more….
Alexandria, Momo Kadous, Soraya, Leila Haddad, Elana, Suhaila, Jamila, Dhyanis….
I get the impression from watching such performances that a prop wasn’t incorporated in the show because it helped the dancer express an emotion in the song, but the property was intended to be the focus of the performance.
The celebration of those traditions, along with the fervor of Boston’s intellectual culture, the talent of our local community of dancers and musicians, and a desire to connect that beautiful history to the global present and future of our dance drives the work we do in our event.
Ali tells us about how he came to produce his first cymbals. He is interviewed by MaShuqa. He also talks about Dahlena, Bobby Farah, his education, inferior copies of his zils, how to know that you have genuine Turquoise cymbals. Testimonials from Jillina, Princess Farhana, and Marta Schill.
However, mosquito netting was invented by the Egyptians and dates back thousands of years.
As time has passed, the local community has found itself on a changing path. The heavily choreographed (written notation) dance trend remains the staple of the main stream while increasingly, local dancers (and instructors as well) have begun to realize that there is something else in addition to set notations of dance movements to learn.
Choosing a costume that fits and flatters your choreography is equally important. If you want to highlight your amazing hip work, be sure to choose a costume with lots of fringe and tassels on the hips so the judges cannot fail to see that hip work.