Mongolian dance

Today in my Advanced World Dance class, we had visitors from China. They are a dance group that specializes in Mongolian dance. To be honest, I was not excited about it, but I ended up enjoying being with them!

I was late for class, so I missed their performance at the beginning of class (dang it!). When I got there, we were paired up with a dancer who would teach us a dance. I thought they were going to teach the class as a whole, but as it turned out, it was a one-on-one instruction with a dancer! Even better!

I was paired up with a girl named Ashley. That's her English name. Her Chinese name was long.. something like "Qing-something". She was really nice and friendly! It was amazing how she barely spoke English and yet she managed to teach me Mongolian dance. This shows that the language of dance is universal. She would show me the steps, and I would imitate her. She did not let me get away with incorrect styling! She was particular about how my body moved and how I placed my arms. What stood out to me is that the movements were very graceful.

She taught me how to do what I would call the "Mongolian shimmy". It's basically a shimmy, but you it's only your shoulders that move. It's not as easy as it sounds! She also showed me that the movements mean something, like drinking of the soup. She showed me videos and pictures of her group performing, and it was way awesome. Mongolian dance is very calm and refreshing, although it is precise and particular. She also taught me a ram dance! The name pretty much says what it's like: it depicts a ram. The dance was funny, but it actually ended up being my favorite dance. We didn't have a lot of time to work on it though!

For a while, I thought that the dance that she was teaching me was also done by men (you know, I was eliminating my ethnocentrism). Then, I looked over to the guys in my class who were paired up with male dancers. They were doing.. uh.. manly dances. That's when I realized that I was learning the girls' dance. Which makes sense, because the dances that Ashley taught me were very feminine. I initially thought that in Mongolia, graceful movement was not associated with femininity. Oh well, I still had a great time being graceful. I just hoped that I could remember everything!

The graceful movements of Mongolian dance actually reminded me of Muslim dances found in Southern Philippines. They have the same flowing movements of the arms and much symbolism attached to it. I was a little surprised to find this out, thinking that there would be some similarity between our dance and theirs. Yes, I know, Mongolia and the Philippines are both in Asia and are not too far from each other. I just thought that it was too far to have similarities between our dances. Well, I learned something new!

I don't have pictures to prove it! Maybe I'll ask some people from my class if they have pictures. In the meantime, I have a midterm tomorrow. So goodbye for now!