Welcome to the latest edition of my ongoing series “Professional Ambitions” which chronicles my journey to becoming a professional fusion belly dancer. The usual disclaimer applies, this is not expert career advice, these posts are based entirely on my opinions and experiences and your mileage may vary.
One key to longevity in any sort of artistic career is to continue to grow as an artist — this is especially important if you have your eyes on a career that will take you beyond the bounds of your own community. As a consumer of the arts, I am always drawn to people who constantly try new things and test their boundaries, so I try to be that sort of artist myself.
There are many ways to grow as an artist. I think that the most important one is to expose yourself to new ideas by consuming more art! They say that you can’t be a good writer without reading, and I think the same thing goes for dance. You can’t be a good dancer without watching dance. Watch belly dance. Watch other forms of dance. Take classes on choreography and combinations to get a close look at how another dancer thinks and creates.
But of course, you don’t have to limit yourself to dance. Consume whatever sort of art feeds your soul or makes you think. Go to a museum or a concert. Read a book. Heck, even just browse through Pinterest to soak up some interesting visuals. For that matter, consume some art that you don’t like, and ask yourself what you don’t like about it, and if you can find artistic merit in it despite it not being to your taste. Really think about art.
Once you have a head full of inspiration, it’s important to give yourself time to play. Make sure that in addition to drilling moves and developing or practicing any choreography for upcoming shows (if you choreograph) that you make time to do some improvisation. You may want to just put on music and do whatever comes naturally with no rules, or you may want to set some limitations or intentions, such as “I want to only use my arms for one song” or “I want to dance how I felt when I saw that one painting yesterday.” Film yourself, so that if you come up with anything cool you have a record and can try to duplicate it in a future choreography or structured improv.
Beyond that, to grow as an artist it’s important to get out of your comfort zone and be willing to fail. Once we gain a certain level of competency as dancers, it can be frustrating to tackle new material, because it’s HARD and we’ve already forgotten how hard the most basic belly dance moves were when we first started! Embrace the struggle. Fail in the classroom and in the studio and in your living room, then fall back on the easy stuff when you go on stage. Keep struggling in private so that someday you’ll have something new to show the public.
On an individual basis, I think there are two basic paths your growth can take: One would be to say “I want to completely master this one facet of belly dance, and I will dedicate all of my time and attention to it.” The other is to say “I want to be a very well-rounded belly dancer and I want to dedicate my time to being competent in these half dozen different styles that I enjoy.” Both of these are really valid options and I enjoy watching and learning from dancers who have taken both paths. You might not even know right away which you want to do… you may start out and try a bunch of different styles before one day throwing them all aside in the pursuit of one, or you may start out thinking you only care about one style but later on grow to love the variety.
When you have an idea of the direction you’d like to grow in, sit down with a teacher or mentor and get their advice on specific ways to help your growth. Your teacher or mentor may be able to give you some tailored private lessons for techniques that you can improve, and they may have recommendations for other teachers who have specialized knowledge that you need.
One more key component to growth: patience! Growth takes time and hard work. Sometimes you’ll hit a plateau and it will seem like you aren’t growing at all, and this is when it’s the hardest to be patient. Keep working, keep feeding your creativity with outside inspiration. You’ll get there in time.
Readers, I know I’ve only hit on a few techniques for artistic growth. Feel free to share your own advice in the comments!