THE ASSIUT QUEEN

 Assiut Queen Dawn Devine aka Davina: Photo by Alisha Westerfield

Quite a few dancers can brag about having a career  that spans a quarter of a century, but not that many of them can also claim concurrent and wildly  successful careers  as costumers,  art historians and  authors! The multi-talented  Davina, aka Dawn Devine  can…only thing is, she doesn’t gloat about it, she’s  much too  nice – and busy- for that sort of thing. Easy-going, sweet and funny, Davina is so understated about her vast accomplishments, that even if you know her, they might surprise you!

Dawn has so many college degrees, they practically form their own alphabet, and in addition to performing and teaching belly dancing and costuming classes throughout the USA, she also has numerous museums show credits.  She is an expert on antique textiles  (especially Assiut, but more on that in a minute!)  Victorian clothing, and vintage couture, with many lecturing engagements under her tasseled hip belt.  She also   a slew of informative, instructional   costuming books to her credit, including Embellished Bras, Costuming from the Hip, From Turban to Toe Ring, Bedlah, Baubles and Beads and Style File.

Rayah wears a vintage assiut shawl from the collection of Judeen Esau.  This gorgeous piece has a rich blue groundcloth and a golden hue to the metal.  Photo by Alisha Westerfeld

 As anyone who knows her can attest, Dawn is a walking encyclopedia on anything concerning belly dance costuming, but her favorite subject, and most enduring obsession is Assiut, the gorgeous traditional net and metal fabric named for the    Egyptian city of the same name.  All belly dancers, no matter what their preferred style, are in love with Assiut.  Spotting a vintage piece of Assiut on eBay causes dancers to bid like maniacs, eager to  part with their rent money. Merely mentioning it  on social media causes comments like “I’m drooling all over my keyboard!”  And in real life, a shawl of vintage Assuit at a flea market has been known to induce catfights.

 Davina’s  own Assiut mania began this way:

“My love story began in a crowded antique store, filled with dusty cases holding tumults of vintage items. I turned and looked across a crowded room and my life changed.  In an instant the rest of the world disappeared and I only had eyes for one thing. My love story began in a crowded antique store, filled with dusty cases holding tumults of vintage items.  There were jewelry pieces and objects d’art. There were trinkets and baubles, the day-to-day objects that populated the lives of our ancestors, 60, 80, 100 years ago.  But there, draped gently over the edge of a photo frame, and laid delicately across a shelf was my beauty.  She was creamy and soft, with pewter-toned metal stitches.  It was Assiut, and it was going to be mine!”

 

                        1920's French silent screen actress Stacia Napierkowska in Assiut

 Since that fateful moment, she’s been hooked on Assiut, also known as tulle bi telli.  It became a hobby, moved into a personal mania phase, and then, it took over her life! Now, she’s spreading the love- and her vast knowledge.

Davina’s latest book, done with  photographer and belly dancer Alisha Westerfield,  The Cloth of Egypt: All About Assiut was just published.  The book is gigantic, highly informative, impeccably researched, and loaded with incredible  vintage photos of Assuit, as well as step-by-step instructions  for fabricating costumes.

Even before the book was a glimmer in her eye, Davina   spent years researching Assuit, not to mention fabricating high-end, custom-made costumes for herself and many other dancers.

She says,

“I committed myself to a massive interdisciplinary research project with one simple mission, find out everything there is to know about the cloth we call Assiut or tulle bi telli.  The result of years of research, months of writing, crafting hundreds of costumes, dozens of photo shoots, is my new book “The Cloth of Egypt: All About Assiut.” 

 In honor of the book’s publication, Davina has  complied a list of facts on Assiut exclusively for this blog, here it is:

1 - Assiut is made from cotton.  Frequently, antique Assiut is labeled as silk, linen, or a blend, but the truth is that vintage Assiut cloth is made from finely spun, high-twist Egyptian cotton.  

2 - Assiut can be spelled in a myriad of ways.  Arabic cannot be easily translated, so rather, it’s transliterated by ear from spoken Arabic to written English, with British and Americans sounding out the words and writing them down phonetically.  This leads to more than 50 spelling variations.

3 - Most people know that the phrase tulle bi telli means “mesh with metal”... but few know that this is a marriage of three languages.  Tulle is from the name of the lace-making capital of France.  Telli is from Turkish word Tel, which means metal.  Bi is “with” in Arabic. 

4 - Assiut is a single-stitch embroidery technique.  The stitch is made with flattened metal wire called plate, and the stitch is made using a blunt tipped double-eyed needle. 

5 – Antique Assiut cloth was made by the thousands of yards and was considered the essential souvenir for travelers down the Nile during the British occupation of Egypt.  British, American, Russian, French, And Italian women all collected and coveted Assiut cloth for it’s supple drape and metallic gleam. 

6 - Vintage Assiut pieces come in three sizes.  Scarves, narrow enough to wrap around the neck, head or hat to keep flies, gnats and mosquitos off of the face.  Shawl sizes, which were designed to be worn as wraps about the shoulder, were wide enough to envelop the body, but short enough to be easily handled by the wearer.  Opera wrap or piano shawl size, which was the longest and widest, designed to fit over a grand piano, or to wrap around the body, and still have enough left to elegantly drag along the ground, a shimmering train of exotic abundance.

7 - Modern Assiut should be pounded or rolled to press down the individual stitches.   Machine wash on gentle and tumble dry low in a mesh lingerie bag to keep the stitches from catching, and pulling.  Vintage Assiut should always be hand washed and dried as flat as possible.

8 - Assiut is associated with weddings in Upper Egypt. Some of the most popular motifs are directly related to wedding symbology. Camel figures with plants, stars, or even stylized men, represent the groom.  The female figures, often holding hands, or with arms raised, represent the bride and her bridal party.  Other common images that appear in Assiut wedding shawls include combs, for preparing the brides hair, perfume bottles for anointing her body, and diamonds, protective shapes with talismanic properties to protect the bride on her special day.

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Purchase a copy of “The Cloth Of Egypt: All About Assiut” here:

http://www.amazon.com/Cloth-Egypt-About-Assiut-Assuit/dp/069227054X/

 

The book's cover: I'm wearing an Assiut bra made by Davina & a pre-1919 white Assiut shawl
Photo by Alisha Westerfield

ATTITUDE AND GRATITUDE

Baby kitty Carmen,  my little "street tiger"

I'm home from my 2014 travels, and mistakenly made the assumption that things would quiet down a  bit... WRONG!  Aside from finally unpacking my on-the-road suitcases,  my house was a wreck cause I'd been away   about four weekends a month  for the past three months.  And, unexpectedly,  after  my two beloved senior citizen kitties Smudgie ( age 21) and Ni-Ni, (age 14) passed away within a month of each other, I was blessed with two tiny baby kittens!  They are  little  feral "street tigers", a brother and a sister, who have been rescued,  tamed and are now living in the lap of luxury in the Royal Palace. Beeper and Carmen are a handful, but they are amazing!   I am so blseed to have them,  The Universe brought them to me at the most perfect time ever. And  now that I'm home for a while,  we can bond even more and  I can watch them grow. 

On one of their crazy "let's chase each other around the house" moments, they knock a diary of mine from off a shelf. I had to page through it, and was kinda amazed at what I found. The diary covered a trip to Egypt from 1991.  In addition to Arabic translation of commonly used words and glue-in tickets from Luxor Temple and The Sphinx, there was a gratitude list.  I didn't even know I was thinking that way back then, but apparently I was!

  Just some of the things included on the list were  ( obviously) colored by my trip to Egypt, like  "I am thankful I can travel", "I am grateful that I can read" "I have a  a healthy, strong body" and, funnily enough, "I am grateful for modern conveniences"... yeah, I'll say!

 But there were many, many more. And there was also a list  on how to out-flow energy  and love to  people, things like " Keep a good attitude, try to be optimistic and positive, look on the bright side" ,  "Be helpful and supportive to other people", and " Communicate  as much as possible;  if I love someone or something, I will say it. If I am not happy with someone or something,  or find anything unsatisfactory, I will say that too but in a kind  and positive way".

  Seriously, I do not remember being so enlightened... but I guess I was, even back then.  For the past   fifteen years or so,  I've made lists like this  at the year's end, or whenever I thought I needed to count my blessings.

Since Thanksgiving is approaching, I made a Dance List of everything I am thankful for.

Dancing literally changed my life. On top of the “usual” benefits, like giving me a strong, toned, flexible body, the emotional and spiritual impact dancing has had upon me is so significant, I can hardly put it into words. In my writing, I am usually a confirmed abuser of the exclamation point, but the amount of punctuation I would need to apply in this case is boundless, so I will spare you.

From the age of three, I wanted to dance, but for many reasons (the foremost being a ballet teacher who rejected me at an early age because my feet were flat ) dancing wasn’t in the cards for me until  well after I had already reached adulthood.

Maybe I had a karmic debt to pay, maybe my life just unfolded the way it was supposed to, but I came to belly dancing fairly late in life, after the age of thirty. Though I still sometimes wish I had been able to study dance since childhood, I no longer feel robbed, or the regret I used to experience about not having been a life-long dancer; now I am just thrilled with the way things turned out!

Mere months after I began belly dancing-almost as a lark- my life did a full 360 degree turn-around. Instead of picking my body (and all the individual parts) to pieces by visually and physically comparing myself to unrealistic and “ideal” images in the media, I began to love my body for the way it looked while I was dancing. Soon, that sentiment morphed into simply loving my body. As I developed more skill, I began to be grateful for what my body could do.

Dancing also helped me quit some very self-destructive behaviors I had for decades: substance abuse and an eating disorder. A hardcore bulimic for years, my love of dancing helped me cultivate a healthy relationship with food…and need I tell you that it’s impossible to dance for hours with a hangover or while high? Suddenly, I had a choice to make and I picked dancing over controlled substances and being unhealthy.

Dancing helped me get through-and over- a painful divorce. The feminine energy and sisterhood I felt with other dancers was healing and gave me hope. I see this theme repeated with many other dancers, and I hope I can pass this feeling on to others.

Belly dancing also lead me to other forms of dance, and  for that, I am eternally grateful. It’s what directly lead to my career in burlesque, not to mention studying and performing other types of dance as well, like jazz, ballet, Bollywood, samba, contemporary, hip-hop and many other genres. Whenever my schedule ( or my creaky ole body) allows, I take dance classes.

Dancing has also allowed me to meet thousands of incredible, beautiful, intelligent and talented women the world over… that I may never have met normally during the course of my everyday life. Through dancing, I have made life-long friends with many strong women of all ages, shapes and sizes who are veritable super-heroines; they are giving, driven,  talented, and usually very witty to boot.

I’ve met dancers who are emergency room nurses, teachers, criminal attorneys, children’s advocates, speech therapists, accountants, trauma counselors, ranchers, authors, film festival curators, architects, coal miners, political activists, rock stars, explosives technicians, police women, sitcom actors, college professors with PhD’s… not to mention mothers, grandmothers and even great-grandmothers…and all of them are serious dancers!

I am thankful that I live in a country where women are free to dress as they please, to dance for joy-or professionally if they choose- and where dancing is considered an art-form.

Every day I give thanks that dancing, something I have always done only for love is also what I do for work, and how I make a living. I never take this for granted, sometimes I have to pinch myself to make sure my life is real. When I walked into my first belly dancing class, if anyone would have told me that within a fairly short time I was going to turn professional-not to mention have a career  over twenty years later- I would’ve laughed so uproariously, the walls of the studio would’ve blown apart!

My dance career – my performing and teaching- has taken me all over the globe and I have loved every moment of it. It was a far-fetched wish, and that wish came true. The only thing I might add here (and believe me, my tongue is firmly planted in my cheek!) is the old adage about “being careful what you wish for”. Had I known that my wish was actually going to come true, I probably would’ve added in a clause allowing me to have a luggage valet and a personal massage therapist travel with me!

I am so thankful for all the wonderful women who have sponsored me to teach and perform. Sponsors are super-human, and in addition to paying for my travel, feeding me, housing me, fulfilling my backstage requests, and staying up til the wee hours talking shop, many of them have also gone wa-a-a-ay above and beyond the call of duty. They have taken me sight-seeing, brought me to amazing shows, given me gorgeous gifts, taken me hot-tubbing, booked me massages- even brought me to the emergency room, or dealt with my tearful grief when I was thousands of miles away from home and my beloved kitten disappeared. You ladies know who you are, thank you so very much! In general, my sponsors have gone so far out of their out of their way to make me feel comfortable when I am on the road, I cannot thank them enough; most of them have become life-long friends.

I am very grateful for my teachers and dance-mentors, women  ( and men!) who were dancing professionally long before I even  thought of starting to dance…all of whom were very generous with sharing their knowledge of not only technique, but also practical application, not to mention costuming ideas, crowd-control skills and career- building know-how.

My students, whether on-going pupils or one-time workshop attendees, make me feel such gratitude, I can’t even verbalize it. I learn something new from them every day!  The  drummers  and musicians I’ve worked with  are amazing and  love what they do… and  aside from learning a lot from them,   I love them for  caring, cause our shows have always been fabulous!

I would like to thank The Audience too- where would any dancer be without you? There is almost nothing more fulfilling than hearing an appreciative audience and seeing smiling faces in a darkened theater, just ask any performer! And of course,  all the behind-the-scenes people, those who never get enough thanks, like the artful  lighting and sound technicians,  all the harried- but unbelievably competent stage managers ( many of whom  are volunteers)  the  talented photographers and graphic artists I’ve worked with….and of course,  my long-suffering  friends and my boyfriend; all patiently waiting  for me to:

  a) get off stage  b) get my bag  packed up  c) stop talking about dancing!

Last but not least, I also gotta say that I am so very grateful for having a job that has the best, most amazing “uniform” EVER- what could be better than a blinged-out costume?

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you and yours!

Baby kitty Beeper helping  to organize my Belly Dance Handbook orders!

 In honor of the Holidays,  and to say  thanks to you,  I’m having a Thanksgiving-through-Monday, Dec 1  sale…  my  books "The Belly Dance Handbook" and  "Showgirl Confidential", and the new BaLAdi Tour CD by Issam Houshan will be on sale for big  discounts here:

http://www.princessfarhana.com/shop.html

SMALL FRY: DANCING FOR CHILDREN

 In the past month, I’ve gotten two of the best tips I’ve ever received in over two decades of belly dancing.  They  weren’t  crisp hundred dollar bills,  large bouquets of flowers or earrings made of 14 karat gold… though I’ve been lucky enough to get all of those and more. One of the tips was a grubby Sponge Bob  pencil eraser, tucked into my belt by a five year old boy. The other was a small piece of pita bread offered by a toddler, who was imitating  the  behavior of the adults around him.

Children are the best audiences ever- they’re my  favorite audience!

 Throughout my career, I’ve danced for thousands of kids.  I often joke that most of my biggest fans are the smallest people- kids under the age of  ten- but it’s true! When I tell people I love dancing for kids, sometimes they look at me oddly… for a couple of reasons.

First is that in addition to performing straight-ahead Egyptian-style belly dance, within the belly dance community, I have become known for  my fusion performances, and some of them have been considered very controversial.  But I never  perform anything other than  family-style show unless I know for sure that there will not be children present.

Second, outside of the  belly dance world, many well-educated people still  fall prey to the usual  stereotypes, marginalizing our art as either a seductive ritual or cheesy novelty.  Whether male or female, I can literally see their  “civilian” brains  going into over-drive, conjuring up  images straight out of a  Sinbad or James Bond movie.  They imagine me doing “The Dance Of The Seven Veils” in shadowy, smoke-filled hashish den while leering villains in ornate turbans throw solid gold coins, making plans to carry me away on their flying carpets to a life of slavery in an exotic harem…yeah, right!

I explain something that probably doesn’t need to be clarified here: in  Middle Eastern and North African cultures, the movements of belly dancing are performed by non-professionals as a an integral part of weddings, family gatherings and baby christenings, and women’s parties. When they hear I, like most belly dancers, usually do shows for families, including children, their jaws drop a few inches.

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Since I am still  the featured performer in  the same restaurant that gave me my very first job  almost twenty-five years ago, I not only dance for children on a regular basis, but I’ve have had the extraordinary privilege and pleasure of seeing a good portion of my audience grow up, go to college, get married and have their own kids! It’s impossible to estimate the amount of autographs I’ve signed on paper napkins, and for years my refrigerator has been plastered with primitive crayon portraits  and misspelled fan letters painstakingly written in block letters.

Children are the world’s most pure and unsullied audience, and that goes for every kind of performing art.  They don’t need any sort of suspension of disbelief to be moved by a belly dance show, they are happy enough with a swirling pastiche of dancing women, sparkly costumes, loud music and excitement. Children simply  don’t have the pre-conceived notions that adults do, they  just love being entertained. They know nothing of sexualized stereotypes or judgments that have to do with weight, age, racial  or cultural  prejudice.  They let out wild squeals of unbridled joy the moment a dancer appears.  Not only that, because of their candor, kids will often left you know exactly what they’re thinking.

Due to  “truth factor” in relations with kiddies, sometimes the biggest obstacle for me when I’m interacting with or performing for the small set is to stop myself from bursting into laughter because of their totally logical yet completely innocent observations!  As the Sixties-era television host Art Linkletter used to declare, “Kids say the darndest things”.  Thanks to Walt Disney, I’ve been called Princess Jasmine more times than I can count, but some of the exchanges I’ve had left me laughing for days.

I remember a seven-year-old girl who visited me in my dressing room after a show one night. While she played with my finger cymbals, she very regretfully told me that she could never be a belly dancer because she didn’t have “those round things or those black things”.

  I told her that those “round things” were called finger cymbals and explained that anyone, even she, could have them because they were a belly dance accoutrement that anyone could purchase.

“ But I still don’t have those black things,” she sighed forlornly, shaking her head.

“What black things do you mean?” I asked, utterly confused.

 Rolling her eyes as though I was the stupidest person on earth, she pointed directly to my false eyelashes. When I told her that they were fake, just a part of my stage make-up, and explained how they were applied, she leaned in very close to me, cocked her head

towards the dining room and whispered conspiratorially,

“Everybody out there thinks they’re real!”

 Standing costumed in a hallway just after a show, a little charmer of about five gave the once-over to my sword partner Samra and me and observed,

 “You guys look just like genies… but with legs!”

It took us a moment to realize that she meant legs…. as opposed to the smoke rising from a magic lamp!

 Another time, a little boy ( the nephew of another dancer I worked with frequently) burst into our dressing room to visit us before we went on. Unaccustomed to seeing his aunt in costume, he  stared at our Egyptian finery with his mouth hanging open in shock and exclaimed,

 “Hey, where’d you guys get the all the diamonds?”

 And speaking of being an aunt, I discovered that my baby niece Olivia  had definitely gotten the belly dance gene.

 When she was a toddler, her vocabulary only consisted of an only few words…or so we thought. One night she shocked our entire family with her first full sentence.  As I walked into the room, she cheerfully greeted from her high chair with:

“Hi Auntie-big earrings!”

 Visiting Disneyland when she was three, we almost got kicked off  “ It’s A Small World.” As our boat floated by the Middle Eastern countries, she jumped to her feet, scrambled on top of the bench, pointed at a veiled mannequin and screamed,

“It’s my Auntie!”

 As if on cure, the ride ground to a halt, the music cut out, and a booming voice came over the loudspeaker,

“THE CHILD MUST SIT DOWN!”

 Olivia’s obsession with the dance continued to grow as she did. We’re  talkin’ about a little girl who got elaborate hand made mini-costumes for every birthday…but somehow, it just wasn’t enough.   We were spending   a cool spring afternoon together, about to go to her favorite park.  As I went to another room to get our jackets, she pouted obstinately,

“I DON’T WANNA GO TO THE SWINGS!”

   I was about to placate her the way one normally would with a four year old, but   almost had a heart attack as I re-entered the room.  She stood in the middle of the living room, completely naked… except for one of my rhinestone tiaras sitting askew on her head. Her play clothes lay in a heap at her feet.  In each hand, she held an unsheathed sword- my full-sized, heavy, sharp scimitars. They were bigger than she was, and she swung them around dangerously.

“I just wanna stay here and play dress up with you!” she whimpered.

Feeling my face drain of color, I cajoled, 

“ Ok, sure honey! Whatever you want! Can you put the swords down for Auntie? “

Once, at a wedding, a little girl of about nine  asked if I was really and truly a princess.

 “Why of course I am,” I answered, not wanting to wreck the illusion.

Growing skeptical, hands on hips, she asked me to prove it.

I knew what would verify my claim. Unbelievably, the California DMV allowed me to pose for my driver’s license photo while wearing a large  rhinestone tiara. When I whipped this out of my wallet as “proof” of my royal lineage, she gasped sharply, her eyes widening as she meekly asked,

“ Do you live in a real castle? Can I visit you?”

 Backpedaling quickly, told her that when I was “visiting” California, I lived in a regular house, just like everybody else.

 Far and away one of my most cherished memories is of Timmy, a Canadian four- year- old whom I met while he was in LA with his family, visiting relatives. Timmy fell in love with me at first sight. He swooned as he watched me pass by in costume, and scrawled illegible love notes to me on placemats, which he sent to my dressing room via a very patient waiter.

When I came out to dance, his eyes bugged out of his head. He grabbed fistfuls of his own hair, held a hand over his mouth as if to stifle a scream, and bounced uncontrollably in his seat. He snatched dollars from his mom and ardently stuffed them into my belt, and when he ran out of his own money, he picked it up off the floor as well as personally soliciting it from diners at other tables, much to their amusement.

 Later in the evening, his apologetic mom asked if I would dance once more, as he’d been pestering her throughout the entire meal, asking if I would perform again.

 Of course, I obliged. When the music started, his excited squeals could be heard throughout the entire restaurant.  Making my entrance, I decided to make him feel special by draping my veil around his tiny shoulders. The moment I did this, he let out an earth-shattering shriek that could probably be heard down the block and then he yelled,

“MOMMY! THE LADY LET ME HOLD HER BLANKET!

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 Purchase a signed copy of “The Belly Dance Handbook”  by Princess Farhana   here:

http://www.princessfarhana.com/shop.htm

Photo & design by Maharet Hughes/ Graphic Vibe LA