Last week at Je'Bon, I joined an eclectic group of dancers assembled by the incomparable Anasma, including The Piel Canela Dancers, who dazzled the audience with hot-hot Latin dances, and the ultra-hot-hot hip-hop artist Megatron who similarly mesmerized the crowd.
Here is footage of my candle-balancing performance:
Our featured dancer, however, was an enchanting Spanish bellydancer named Zoe Anwar.
She asked me how I came by the name "Tandava," and I explained that Middle Eastern dance had become my path to healing from traumatic injury to my abdomen and lower back, and had doubly enhanced my life by engendering a creative rebirth.
When I was reading up on Hindu deities, I learned about the God Shiva's dance of creation, maintenance, destruction, and re-creation as the cycle of rebirth begins again: the Tandava (pronounced tAN-Dah-vah, accent on the first syllable, soft "t", hard "D" -- I pronounce it "tan-DAH-vah").
Immediately the name resonated with me in meaning and sound (it is, after all, a way cool name). I rolled it through my mind for several weeks and finally settled on it.
Last year, I came upon the myspace page of another bellydancer named Tandava...a woman in Madrid, it seemed. Grrrr!
But it wasn't -- the Spanish Tandava was none other than Zoe Anwar's dance company!
She asked me if I had learned to do the Tandava as a meditative dance; I said I had not, but would love to learn, and she has promised to connect me with a teacher in the New York area.
For a look at some other Tandavas, check out my "What's a Tandava" side module.....
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