Visions in Dance Review

I wrote this little piece up to honor my friend Lisha and the other wonderful girls who together are making magic under the name of Visions in Dance.

In November in Dallas Texas, I was lucky enough to be in the audience at the Kismet hafla. While the show was outstanding in the level of talented belly dancers performing there, the next to last group brought with them a new definition of "Dance."

Visions in Dance were the most spectacular and emotionally thrilling of the show.

In a dynamic and well-integrated piece, with visuals, technology and beautiful choreographed moves, the audience was simply held in thrall from the first moment the eerie sounds of their slightly menacing sound track filled the room. Impeccably designed motion combined with the techno sounds conjured up strange futuristic images of dance with perfectly choreographed traditional belly dance moves accented with touches of humor, meshed into a spellbinding whole.
Visions in Dance brings forth simultaneously an exhilarating tribute to the ancient art of belly dance combined with a visionary stagecraft, non-traditional costumes and a poignant depiction of the soul of dance. The performance, both magical and surreal, brought devotees and performers of tradional belly dance to their feet in homage to the four visionary dancers.

Vision in Dance are without a doubt, brilliant entertainments with a charm all their own. Find them, watch them and know you are seeing something very special.

Belly Dance is a living art form, and as such will evolve. While deeply rooted in tradition, Belly Dance is still growing and changing among the young dancers. The heart of the artistic spirit is personal creativity, and the essence of creativity is to create--new ideas, new artistic works, new ways of presenting classic material, and evolution of new forms. Some who see the traditional moves of belly dance translated into a newer form will of course protest that Visions in Dance are not doing *true mid-eastern dancing*.

Keeping Middle Eastern dance alive and respected is a difficult job for any dancer, and not a simple issue. Each dancer must chose between being an artist and accepting the stereotype or abolishing it to establish something new in technique. There are many fantastic and renowned Middle Eastern dancers in the United States who keep the culture and history of Middle Eastern dance unadulterated. With all of today's negative publicity qualities associated with the Middle East, the dancers' struggle to break the social stigma is still met with misunderstanding. It is encouraging that there are young avant-garde dancers like Vision in Dance who are adventurous enough to test the limits of this ancient dance form and use it as a lexis of movements from which to draw inspiration and to becomes the vehicle of communication to make sound and emotion visible to a new audience.