South African Teacher Training Safari – Part 1
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Several years ago, a very lovely and enthusiastic dancer from Cape Town, South Africa joined us for our Turkey – Gateway to the Orient Tour. As well as falling in love with the many wonders of this beautiful country and its truly magnificent and special people, she was apparently also very happy with the dance training that I offered during the tour. In fact, she insisted that I come to teach the dancers in her country as soon as she could manage to get the funds and promotion organized to bring me there. At that time the belly dance community there was very small, with very limited exposure to, or opportunity to study with any Egyptian style oriental dance artists. Life, its many changes and some fairly chronic hyperactivity transpired for the next few years in both of our lives, until finally the time was right to move forward with this project. The launching of her own belly dance school, the establishment of a solid national community of teachers and performers, combined with growing number of students in all parts of the country has now permitted the support of international workshops. However, the community’s primary interest was in my teacher training courses, which seemed like a fabulous idea to me, as I love to teach a smaller numbers of people intensively for long periods of time. We set up dance workshops and Teacher Training Level 1 and 2 in both Johannesburg and Cape Town, as well as dance workshops in Durban. This ambitious schedule, with most weekdays off between courses, gave me the time to really get to know the dancers, as well as the amazingly beautiful, rugged and unique country that they call home. I have spent a great deal of time in North Africa, between Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco and even had a crazy adventure in Nigeria many years ago, but I have ALWAYS dreamt of exploring the lands of lions, elephants, giraffe and rhinos….. so, that is exactly what we organized for our between class travels.
My actual teaching adventure began with 16 hours of dance workshops IN ONE WEEKEND for the obviously enthusiastic and information hungry ladies in the lovely coastal city of Durban, (know for its huge Indian population).. We began with my Body Logic Technique, then went on to caneless Saidi and Tunisian folklore, then focused on Milaya Lef choreography and styling, finally ending the marathon with an exciting new drum solo. Most of the students were unfamiliar with much of the workshop content and totally unfamiliar with the Hadia style of oriental dance, but their enthusiasm and sincere desire to grasp this new approach and information was strong enough to allow them to meet the challenges and corrections. I really saw enormous transformation in form, technique and expression over the course of the weekend and was thrilled to see them busy making arrangements with each other to practice all the new material and already anxiously awaiting my return next year, as they completely demolished my entire stock of DVDS that should have last for the entire trip. GONE also were the deep bent knees, tightened abdominals attempting to force the pelvis into submission, backward tilt of the torso, wide open feet, tight washing machine twisting hips (which apparently was supposed to be some type of shimmy) and those tension filled arms with dropped elbows and tense flexed wrists. Apparently and unfortunately for her many students, the first major teacher in South Africa, who was responsible for training most of the subsequent teachers has never taken even one class with one instructor throughout her entire career. She is very proud of the fact that she taught herself to dance out of a book. I am sure that the many dancers who struggled so hard trying to stand up straight, sort out what various parts of their anatomy were up too, breath and relax into their body and their movements and then actually connect those up with the music regret these her decision to approach the “learning” of our beautiful art form in this manner. I was not surprised that she did not attend the teacher training courses. On the other hand most of the girls who did attend are the ones who have continued to actively seek out and attend workshops and training at home and abroad.
After classes, we had a delightful night out for a uniquely South African Experience restaurant called Moyo – where face painting, artwork, hand washing and fabulous singing waiters came along with the yummy food. The next morning, it was off to a traditional Zulu village umuzi of KwaBhekiTunga in the region of KwaZuluNatal. We arrived after a lovely scenic drive up the coast from Durban through endless fields of sugar cane, JUST in time for the show in the village kraal. After a warm welcome and a tour through the village, with many interesting explanations about the history and customs of this fierce tribe of warriors, we were joined by a welcoming committee of young unmarried ladies. It was a bit comical to watch the faces of European tourists, as they gazed upon the smiling, singing and dancing bare breasted girls who wear nothing more than necklaces, beaded hip decorations, shorts and ankle bells. They and their singing was absolutely beautiful although their dance style certainly reflected the masculine quality of the great Zulu warriors with its powerful foot stomping and athletic leg kicking and hand clapping. The cultural festivities continues with formidable dancing by the warriors themselves, all decked out in their animal skins and arm and knee bands reminiscent of lion manes. Demonstrations of cooking, Zulu beer making and Sangoma (witch doctor) rituals accompanied the interesting explanations of the ancient Zulu traditions and costumes. Then we arranged a private tour through the neighbouring village, with a visit to the real Sangoma, complete with bone throwing, divining wand and Mooti as our highlight. After a wonderful dinner of Zulu and Afrikans dishes, we retired to our traditional round Zulu huts, which were way beyond cool (in artistry as well as temperature)! Young tress branches are bent into arches and secured with grass ties. Fortunately, ours offered the contemporary luxury of electricity and plumbing with our private en suite. Peaceful beyond belief – silence, deep black skies and a million stars. The next day after a relaxing morning at the pool, we headed off to Umfolozi game reserve, only 90 minutes to the north of the village. One never knows whether they will actually see any animals on safari or not because they are wild creatures, in the open, unfettered and oblivious to the agendas, wishes and hopes of the little humans that occasionally pass through their world. So, I hoped and prayed and beseeched our friendly Sangoma that we would be lucky!
I really don’t think that I could ever find the words to describe the silent reverence that completely overwhelmed me as we were blessed by the appearance of a huge bull elephant, only one minute after entering the reserve – an omen for much more yet to come. He was majestically rambling and grazing alone, just off the side of the road against the backdrop of a gentle sweeping hill covered in tall waiving grasses, dotted with those incredible umbrella shaped African trees. Then I spotted an entire family of giraffe in the distance moving up the slope on the opposite hill. Only minutes later, a nursery of giraffe with 2 adult females and 7 babies sauntered across the road, stopping to pose for photos right in front of us. Next we sighted the first of multiple herds of zebra with its one token wildebeest companion. How completely gorgeous and magnificently decorated these striped African horses are! Meanwhile, large herds of delicate and graceful impala filled the open plains and blended into the surrounding trees along our entire drive. Next, we spotted a very short and feisty little warthog with his Tina Turner hairdo running parallel to the road, trying to outrun our car for more than 15 minutes rather than avoid us altogether by taking a small turn left. After providing us with endless giggles, he disappeared into a little burrow and was gone. I was completely delighted with the many gifts that the reserve was offering us, but admitted to my hostess that I REALLY wanted to see a rhino! Yes, you guessed it, less than 10 minutes later, we noticed some large grey boulders moving across a field in the distance. With a gasp of awe I cried out RHINOS! As we approached to a good viewing distance, we could see one huge male and his two females grazing through the grass. I couldn’t believe it! Next we drove through a huge herd of Wildebeest including many babies. Time was flying by and dusk was fast setting in and we still had not reached our safari camp. So we decided that, in spite of these amazing creatures, we had to move onto camp unless a Rhino or elephant actually stood in the middle of the road to block our path. Right on cue, an enormous and very scary hyena stood frozen in our headlights in the middle of the road. The showdown went on for a good 10 minutes as he stood motionless – stunned by the light. I opened the window and leaned out to take photos as he growled and snarled menacingly… then finally dropped onto all 4 legs and sauntered by the side of the car, his shoulders as high as the bottom of the windows. As it was quite dark by this time, we decided that was ABSOLUTELY the last stop before camp (until we saw at least 6 rhinos outlined in the trees just a few feet from our car). Eventually, we made camp and awoke to another glorious full day through Umfulozi and neighbouring Hluhluwe reserves. This day proved as amazing as the previous one. We saw many more of yesterday’s animals involved even more personal and intimate family dynamics and close-ups, as well as a magnificent lion pride, Kudu, buffalo, baboons and monkeys! Then next day we were off in the early morning to the St. Lucia Estuary for a crocodiles and hippo cruise. The crocodiles were both numerous and HUGE, much more so than the ones that I had seen in Australia last year. Then we came across 2 very large resident families of hippos. It is hard to describe the sight of such huge and heavy creatures (often considered the most feared of all African large game) effortlessly sprinting and playing with each other in the shallow water. I was also amazed to find out that these animals actually run rather than swim under the water. The final poetic touch to such an awesome week was a solitary mother hippo alone with her baby, as the sun set on another magical day in Africa.
Still unable to believe that I was living one of my lifelong fantasies – Hadia Out of Africa – I headed to Johannesburg and many days of hard work ahead of me…
Stay tuned for more adventures in my South African Teacher Training Safari – Part 2 (elephant riding, Soweeto, hanging out with penguins, the Wild Coast and Cape Town)
If you would like to be part of my next Dancing Safari Adventure 2009 in South Africa, keep an eye on my site www.hadia.com for more info or contact me at hadia@hadia.com.