Marvelous Margo

By Amsah Noor

On Saturday, May 31, 2003, Fikriyyah sponsored her second annual spring workshop in the State College, PA area. Though it rained steadily throughout the day, the warm manner and sunny disposition of seminar teacher Margo Abdo O'Dell, from Minneapolis, MN, managed to brighten our spirits. The advertised contents of the five-hour workshop were traveling steps, a short drum solo choreography and some Lebanese debke, and that was exactly what Margo delivered.

Though the details of such things as teaching space and lighting might seem mundane, I have been to enough events to know that they really do play a big part in either increasing or decreasing the participants' overall enjoyment of the workshop. Happily, the environs for this seminar were more than suitable. Held in the same local school as the previous year, the room was large and airy, with more than sufficient space for the number of participants, and featured large windows and a smooth wooden floor. Though perhaps half of the dancers were drawn from the quickly growing State College dance scene, there were also participants from other parts of Pennsylvania, as well as Maryland and New Jersey, who traveled to see Margo in her first appearance on the East Coast since Rakkasah 2002.

Margo began the morning with a very thorough warmup that quickly banished the damp chill from our bones. She then taught a series of traveling combinations that could be strung together or modified easily to fit the demands of performance. It what was to become a hallmark of her teaching style for the day, Margo included variations for many of the moves, layering techniques on top of the basic movements or offering slightly more difficult variations in order to challenge both beginning and advanced dancers.

Once we had mastered the traveling combinations, Margo moved on to the drum solo choreography. She demonstrated the piece first, impressing new and veteran dancers alike. Though short (under two minutes), the choreography appeared very complex, and I was excited to learn the material but also a little intimidated. However, my fears were soon dispelled once Margo began teaching. She broke down everything completely, again giving multiple options for many moves. There were a few tricky spots, but Margo spent extra time when those came up and gladly repeated anything when asked. As a credit to her teaching style, I saw multiple beginning dancers that I knew following right along and really absorbing the dance. As with all good choreographies, there were portions that will take extra time and effort on my part to be able to perform well, but I think each and every participant had at least the basics of the whole piece under her hipbelt by the end of the day. As an aid for later practice sessions, Margo also handed out detailed notes, which were much appreciated.

After the drum solo choreography was finished and we had taken a short break, Margo rounded out the day with about 45 minutes of debke. She first demonstrated some simple solo movements used in Lebanese social dancing to give us a feel for the style, then soon moved on to steps used in the line dances. We learned several steps in counts of 6, 8 and 12, then put them to use as we all took hands and danced around the room. This was so much fun that even the vendors joined in.

For the final fifteen minutes of class, Margo led the group in a series of unusual but very effective stretches that were all done while on the ground. She neither hurried through these, nor neglected muscle groups, so everyone was sufficiently stretched by the end. After a hearty round of applause for Margo and some last minute shopping, everyone scurried off to prepare for the evening show.

Overall, I found Margo to be a very warm teacher, genuinely interested in helping her students master the movements. She brought with her lots of meaty material as well as a good sense of humor and enough funny anecdotes to keep the class in stitches all day long. And while I do not want to comment on the evening show in general as I spent the majority of the time in the dressing room getting ready, I did get to see both of Margo's pieces, and they were truly breathtaking.

— Reprinted with permission, Zaghareet!, Elizabeth City, North Carolina,
September/October, 2003

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You are the Queen
Instructor Finds Pride and Power in Dance

By Patricia Cumbie

The silver and gold coins dangling from their colorful hip scarves gave off a merry jingle as the students practiced snapping their hips from left to right. As they began to find their groove, instructor Margo Abdo O'Dell turned up the music and urged them to speed up.

The beginning dancers were learning the shimmy, a signature move of Middle Eastern dance. The goal is to create a rhythmic vibration of the hips, but for the 20 women and one man, it seemed easier said than done. As the students struggled, Abdo O'Dell called out encouragement.

"Keep breathing. Keep your abdominal muscles contracted,"  she cajoled. "Hey, I see there's some dancing going on there."

The students laughed, letting loose some self-conscious tension, and then smiled as they let their hips fly.

Abdo O'Dell is an understanding instructor. She knows that while many women want to dance, most "dance in their heads," held back by self-consciousness and perceptions of what a dancer's body should look like. Taking a dance class, especially one like belly dance, takes guts and resolve.

"Many of us have grown up in a culture of thinness, blondness and youth, and if you're not any of those, you can't be part of certain dances,"  Abdo O'Dell said. "This is a dance form that welcomes all ages and sizes."

Known for her colorful dance costumes and her flamboyant practice gear, hot pink leotards topped by a sequin-fringed hip scarf, Abdo O'Dell sparkles with energy. Fellow Middle Eastern dancer, Diotima, describes her as "a much loved wise-cracking sister who can dance like a goddess."

Years of dancing have sculpted her body into beautiful curves, and her carriage is proud. She tells students: "You are the queen, throw your shoulders back, and don't look down."

As she watched her students throw off their inhibitions Abdo O'Dell smiled. "I like to see that look of satisfaction when someone has had a breakthrough,"  she said.

Abdo O'Dell knows all about breakthroughs, and how Middle Eastern dance can be a life changing experience for women.

Born and raised in Minneapolis, she and her sister are children of a Lebanese mother and Irish father. Abdo O'Dell began dancing at age seven. She studied tap, ballet and jazz, and modern dance in college, but she avoided Middle Eastern dance.

"Even though I grew up around Arab people, listened to the music…I rebelled against it. I didn't get it, or understand it,"  she recalled.

Instead, she worked hard to fit in, shaping herself into an overachieving all-American straight-A student. Middle Eastern dance was not a part of that picture.

Then while studying psychology at the University of Minnesota, she enrolled in a dance class taught by Selwa Raja. The Middle Eastern dance instructor from Yemen shattered Abdo O'Dell's perceptions about Middle Eastern dance.

Raja had very firm ideas about what the dance was about. Her technique was very precise, and that impressed Abdo O'Dell. Raja also kept her abdomen covered, and her costumes were made of beautiful fabrics and scarves, not the beads typically decorating costumes today.

"The dance really clicked. I finally got it. I totally immersed myself in it,"  Abdo O'Dell remembered. "She was a true embodiment of the music. I watched her and got a strong feminist impression. She wasn't painted at all, nothing like what you see in clubs or Hollywood."

Abdo O'Dell found Middle Eastern dance gave her power and permission to express herself as an artist and woman in a way no other dance form had. Historically, the dance known as baladi was exclusively performed for women by women as a rite of fertility and to strengthen abdominal muscles for childbirth. It later evolved to include ceremonies of all types, and the classical female dance solo known as raks sharki became an expression of Middle Eastern cultural traditions.

However, the shimmies and undulations that celebrated a sensual womanhood in ancient times have been widely misinterpreted in current times to mean titillation, especially in Western society. It all started for Americans at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair when entrepreneur Sol Bloom introduced a dancer as "Little Egypt" and coined the term "belly dance," making the dance out to be an exotic phenomenon. The Budweiser beer commercial featuring a man's fantasy evening with two belly dancers continue to perpetuate the idea of belly dance as sexual entertainment for men. Even locally, during a recent cabaret evening in the Twin Cities, the MC instructed the men in the audience to "keep their hands in their pockets" because the belly dancers were coming out.

Abdo O'Dell and other women in the Middle Eastern dance community, like those organized in the Guild of Oriental Dance here in the Twin Cities, work hard to counter those messages and to promote the spirit of the dance as a celebration of the feminine.

"If you're proud of the art form then it's easy to feel good about what goes with that. The classical female solo is a really powerful genre,"  Abdo O'Dell said. "A woman by herself exuding confidence and power is something patriarchal society looks down on."

She also feels strongly about changing misinformed ideas about Middle Eastern dance. "You find doctors, lawyers, scientists-women with lives, doing important things in the world-are choosing this art form for themselves. They're not doing it to titillate men."

After the University, Abdo O'Dell continued to study Middle Eastern dance, traveling across the country to study with Egyptian master teachers such as Ragia Hassan and Jamila Salimpour. In the Twin Cities she studied with Cassandra Shore, taught at the Cassandra School of Dance and performed as a guest dancer with Jawaahir Dance Company. She was the featured dancer at Beirut Restaurant in St. Paul for 18 years.

Abdo O'Dell is a vibrant performer whose generous spirit really energizes audiences, said Susana di Palma, founder of Zorongo Flamenco Dance Theater. "(Her) joy and her really rich family background comes through. She's searching to do things in creative and unique ways in her own voice."

Now Abdo O'Dell has her own dance school, Margo's Mid-East Dance Studies, her own company, Haneen Dance Ensemble; and is a featured performer at many festivals and stages around the United States. "The fact that I'm doing this for a living, this thing that's been my passion and what's kept me balanced all these years, has been a surprise and a blessing,"  she said.

But the success she's enjoyed comes as a surprise, Abdo O'Dell said. Initially she never intended to perform, but her mother, ever supportive, encouraged her to begin dancing at the Beirut Restaurant. For many years, she danced on weekends as a much-needed creative counterbalance to her corporate sales job. Six years ago, she decided to devote herself to dance full time.

However, over the course of the last decade major life events started piling on the stress. "Stuff started to happen. My parents died, I had a son, my husband started his own business,"  she said.

Just as she started to question her commitment to the dance, fate intervened again. In 1998 Abdo O'Dell met world-renown Middle Eastern dancer Elena Lentini and she began to look at dance not only as a way to express traditional culture, but as a way to express her own unique cultural experiences.

"I saw her reach into herself and be empowered to express whatever she wanted. She said 'keep all that traditional stuff you've polished and allow yourself to keep exploring.'"  Abdo O'Dell saw how her experiences as an American woman with Lebanese heritage could have meaning. "It gave me the permission to take off the blinders and allow my own creativity to take this dance in new directions."

That's when she decided to start her own dance school, and last year she launched her first full-length show called "Tajdeed," an Arabic word for renewal.

Dancing on stage rather than in a restaurant allows for a different type of performance, she explained. "I think there's a lot that can be said in this dance beyond the restaurant venue. There's so much emotion in Arabic culture and music. It's not just about one feeling."

Abdo O'Dell has another new show, "Women's Voices," scheduled to debut at the Red Eye Theater May 8-11, which will draw on her own mixed cultural heritage.

"Of course you have to study technique, it's the vocabulary of dance,"  she said, "but the story you put together has to be about who you are."

'Orient in the Moonlight II' celebrates dance

By Colleen Simeral

Margo Abdo O'Dell wanted a way to communicate with other people. She chose Middle Eastern dance as her pathway of expression.

"It's a very creative outlet,"  she said. "And dance happens to be my art form. It's a privilege to be able to share the art form that I love with students and audiences."

Abdo O'Dell, the featured performer in "Orient in the Moonlight II: An Evening of Middle Eastern Belly Dance" at Mount Nittany Middle School, has spent the past six years dancing as a pro. However, she didn't grow up expecting to belly-dance. She first became involved with Middle Eastern dance while attending the University of Minnesota, falling in love the first time she saw it done by her instructor. Belly dance is also culturally ingrained in Abdo O'Dell, who is part Lebanese.

It was not something that she intended to do professionally. She danced for pleasure while maintaining a career in business. But her talent did not go unnoticed -- she soon began to attract praise from beyond her local area, she said.

"I just developed my skills enough so that people across the country began to recognize it,"  she said.

Despite her devotion to Middle Eastern dance, Abdo O'Dell finds one drawback to performing.

"There is quite a bit of misunderstanding and stereotyping in Middle Eastern dance,"  she said. A common misperception of belly dance is that it is risqué, Abdo O'Dell said, which leads people to an additional misperception, that "it's not as artistic or professional as other dance forms."

Barbara Price, Orient in the Moonlight II's sponsor, intends to amend some of these misperceptions with today's performance.

"Belly dance is very tasteful and fun,"  she said. "There's nothing inappropriate about it."

Price chose O'Dell as the performance's featured dancer after viewing one of her instructional videotapes.

"I like to try to bring people that have reputations of excellence in dance to the Centre Region,"  Price said. "I was so impressed by her stage presence, movement vocabulary and ability to flow with the music. I kept reading about the workshops that she gives across the county, kept hearing all these good things about her.."

"It's very much a celebration of femininity and womanhood that doesn't focus on any particular age and body type,"  Abdo O'Dell said.

"At a Middle Eastern dance show, you're not a silent audience,"  Price said. "We want people to clap and hoot 'n' holler, to support the dancers. It's a different kind of theater show. No one's going to yell at the kids for coughing."

— Reprinted with permission, Centre Daily Times, State College, Pennsylvania,
Friday, May 30, 2003

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Margo Abdo O'Dell

By Carstens Smith

"Middle Eastern dance is very difficult to do, so receiving the IAMED Best Modern Egyptian Dancer award for 2001 is quite an honor," says Margo Abdo O'Dell. The Minneapolis dancer has studied, performed, and taught Middle Eastern dance for over 20 years, though the dance has always been a part of her life. Margo's maternal grandparents were born in Lebanon and family weddings and holiday gatherings were a marathon of debke and dolmas.

Home laid the groundwork for Margo's love of dance, while weekly lessons at Adair Dance Studio taught her fundamental principals that have served her well throughout her life. "When I was about 9 years old," Margo recalls "my cousin Carol and I were asked to perform a Halloween tap dance at the upcoming recital. There were a few minutes left in the program, so the teacher put together a last minute choreography. Carol and I were in skeleton costumes, and the teacher was dressed as a witch, complete with a long cape. Carol and I were to be hidden in the cape, then suddenly emerge and start dancing. I practiced and practiced the dance - I believe the behavior could be called anal - and was all set. On the night of the recital, we were in costume, under the cape, and under the black light. The teacher pulled back her cape and I couldn't remember a single step. That's when I learned the power of improvisation. I just kept my feet going until the music stopped."

Another valuable lesson came a few years later when Margo needed a little tea and sympathy. "I had some sort of a pain or another and went in to talk to the dance mistress, Miss Ruth. I expected her to say "There, there" and instead I got, in the nicest possible terms, 'Buck up, girlie and dance through your pain. So that's what I did,' " she says.

The now stoic Margo went on to study at the University of Minnesota. She majored in Industrial Psychology, but took advantage of the Dance department's offerings. "There were some phenomenal teachers there," says Margo. "I learned to move with the music, how to interpret tempo and how to work with rhythm and time. There were several instructors who really worked with the dancers on how to be in the moment and be in your body. They worked with us on how to use space, a concept that I like to apply to Middle Eastern dance," she says.

"I also developed a real appreciation of modern dance during that time, something that influences some of the choreographies that I am now creating. Alvin Ailey's work, with its passion, strength and grace, Twyla Tharp's innovations, and Martha Graham's powerful, powerful emotions all resonated with me. I've also come to like Mark Morris's work - he's entertaining, intriguing, and can leave me guessing," Margo says. Margo's been reconnecting to her interest in modern dance as she explores an expanded vocabulary of dance. "My mentors in Middle Eastern dance were all traditionalists and I still enjoy performing traditional dances and Raks aSharqi, especially for Arabic audiences. But Arabic music is in the world, and it is incorporating other influences into its expression and I enjoy being able to do the same in my work," she explains.

Decades ago Isadora Duncan studied ethnic dance as a way to revitalize the dancing of Europe and the United States. She emphasized that the solar plexus was the center of the dancer's power and worked to re-energize the art form. Margo has recently studied Duncan technique and has brought Duncan's philosophy full circle by applying it to Middle Eastern dance. "All those years of floor and abdominal exercises in modern and Middle Eastern dance had a purpose, to develop the power in the dancer's center. However, most of the time I did it because it was fun. I never thought about the theory behind the work. But the results are the same and I used Duncan principles to inspire me to create a choreography to a Natacha Atlas song," says Margo. Atlas, a Belgian born Sephardic Jew who now lives in Egypt, epitomizes the cosmopolitan influences that are shaping modern Arabic music. Her dramatic and powerful songs provide an opportunity to explore new forms of movement within Middle Eastern dance.

"World music succeeds in bridging western and Arabic music and my students respond enthusiastically to this fusion. I want to meld the modern movements with the traditional ones in the same way. Raks asharqi is a cosmopolitan art form borrowing from many cultures and creating an idiom uniquely it's own. The new music coming from the Arabic diaspora provides us an opportunity to enrich this dance's heritage of taking the best from the traditions it encounters."

Initially Margo was hesitant to explore new forms of movement within Middle Eastern dance; pressure for scrupulous authenticity marked the development of Middle Eastern dance in the United States and strongly influenced attitudes towards the dance throughout Margo's professional career. Meeting and watching New York based Elena Lentini created a breakthrough for Margo. "Elena communicates on some spiritual plane. I encountered Elena at a time when I personally could no longer express what I needed to with the vocabulary I had. I was awed by the power of Elena's presentation. She connects to her audience on a visceral level. Elena really gave me permission to break out of the box I was in and to broaden how I thought about and created dances," says Margo.

Students both in Minneapolis and throughout the country at Margo's workshops have enthusiastically embraced the new elements in the choreographies that Margo is now teaching. Margo says "Now, when I choreograph or teach, I am reminded of a Carl Jung quote, 'The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.' In my earlier years as a dancer, I wanted to know as much technique as possible and believed that precisely replicating it was what made for good dancing. The importance of technique or its practice should not be discounted because I believe you need to get to a state of unconscious competence with your technique. That is, that you know it so well that you can produce it without thinking. As I matured in the dance, I realized that the technique itself is not the goal, but the tools needed for creative expression. So now I try to do for my students what wasn't done for me in my developing years, but what Elena Lentini opened up for me later in my career. I don't want them to think in a restricted box about technique. We drill technique, to be sure, yet I encourage them to play with movements, experiment with music, in order to create unique unto themselves. This also speaks to the enjoyment of watching someone perform who is authentically herself, not a replica of another. It also gets to the real reasons most people pursue Middle Eastern dance. Our dance is an enduring journey of body, mind and spirit. The deep roots the dance has in femininity and spirituality is part of what sets it apart from other dance forms. I'm on an indefinable sort of journey and I'm honored that my students and audiences want to see where I am going with it."

— Reprinted with permission, Zaghareet!, North Carolina,
November/December 2001

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