World Belly Dance Day 2008 USA Seattle
"The evening was celebrated with dance performances; Skin Deep Tribal Belly Dance, Gigi Gulhan from Turkey doing a Turkish Roman dance, Tamalyn Dallal representing Arabic culture with Beledi, Heather Rastovac performing a classical Tajik dance, and finally, a guest artist who drove down from Vancouver B.C., Adalat. She is an Uyghur dancer, born and trained in Xinjiang."
-- Tamalyn Dallal
Tamalyn Dallal, in Colaboration with Skin Deep Studio of Seattle presented a panel discussion, film showing and performance at Skin Deep Studio in Seattle. It was entitled "Meet the Uyghur people of China and Follow Dance Across the Silk Road".
Panelists were dance ethnologist, Helene Eriksen (www.helen-eriksen.de), Tamalyn Dallal (www.tamalyndallal.com), and multi ethnic dancer Emilko Nakamura. We talked about how cultures, music and dance converged along the Silk Road, spanning from China to Central Asia, Iran, Turkey, and all the way to Syria.
Tamalyn showed several videos from her collection that introduced Uyghur culture. The Uyghurs live in China's largest province, Xinjiang. They are Muslim and their language is related to Turkish. They are famous for their exquisite dances involving intricate hand gestures, fast spins an dramatic slow movements. Tamalyn showed videos of famed Uyghur dancer Pasha Umer from her dvd "Orientalia Ethnic", pieces from the Xinjiang State Song and Dance Company that she obtained while in Xinjiang that included a group belly dance piece. She also showed the Xinjiang section of her five part documentary film "40 Days and 1001 Nights".
"40 Days and 1001 Nights" is a book, documentary film, music cd, and dance concert DVD in which Tamalyn Dallal spent 40 days in each of five Muslim countries and shared her experiences to help bridge understanding between Muslims and non Muslims. This project involved music recording and learning about dance as well. One of the five cultures she visited was the Uyghurs of Xinjiang, China. They are little know to the outside world, but share many of the same problems as Tibet in regards to their relation with China and being minorites whose language and culture are different from the rest of China.
Finally the evening was celebrated with dance performances; Skin Deep Tribal Belly Dance, Gigi Gulhan from Turkey doing a Turkish Roman dance, Tamalyn Dallal representing Arabic culture with Beledi, Heather Rastovac performing a classical Tajik dance, and finally, a guest artist who drove down from Vancouver B.C., Adalat. She is an Uyghur dancer, born and trained in Xinjiang.
It was an amazingly varied evening in which guests were invited to drink Uyghur salted milk tea. It was an opportunity for many people with mutual interests in Central Asian culture to unite and for others to learn about a large section of the world we hear little about.
Donations were collected for two projects:
"Participate Now", which works with women with AIDS in Zanzibar. They help the women build small businesses so they can continue to support themselves and theirr familes.
"School Angels" is a project that is building a school for Burmese refugees who have crossed the border into Thailand and live in refugee camps there.