No Veil Left Behind

Hi there, I’m Heather Wayman, assistant teacher and team member at the Belly Dance Geek. Very often, podcasts, video tutorials, and programs too come from questions that you ask. Today, I’m going to be addressing a question that was received in the live version of Rock the Routine. The question was, what are some graceful methods for collecting your discarded props such as a veil or cane when your routine comes to an end?

The primary focus of today’s tutorial will be on collecting discarded veils, but some of these techniques can also be used to pick up canes, swords, or fan veils or other props. Let’s look at some of the ways that we can retrieve those discarded props.

The position of your veil on your performance space is going to have some kind of bearing on which method you choose for picking up your veil at the end of your performance. The curtsy is a very common method and it can be used in pretty much any situation wherever you’re veil is on your performance space.

You simply do a little plié, and when you do that it obviously it gets you lower to the floor, but it’s not going to get you far enough down to actually retrieve your veil, so you’re going to have to use some kind of forward or side motion. When you do the curtsy I would suggest not having your body straight onto your audience because you don’t want to curtsy and lean forward into them picking up your veil.

I would suggest putting yourself off on an angle if you’re going to lean forward, and picking up the veil, and try to leave your ribcage and your chest is lifted as possible. You can also have a side-to-side motion if that is okay with your body. So you would come down, pick it up and come back up.

Also, if you can eyeball your veil, you’re going to know where it is before you go down to pick it up. In that case, rather than having your eye follow your hand until you pick it up, I would notice the veil, know where it’s at, lean over, pick it up, make eye contact again, and then be off on your way.

So with the veil, it would look like this. Let’s say you’ve discarded your veil, you’ve danced, and it’s time to go back and pick it up. Simply pick it up and finish your finale. I’ve just picked it up in my scissor fingers, or you could use your thumb if you needed to and wanted to be a little more stable.

Another way to do that would be if the veil is behind you, if it’s on the backside of the stage, what you just saw works also. You could also create some kind of a mystery here, sway, maybe look back, pick it up and turn, just a variation of the curtsy.

Another possibility would be to incorporate a deep lunge into your retrieval. In that case, I would come on down to a nice deep lunge, maybe do a little mystery play with my veil, with the back hand grabbing onto the veil while the front hand is continuing to mystery play, and then pick up the veil and turn it into a rope bail. Let’s see that again. So I’ve done my finale, I’m rolling about here, I see the veil, and I’m up, and away.

A variation on the deep lunge could be … so that you do your lunge where that leaves you facing the back with your audience, your back to your audience. You’ve lunged, pick up the veil, bring it around to the back and up, and you’re off.

Another option is what I’ll call the sweep and pick. Let’s say that your veil is in the front of your performance space and you’ve finished your dance and it’s time to retrieve it. What I would do is take a little bit of a wide stance here and you’re just going to have a weight shift back and forth, and your upper body is going to do a sweep down, sweep down. When I go to my left side, my left knee is bent, and as I sweep over to my right side, my right knee bends and I pick the veil up, and come back up.

In real time it would look more like this. Dancing, dancing, dancing, I’m here, and I’m off. From the side, the whole movement is in the toaster slot, I call that the toaster slot. My rear is facing the back so no one’s gonna see that and that’s a good thing. With the vale it would look like this if I’ve dropped my veil in the front of the space and I’ve danced and completed. Hopefully that doesn’t happen. I’m ready, and I’m off. The sweep and pick.

My favorite veil pickup is one that I learned indirectly from Isis of the Isis Star Dancer Studio in Bedford, Texas. It’s called … I don’t know why she calls it, but it’s a pickup with your foot. What you want to do is spread out your toes, grab a hold of that veil, pick it up and pop so that you can pick it up.

Here’s the trick on this though, you have to be very careful about this. You want to make sure that when you pick it up, that you actually pop it up behind you, straight up so you can catch it because if you get nervous and let go of it too quickly, you’re going to end up tossing it way back there, especially if there’s not a carpet. A slick stage space is going to make it just fly behind you.

You can do this with either foot. One foot is going to be easier than the other. That’s my stupid foot, and you’re off. Also a tip for that, you want to practice with the skirt that you’re going to use with your performance. You want to practice that anyway with your costuming because you know things happen, bad things happen when you don’t practice with your costumes.

You might have your skirt when you bring your foot up like this if it’s a full skirt, your skirt might actually get kind of stuck in it or push down on the veil and keep it from popping way up. Definitely practice with your skirt.

Now let’s take all of these pickups and incorporate them with some finale music.

Okay, you’ve seen five ideas for picking up your veil after your performance is over, now it’s your turn. Sometimes, the best gems come out of just getting into the studio space and noodling around to see what comes out. If you have questions or comments, please let us know, and if there’s a specific idea or topic that you’d like to see covered in a future podcast, article, or program, please let us know about that too. Send us an email, put it in the comments below, but do let us know. Thanks for watching and happy dancing.