September 2007 News
September 12, 2007
Greetings from the beautiful Pacific Northwest. I am in Seattle for a brief time before hitting the road again in a week. This has been a long and eventful summer. I spent 3 weeks in Algeria in July and August. I was invited to be a juror at two international folklore festivals. At the first festival in Sidi Bel Abbes in western Algeria it turned out that I was the president of the jury and was also asked to perform Algerian dances at the festival. That was of course a bit scary…but a great honor…I performed Naila (dances of the Ouled Nail tribe) and Andalusian to very appreciative audiences. I was also asked to do innumerable interviews for newspaper, radio and TV…all in French. I really loved the men’s dances “alaoui” from the western regions of Tlemcen and Sidi Bel Abbes in which the men stamp and toss a red tassle on the back of their shoulders to very groovy rhythms. From Sidi Bel Abbes we had a very hot all day bus ride to Tizi Ouzou, which is the main city of the mountainous Kabyle region to the east of Algiers. This festival only presented groups from Africa and the Arab world. There were spectacular groups and it was a great opportunity to discover more about Kabyle traditions, including visiting a village hadra (trance ritual) and buying costumes for my training project in Worms, which will be performing a Kabyle dance in their upcoming recital on the 6th of October. If you are in Southern Germany, please do come and see this performance of dances from the Magreb which will include Algerian Nailiyat and Kabyle, Andalusian, Moroccan Sheikhat and Raissat as well as the Guedra and Tunisian.
I already have my first registrations for my yearly dance and culture tour to Istanbul. If you have been considering coming, don’t hesitate too long. This is a great experience to delve in deeply to the rich traditions of this many-faceted city and learn Roma dance at the source! Please see the Turkey Tour page on my website for more information.
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