Get us in your inbox

Search
269.dance.open.jpg
NOTHIN’ BUT NET Baladina Dance Company shares its secrets.

Hips don't lie

Erika Ochoa shakes it to the East, and shakes it to the West.

Advertising

At the age of 24, Mexico City native Erika Ochoa, who had studied Latin dance her entire life, became drawn to Middle Eastern and belly dancing. It wasn’t a stretch. “In both styles, the movement comes from the hips,” she says, guessing similarities between the techniques facilitated “that big boom in the Latin community when Shakira became popular—all she’s doing is belly dancing.” Ochoa enrolled in lessons at the Jasmin Jahal School of Dance in Portage Park and in short order was deemed ready to perform with Jahal’s company. On the inside, though, she felt she was only going through the motions, however intricate they were. “It was just, ‘step, step, step,’ like a robot,” she recalls. Four years into her new career, she happened into a workshop led by Samara, a performer who teaches at the Ailey School in New York.

“I’ve had many teachers, but Samara changed my life,” Ochoa says. “I went from knowing the techniques to truly loving the movement and the music.” Not only did Samara help her connect more deeply to steps she had simply been executing, but the two became friends and have been visiting each other ever since. Ochoa, now 38, attends Samara’s weeklong workshop every year, and the latter will make her second appearance with Ochoa’s Baladina Dance Company Saturday 24.

Baladina is the professional arm of Pineapple Dance Studio, the Forest Park school Ochoa founded in 2006. (When asked if the name is a reference to the legendary Pineapple Dance Studios in London’s Covent Garden, Ochoa says it’s pure coincidence. “All I wanted was a catchy name for my school!”)

A common first (or only) exposure to Middle Eastern dance is finger-cymbaled divertissements roaming the dining rooms of Mediterranean restaurants. “The music is either too loud or not good, or people are just focused on their meal. They’re not really giving it their attention,” Ochoa says. A proscenium stage like Village Players Theatre’s will focus eyes on the subtleties of folkloric Tunisian and Egyptian vocabulary.

One of these is a Sa’idi (Upper Egyptian) form called Raqs el Saya, traditional martial-arts moves using a stick or cane translated into softer, more lyrical movement refined and popularized by Mahmoud Reda in the 1960s. At the time, Reda was already well-known for giving dry, competitive physical activities a shot of expression and grace: As one of Egypt’s representatives to the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki, Finland, Reda was the first gymnast to add short bursts of choreographed dance to his floor routines.

Ochoa has studied with Reda as well, who’s since become the primary exponent of Raqs Sharqi, a fusion of belly dance with jazz and ballet techniques. Music is always the bedrock, though, which Ochoa notes is a two-way street that’s paralleled her own reinvention. “Egyptians love Latin music—they’ve always taken from Latin rhythms and vice versa. The exchange between the two cultures is very interesting.”

Baladina Dance Company featuring Samara presents “Bint el Balad” Saturday 24 at the Village Players Theatre in Oak Park.

Recommended
    You may also like
    You may also like
    Advertising