Veil For Belly Dance

After five years of dance study with a variety of different master teachers, I have heard a lot of smack talk about using veil for Middle Eastern belly dance. Usually there is a split down the middle between the old school, who believes that authentic belly dance should only use the veil for a short entrance piece but ditch it before the meat of the choreography (the visceral opening of the guts of a musical arrangement), and those who have found an ethereal (and maybe even spiritual) place akin to the whirling dervish dances where the dancer is both tranced and sweeps the viewer into the magic of concealing and revealing veil work.

I think you can figure out where I stand. As one of my teachers once pounded into my brain, "It really doesn't matter what movement you do, as long as it expresses the music and emotion." My amendment to that is that the majority of those movements do need to come from Middle Eastern Raks Sharki to be considered belly dance, but that doesn't exclude movement found in most folkloric dances, such as spins and turns.

I'm not here to argue with old-schoolers how much veil work to include in your choreographies in order to make them "authentic". If you're an old-schooler, you've already convinced yourself of that answer. What I enjoy doing is passing on what I've learned of various veil movements used to express the vocabulary of emotion found in Middle Eastern music, and to let the dancer choose the presence, absence, and volume of veil movement in his or her own choreographies.



In my years of study with "veil master" Sabura (her website appears to be down at this time) has passed on some beautiful veil technique, which she teaches throughout the U.S. and Canada. It would be completely unfair to her to reveal her more advanced technique to others. If you are interested in learning Sabura's advanced veil technique, please request her in a city near you. Her double veil and her "triple wrap" work are just stunning to see and to learn, but you won't likely see this on a teaching DVD. It has also inspired me to find my own variations and to encapsulate them in a different genre, such as what I call "Imei's Latin Veil", using Latin dance inspiration in the midst of exciting veil work and combinations.

Learning veil for a choreography? I challenge you dancers to start putting some good stuff out there on Youtube. Have a question about a veil move? Please post it to my Youtube channel, YourLilChinaGirl.

Check out Sandra's classic veil entrance DVD (she included it in the last Bella costume I purchased from her recently) for a nice veil choreography to "Faddah", which happens to be one of Sabura's favorite pieces of music.