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Yasmela tell us about the Mendocino Middle Eastern Music and Dance Camp for THE GILDAD SERPANT

A review-style article from JAFEEDA MAGAZINE

I was only able to attend two of Elena Lentini's classes. Elena is from New York as well, and was a principal dancer in the Ibrahim Farrah Near East Dance Group. One day I was in class she was explaining how to take on the characteristics of other creatures to enhance your dance. Our focus was on snakes that hour. Elena deftly demonstrated many moves and had us follow her while we tried them on for fit. I got so much out of just watching her and hearing her explanations. She has a unique style and way of getting ideas across that resonated with me. I like the snake techniques she shared and some of them have already cropped up in performance and practice for me while dancing since!

Knowing you may like to hear more about this Camp than my experience of it, I asked a few folks at random during the week for their personal impressions.

"For years I've been attending other camps on both coasts. Years! I thought they were 'it' for me. This is my first year here, and already I see I have been wasting my time. I've learned more useful things here in the first three days of this Camp than in all my years at the others. This is where I want to be. Wow. At least I'm here now. Too bad it took me so long to figure it out!"~ anonymous musician from MD.

Lee, San Juan Capistrano, CA. Second year camper: "Rather than being a geographic lace, this is a mental space. Each person brings with them their own knowledge and longing for a world that they wish existed. Because I believe we all, in the Middle Eastern life - I call it 'The Life'- want something to exist.... we want a perfection that doesn't exist. Especially those of us who have been in the dance for many years have a nostalgia. We remember something that doesn't exist, especially now, in the current age of Egyptian cabaret and the 'Egyptian Nazi Regime.' I think we're bringing with us a mental space, a hope, a desire that definitely comes true here in moments. But those moments are only punctuated by moments of agony, because the place is a juncture between agony and ecstasy. You're camping, so you're uprooted from all of your paradigms, all of your physical creature comforts. You're lost, you're cold, you can't find anything - and there are moments when you wonder why you're here. And then that moment will be followed by an ecstatic message from God that says 'THIS is PRECISELY WHY YOU are HERE!' in no uncertain terms."

"I'm taking a lot of drumming classes. This is my first year, but my Dad has been here lots before. I'm studying the dumbek with Salah and Souhael. I took a dance class. It was pretty cool, I enjoyed it. I really like the ensemble class I'm taking with Souren. He's really classical. He plays the clarinet, and he's just so humble. It always comes out so beautiful. He's really strict about keeping everybody in place. Like the drums - he keeps everyone very solid. Which is great for me as a drummer, 'cause when I sit back and watch drummers, every drummer has a tendency to rip. You saw Souhael (in performance) last night! He's a madman. So Souren's class is good because it teaches discipline. If you're silent, and still get the notes clear, you can hear everybody - which is rare. All you have to do is tone down and you can hear every little separate piece of the whole. I can tell he's classically trained. He's kinda old and he's really sweet, though, and just has a gentle way."~ William, from West Marin County, CA.

"Will's my son. He said a lot of what I feel, too. The Camp is very nourishing. If you have creative energy and you want to express yourself, this is a good place to come, because you're really supported by the energy here. I think it's very intense and it can challenge you to really want to perfect yourself each year when you come back again to experience with your other friends. It's a good coming together and sharing here." ~ Patrick, West Marin County, CA.

"This is my probably my sixth year. I love to come back for many different reasons, but one of the main reasons for myself is that is I am half Middle Eastern. I can come here and be immersed in my culture, and not only mine, but all the varied cultures of the Middle East. It's a very, very profound, very deep experience for me. It's just so beautiful for me. I don't get this anywhere that I live, where I can have all of this. And the concerts, the food, the people. So it feeds me on a soul level and that's why I come back. I have many friends that I like to see year after year - it's always a joy to see what's new. It's always very inspiring for me whenever come up here. I come away with new ideas, things I want to do when I get back home. Mainly, the Camp feeds me, and that's why I come back." ~ Liza Vosbigian, Los Angeles, CA.

Rosalia, from Eureka, CA said, "I'm taking Georges' violin class, the debke class with Hassan and I'm working in the kitchen for over six hours every day. I get up around 7:00 a.m. to shower and serve breakfast. I take the debke class at 9:30 and then the violin class from 10:45 - 12:45. After lunch I work from 3:00 until around 9:30. That's because I'm a full-time scholarship camper. The classes are really, really fun, and they're both something that I'm new at. I'm used to doing sort of a westernized style of belly dancing, and I play Irish
fiddle. The Arabic tuning was new and really hard! I just figured it out this afternoon!" (Cheers in the background)……..

This year one of the belly dance teachers was Rayhana from New York. I asked her to share some thoughts and background about herself. "I teach and dance in New York. I do study with a lot of people. This is really different for me, to be out here in the forest. I feel like Little Red Riding Hood! But the really nice part is the community feeling. That's one. The classes. There's so many, one right after the other, so many choices. So many different
talented people. It's wonderful to be able to take all those classes without getting on a train or in my car. I love the atmosphere, the community mealtime. Another thing I like about it is the music classes and classes for musicians. There's a real balance because when there are too any dancers it becomes somehow lopsided, and tensions run. I'm not really sure why, but that's what I've noticed in workshops. So there's a real balance here. Of course having males and females helps. Certainly hearing the concerts every night with so many fabulous musicians is great. In my opinion, they should be a separate admission fee, they're so good! I thought about that the other night while I was dancing, how it really is something extra. Then to go up to the Cabaret and see dancers! I've been coming here three years. The first year, on the first night I cried in my cabin. I'm not a very outdoors person. There's moonlight, no electricity, no bathtub, and I thought, 'how am I gonna live?' But I made it, and the next day, as soon as I went to classes, I got over it. Last year I felt better about coming, as I knew what to expect and what to bring with me. This year, I didn't know how I'd be received teaching, and the people have been just wonderful and cooperative. There's a lot of really talented dancers here." I asked Rayhana to tell us about the classes she's teaching. "I taught a veil number that I choreographed to a contemporary Egyptian piece of music, 'Ghalbi Mali.' Normally, an Egyptian would not use a veil throughout the whole piece, so this is something that's Americanized. The song is about a man who left a woman and doesn't know what happened to his heart. He says he 'no longer has it, and I just don't understand what happened.' So she's not being very faithful during the dance because she knows. The dance is playful and once in a while she socks it to him. I'm also teaching floorwork in a more freestyle format. I'm teaching everything, basically, that I do when I do floorwork. And, if anyone has any questions about what they do, say in one of their own routines, I help them individually. The floorwork is pretty intense but it's a lot of fun and I think I've moved into every possible position on the floor during our time."

Jenny Fremont from WA and first-year camper from WY, Julia Patel/Majoun, told me about Elena's classes. Jenny's favorite word to describe Elena is "Lyrical!" Julia says, "The class was unlike any other bellydancer's I've ever had because it tunes into the spiritual essence which turns into producing your own power and expressing in ways unlike cabaret, unlike tribal, unlike anything I've ever seen before. It's got some modern, some fusion, but it's totally Elena. She's an icon and there is nothing like her." "She's way ahead of her time," Jenny interjected. Julia continues: "She uses the breath, she uses all the elements, she becomes anthropomorphic...... she never criticizes or corrects. Everything is up to your own
interpretation. She does things on and off the beat. She brings into the dance a pounce, a
voracity - other times the feline and the feminine." Jenny: "She could just walk across the
room - I mean, just walk, and make you feel like an idiot." Julia: "Not an idiot, a Goddess!"
Kajira: "Well, one person's idiot is another person's Goddess!" (Unbridled giggling)... Back to Jenny: "I like when she told us about being in Bobby Farrah's class and how he just let her be. She was the one in the corner, not doing anything the way anyone else did it, and she's like, 'I don't know why, he just let me be.'" "She has never compromised her spirit in all these years. She's never sold out. She's followed her own head and I admire her for that," said Julia. "That's what she said about us. She said 'I'm gonna let you be. I'm not the kind of teacher that interjects. You guys are all like butterflies. Why would I want to teach you how to fly?" Jenny recalls. "The way she describes steps is great. She would break it down fairly fast. Then she'd say 'it's like an ahh,' or a 'umpf,' you know, (Jenny is miming moves as she talks). 'Just feel that line of energy.' She'd point to her chest and say 'it's all about here,' or 'here.' Simple, lyrical movements with elegant lines..... so hard to do!" About the Camp experience in general, she said she "didn't realize how taxing Camp would be on my body. The intensity of each workshop, one after the other. The first day I took classes the whole day. The second day I did everything but one. For the past three days I've done five each day."
"It's great watching all the different levels of performers. It's such a non-judgmental crowd that everyone has a good time," commented Elizabeth Artemis Mourat of MD. "It's like being in the Middle East, but you can't tell which country you're in! And, it has all the best parts of those countries without any of the hardship or less pleasant aspects of travel."

"It's very interesting that all these people come from all these different points on the planet and converge in this one little place in the woods in Mendocino. Perhaps these are old souls who've lived before in the Middle East and this is still a picture in their space, it's familiar to
them, and that's what draws people here." "Otherwise why would all these Americans and people from other places be drawn to something so foreign to them and their culture in this
lifetime? Drawn to sounds and music that makes other people you know go 'ick!' and cover their ears, yet to us it's always been beautiful. The jewelry, the textiles, the way people dress. This isn't all learned behavior. This is much older than this lifetime." "The odd rhythms, at least to American ears, and the turbans - everything that people here do so well, I think it's because it's familiar to us." two anonymous self-described "new agers"and experienced Mendocino Middle Eastern Music and Dance Campers.

Other stellar dance teachers this year included the lovely Helene Eriksen, an American who now resides in Germany. Helene is beautiful, giving, very well researched and traveled, and has an astounding array of dance offerings to share. During one of her performances of Persian dance she executed the single most amazing backbend from standing to the floor and back up again that I have ever witnessed. This year Helene taught Armenian and Khaleji dances.

Robyn Friend is the only women's solo dance form instructor at Camp who returns as a teacher annually. Other teachers (except some of the music and folk dance teachers) are changed over the years for variety in offerings. Robyn also teaches Persian and Turkish singing. Her dance focus is classical Persian style, and this year she placed emphasis on posture, alignment and hands. Robyn is well-trained in Pilates, and shares the benefits of this training with her students in class. She is an exquisite performer of this genre; precise, delicate - very alive and engaging.

L'Emir Hassan Harfouche is from Lebanon and he's the debke teacher. A great performer, his classes always sound like so much fun. I can hear their exuberant stomping and yelling from my campsite in the morning. What a great way to start the day!

Joe Kaloyanides Graziozi teaches Greek folk dance. His class recitals always make me wish I had more hours in each day at Camp so I could take one of his classes as well. Joe seems like a very personable and gentle guy, he knows what he's talking about, and he and his students always seem to be having fun .

Music teachers included Souren Baronian (tambourine, ensemble), Necati Celik (oud, baglama), Souhael Caspar (Arabic percussion/tabla), Halil Karaduman (kanun), Georges Lammam (violin, Arabic singing), Elias Lammam (Arabic ensemble), Hank Levin (instrument making and repair), Haig Manookian (oud), Scott Marcus (maqam and nay), Naser Musa (oud), Rowan Storm (drumming, frame and other), Salaheddin Takesh (drumming/darbuka), Hamid (zurna) and Ergun Tamer (maqam and saz). Someone else who cannot go without mention is the Camp's organizer, Joshkun Tamer. He's a humble man who prefers to remain
behind the scenes, but during the evening shows you can find him playing alongside his
colleagues. Since I am not a musician, I cannot comment on the instrument classes, but as a dancer I can comment on the music..... and these folks can play! They can take you to heaven and let you back down gently onto the earth with a breath, a flick of the wrists or a pluck of the strings. True shamans, all of them.

For more information regarding this phenomenon known as Middle Eastern Music and Dance Camp, write to the same at: 3244 Overland Ave., No.1, Los Angeles, CA. 90034. Check out the website, too: www.middleeastcamp.com or call Joshkun at: (310) 838-5471. He can be e mailed as well: joshkuntamer@msn.com

Kajira Djoumahna is from northern California. She teaches several regular Tribal belly dance classes weekly, directs the troupe 'United We Dance,' and instructs workshops in the form nationally and internationally. A well-rounded performer, she enjoys many ethnic dance styles, traditional and not. Kajira has attended this Camp since