Articles

Adventures of Marrakesh Festival & Dance Workshops With Leila Haddad, July 2005

Cheap flights to Malaga-coach to Algeciras-boat to Tangiers-overnight train to Marrakesh! (complete with rucksacks and 3 wheeler buggies).

We arrived early and went straight to our beautiful hotel for a rest and to accustom ourselves to the heat (+40c). We had a few days until classes began so what else to do but shopping! You can buy everything you ever thought of and more, theres not much in the way of bellydance costumes, but loads of cds, dvds and jewellery. This was interspersed with henna tattoos, drumming, swimming, Berber markets in the mountains, more shopping and as much cous cous, mint tea and orange juice as we could manage.

Exploring the museums, old palaces and souks by day and by night spent our time in the amazing J'ma Elf na. Around 5pm every day this square turns into a festival in itself-snake charmers, monkeys, acrobats, Berber dancers, kids boxing(?!), musicians(one with a chicken on his head) and men dressed as bellydancers smoking under their yashmaks. You have to have plenty of spare change as they clock you even if you only watch for a minute plus refuse to play until the tourists have thrown enough money at them.

The amazing thing about the musicians is that they constantly swap instruments each one playing just aswell as another. With one particular group a Berber woman danced a Zar type dance-we were transfixed. Then they grabbed us, the rhythms are quite different to Egyptian but we were soon lost in it. Back to reality my 2 year old daughter started to dance then tried to run off with the money pot! A sure way to get the kids to sleep was to take a horse and carriage ride around the square and back to the hotel. It also gave us chance to reflect on the day and plan the next one. Time for the festival and Leila's classes. At our first one we discovered we were the only english speaking mixed in with mainly italian, spanish and french speaking ladies. Thankfully one spoke english and Leila translated everything into four languages!

I had been to Leila before in the UK, what I really like about her is her relaxed a la Leila style and that she doesn't teach choreographies-instead lots of sequences so you can take ideas with you.

We covered Sharqi, Baladi, veil, stick and sagats. The last class was for anyone to show their own choreography and have a 'critique' from everyone including Leila. There were some very honest opinions from a very non-english audience. And what did the men and kids do? Swimming, they found parks and an indoor play area, they even went shopping! Then we swapped and they went for hammams and drumming with Rashid a local drummer.

Near to our hotel there was a park where during the festival you can watch free performances this ranged from Ballet to Chinese to Moroccan, this was packed with locals and a few tourists. Another beautiful place, Menara Gardens, again not many tourists but very friendly. The stage was on a lake and the consisted of groups from different regions in Morocco in traditional dress performing their own styles of music and dance against a backdrop of projections on the palace and water.

The final highlight - being invited to Fatimas family house (Fatima worked in the hotel where we stayed). It was a Sunday and we were given strict instructions not to bring men. Nervously we went inside a seemingly quiet house in the backstreets of Marakesh.Then women and children of every age suddenly appeared from nowhere, shutters closed, music turned up loud, cakes, mint tea, handed hip scarves and made to dance much to the amusement and surprise of everyone there. After ten surreal days off for the return journey working our way across North Africa, Spain and back home-phew! Can't wait for the next time and the kids loved it. For a dance experience never to forget check out Leila Haddads website for forthcoming dates.

This was written by Katie Holland, with many fond memories of Jon Matthews-we'll never forget our amazing Marrakesh adventures with you :)

What Is Middle Eastern Dance/Egyptian Dance/Bellydance?

The amazing thing about the musicians is that they constantly swap instruments, each one playing just as well as another