Give Belly Dance A Chance

The late afternoon sun is blocked out by mini blinds as seven women of different ages shimmy, sway and undulate their arms inside the Karavan Studio on Mulberry Street.

They are here to learn the art of belly dancing from San Antonios first lady of Middle Eastern dance, Karen Barbee Adkisson. Blonde, fit and barefoot, Barbee stands in front of them facing the wall to wall mirror and demonstrates how to roll a shoulder, perform successive tummy tucks or how to go up on one foot gracefully and stick one hip out and up. Then these moves are integrated into smooth combinations.

Some of the students are already pretty good at it, while others are clearly novices. The Arabic music that accompanies the class sounds exotic and passionate. Even though I am here as an observer, I can barely resist the urge to join them, so fluid and feminine is the movement, so seemingly natural.

"The class is always a hodgepodge. Some people are fairly advanced and some are new," says Barbee after the class as dancers are getting ready to leave. What usually brings them through the door is the desire to exercise in a fun way. Once here, that may change. She glances around at the remaining women to see what they would say.

Eventually, we want to be able to entertain George Clooney, should he call! quips Karin Faucett, 53, one of the new students. Faucett has been thinking about taking this class for years. I've had a fascination with it since I was a child, she says. Another student, Lizz Samford, who's been studying with Barbee for several years, explains that she signed up initially to get the fitness benefits but later developed a thirst for it. Now her goal is to perform free style some day.

Clooney may not show up, but Barbee and her more experienced students, including Samford, do plan to entertain San Antonio audiences June 5-6 with two recitals at the B3 Dance Annex (8321 Broadway). Dubbed Give Belly Dance a Chance, the shows ” which will include a smaller group called Sirocco Dancers” follow in the footsteps of 13 earlier eponymous events that Karavan produced before it closed its original operation in 2007. The new production will be the first public outing since Barbee revived her studio last October, albeit on a smaller scale.

So one of the first questions we have for her is, why close a successful enterprise in the first place?

I closed because my mother was ill and needed my assistance, but there were other reasons as well, she says. That studio on St. Mary's ran like a well oiled machine. I became basically the manager while others were doing most of the teaching. We weren't developing new choreography, and the whole thing stopped being a challenge for me as an artist. If I was to be a manager, I thought, then I might as well be in the corporate world and make big bucks. I felt something was broken, and I knew I needed a change. 

However, change did not mean turning her back on her passion altogether. Post closure, she took on a modest teaching load at the Synergy Studio for a while. Still, her former advanced students clamored for further coaching. That part was fun and challenging, notes Barbee. Those dancers can do any choreography I lay on them. So I got this place (the smaller studio) basically for private lessons. Today, only six months after reopening Karavan, she already has some 100 students, not counting the two Synergy groups. And she's back doing what she likes most choreographing.

Though belly dance has traditionally been performed by individuals, Barbee is following the trend among contemporary dance makers toward expanding the scope of solo genres such as belly dance and flamenco, for instance through ensemble choreography. The upcoming recital will feature completely new choreography set on an ensemble of 60-70 dancers.

HER OWN WAY
The origin of belly dance is somewhat murky. There's nothing tangible about the history of the genre until the movie industry developed in Egypt in the 1920s and 30s, explains Barbee. It was also at that time that Europeans developed a fascination with the Near East, and Egyptian dancers started to perform in cabarets and nightclubs to entertain visiting foreigners.

For Barbee, the fascination started early, while she was helping her older sister learn and teach the style back in the 1970s. Though she had been a student of ballet and jazz since age 5, it was belly dance that eventually claimed her heart. With her sister, the teenage Karen traveled to workshops held in Dallas or Houston to learn all she could. At 16, the young dancer was making more money performing in restaurants than her friends did flipping burgers.

Despite her love of dance, Barbee earned a degree in accounting and computer information systems and worked, rather unhappily, at USAA for years, while dancing on weekends. In 1988, while still punching the corporate clock, she founded the Karavan Studio and two years later took her first trip to Egypt.

When she met her future husband, Tommy Adkisson who is currently a Bexar County commissioner she told him that belly dance was part and parcel of the deal. It was what she loved doing, so take it or leave it. Interestingly, the two met at an Arab American function, which she attended with an Arab boyfriend who disapproved of her dancing.

In 1996, the now established dancer/studio owner finally left corporate life for good, never to look back. Today, in addition to her activities in San Antonio, Barbee is frequently invited to both teach and perform in other cities and even abroad. In April, she was due in China to conduct a weeklong workshop. Now an authority in her own right, she has developed her own vocabulary and method of teaching.

Back in the 70s when I was learning this, most instructors were from the Middle East, and the style of teaching was simply follow the leader with very imprecise explanations, she explains. Every instructor was doing it in her own way. I became increasingly frustrated with that. As I started teaching myself, I began developing a language for my own use a clear vocabulary for the various movements, which is very useful both for teaching basics and explaining choreography.

Unlike Western dance styles, belly dance makes use of the body between your neck and your knees, she notes. To master it, a person must learn to isolate individual muscles and parts of the body and then layer them in combinations to create a variety of shapes: I tell my dancers to listen to the shapes in the music and recreate those shapes with their bodies.

As both teacher and performer, Barbee now has an agent-manager who books her national and international engagements. Her interests have expanded to include producing instructional CDs and DVDs as well as an adjunct appointment in fine arts at NW Vista College.

Childless by choice couldn't figure out where those little guys would fit in, at 48, she knows that this exotic art form from a faraway world is her life's work. I am on the right path, she says pensively. Things have clicked into place for me. I don't know what exactly will happen in the future, but I know it's going to be good because that's what happens when you are on the right path.