YEARLY SYLLABUS OVERVIEW - with The Alay'nya Studio

Our baseline syllabus for the full year is designed to help you grow completely as a dancer, covering the full range of vocabulary, technique, and choreography.

• Winter: Winter is a time of "grounding" energy. We do this using dances that have very "earthy" rhythms, such as the beledi, sai'idi, and masmoudi family. We emphasize strongly rhythmic dances, especially those with nice, hip-dropping beledi sections. We cultivate our ability to generate rhythm as well as respond to it, so we emphasize beledi with zills.We also build our repertoire with drum solos -- a great way to develop technique and precision! We also study basic dance choreography construction, ranging from simple dance openings to how a full-length, mulit-part caberet piece unfolds. We focus on basic choreographic "units" that can be used with different kinds of music, providing "building blocks" for your own choreographies.
• Because winter is such an "inward" time, we use this time to re-focus on how to generate dance from the "inside out." We learn this as a set of seven Basic Principles , which we teach in our Beginner's Session and cultivate further in the intermediate and advanced classes. Visit our Winter Quarter Studies page for more details and lesson plans / reviews.
• Spring: When spring comes, we want to get out and play! Spring has a light, floaty, "airy" quality, in contrast to the more "condensed" feeling of winter. We shift to lighter, freer, and more expansive movements, with emphasis on moving across the floor and Veil Play (Don't click yet - details are still forthcoming.) For the first time, we will also experiment with using swords in our dance. This year, we will also celebrate the height of spring by playing with Wings of Isis! We also start stretching and conditioning for floorwork. Visit our Spring Quarter Studies page for more details and lesson plans / reviews.
• Summer Summer is for "hot" dance! We have two short summer sessions; from after Memorial Day to before the Fourth of July, and from after July Fourth up to Labor Day. (Depending on the calendar, there are a different number of weeks per session.) In the first summer session, we cultivate the "fire energy" through shimmies, exploring the full range of possibilities. We learn how to bring our dance to the "moment of climax" (which may happen more than once in a given dance - where yes indeed, art reflects life). In the second summer session, we learn how to cultivate dramatic, fiery endings to our choreograhies in the "finale" section of our dance. In addition to studying finale options for different dances (both in practice and through video study), we will develop at least one separate "finale" piece that you can add on to your growing "full-length work" for the year. We also infuse candle dancing and fire dancing throughout our summer studies (Intermediate and Advanced students only!).
• Autumn: We so welcome the autumn rains that break the heat and drought of summer! And in celebration, we transition to more "liquid" dance movements. These are ones that often demand a year or more of patient cultivation in order to "reap a harvest"; our Autumn Quarter Studies include deeper integration of undulations, figure-eights, and snake arms into our choreographies. We apply these when using the sensual Chifti Telli rhythms. We also re-visit veil dancing, this time with more emphasis on the "liquid" quality of veil work, as compared with the "floaty" quality that we expressed during Spring. We also focus on the most challenging and inspiring aspect of dance, "taxims" -- improvisational response to an instrumental, improvisational solo, such as ney (flute). We also learn to tap into an inner awareness and slow down, allowing ourselves a deeper connection with the music and our soul. We learn how to put the year's study together in a full-length piece comprising of an opening number, often involving beledi with zills, followed by sections for veil work, chifti telli's, floor work, drum solo, and finale. Each year we complete a different, major piece of music with a full-scale choreography that "comes together" in autumn, before the start of the holiday season.
• Winter Solstice: As the year comes to its most reflective and inward time, we welcome winter solstice with Candle dancing.

Our Energy Curriculum connects us with these different seasonal energies. We learn an "esoteric" or "energy base" to give extra depth to our basic technique, vocabulary, and choreography dance curriculum. (This is, indeed, the "Jedi for Women" part of our studies.)

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