OT -- Miles Copeland's Bellydance Superstars
Posted: 13 Feb 2009 21:24Saw this in the local paper today:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... erformance
As manager of the Police and during his subsequent years at the helm of Sting's solo career - not to mention growing up with his CIA agent father - Miles Copeland learned a thing or two about world-domination strategies.
So when impresario Copeland put together his troupe, Bellydance Superstars, he wasn't thinking about booking these women at restaurants in the San Fernando Valley.
"Once I realized dancing was as interesting as the music," said Copeland, "to me, it was even more interesting because you could develop stars. There are no stars in dancing. In a world with no stars, I can make stars. That's fun for me."
Looking like a banker after work in his dark suit and open-neck, button-down shirt, his white hair as straight as straw, Copeland came to town this week to talk about a round of local appearances starting this today at the Napa Valley Opera House by the Superstars.
Aiming to do for the Middle East what "Riverdance" did for Ireland, Copeland comes to his crusade with a deep understanding of the cultural history of belly dance. With his father stationed in Egypt, Syria and other posts - where he helped plot the overthrow of heads of state such as the King Faisal II of Iraq and Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana - Miles Copeland III, 64, grew up in the Middle East and speaks fluent Arabic.
As manager of the Police - a groundbreaking, internationally popular '80s rock trio that included his brother, drummer Stewart Copeland - he broke into the music business with punk rock. He lives in Los Angeles with his Argentine wife and their three teenage boys, although he also keeps a home in London and owns a chateau in France.
Copeland has auditioned more than 3,000 dancers for the troupe he put together in 2002. The Bellydance Superstars have played 600 shows in 20 countries, including 76 U.S. cities. He has taken his dancers to Morocco and Dubai, where natives expressed disbelief that American women could dance so well and so authentically. What's more, Copeland says he thinks the Superstars could help world peace.
"If you're an Arab in America, you keep your head down. There is nothing of yourself to see in the culture. We have become inadvertent ambassadors between these cultures at a time when we're at war."
A vocal opponent of the Iraq war and an "embarrassed Republican," Copeland was brought to the Pentagon three times to advise the Bush administration on propaganda plans in the Middle East, including the notion of filming a Bon Jovi concert in Damascus with the crowd waving tiny American flags. Copeland told them they would be better off filming Arab performers playing before enthusiastic American audiences. At least they canceled the Bon Jovi concert.
The Superstars saga started in Paris, when Copeland heard rai music, a fusion of Arabic and Western music practiced by Algerian musicians. He persuaded Sting to experiment with Arabian music, and the resulting 2000 top 20 hit "Desert Rose" was Sting's last chart single. "That proved to me that Arabian music could work in this country," he says.
He wanted to produce a dance number for a video by Oojami, an Anglo-Turkish band that recorded the album "Bellydancing Breakbeats" for Copeland's Ark 21 label, and was astonished when 180 dancers showed up to compete for his $1,000 prize. He started Bellydance Superstars with three of those dancers. His agent booked the untried troupe for the 2003 Lollapalooza festival, but before the dancers could play that date, the Superstars got another festival offer and made their debut performance before an audience of 100,000 in Bali.
Copeland insisted on eliminating any flagrant sexuality from his show. Although he admits that in some countries belly dancing is associated with prostitution, he says the audience for the Bellydance Superstars in this country is overwhelmingly female.
"When a woman is dancing for women," he says, "you're going to dance a different way than you would if you're dancing for men. We avoid dancers who are overtly sexual because that demeans the art form and takes it in a different way. Beauty - that's what we're selling, and we're selling it to your 6-year-old daughter as well as your 80-year-old grandmother - beauty and the love of dance."
The Superstars bring together in one troupe exponents of both major schools of belly dance: cabaret and tribal. San Francisco is a center for tribal belly dance. The Rakkasah Middle Eastern Dance Festival has been taking place in Richmond for nearly 30 years. Tribal dancers wear extravagant costumes, often with dramatic headpieces; larger jewelry and lots of tattoos. Copeland calls the tribal style "the dark side of belly dance."
Rachel Brice, a tribal-style dancer, comes from San Francisco and is one of the three original members. Sonïa is a Mexican American woman whose athletic routines left Arab audiences breathless. Petite Jamilla is from Alabama. Sabah is a ballet dancer who performs belly dance en pointe, her top half belly dancing while her feet and legs perform classical ballet moves. "I've had ballerinas tell me that's impossible," says Copeland.
Pointing to Madonna and Britney Spears, Copeland says, "Dance is a big thing, but it never had stars."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... erformance
As manager of the Police and during his subsequent years at the helm of Sting's solo career - not to mention growing up with his CIA agent father - Miles Copeland learned a thing or two about world-domination strategies.
So when impresario Copeland put together his troupe, Bellydance Superstars, he wasn't thinking about booking these women at restaurants in the San Fernando Valley.
"Once I realized dancing was as interesting as the music," said Copeland, "to me, it was even more interesting because you could develop stars. There are no stars in dancing. In a world with no stars, I can make stars. That's fun for me."
Looking like a banker after work in his dark suit and open-neck, button-down shirt, his white hair as straight as straw, Copeland came to town this week to talk about a round of local appearances starting this today at the Napa Valley Opera House by the Superstars.
Aiming to do for the Middle East what "Riverdance" did for Ireland, Copeland comes to his crusade with a deep understanding of the cultural history of belly dance. With his father stationed in Egypt, Syria and other posts - where he helped plot the overthrow of heads of state such as the King Faisal II of Iraq and Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana - Miles Copeland III, 64, grew up in the Middle East and speaks fluent Arabic.
As manager of the Police - a groundbreaking, internationally popular '80s rock trio that included his brother, drummer Stewart Copeland - he broke into the music business with punk rock. He lives in Los Angeles with his Argentine wife and their three teenage boys, although he also keeps a home in London and owns a chateau in France.
Copeland has auditioned more than 3,000 dancers for the troupe he put together in 2002. The Bellydance Superstars have played 600 shows in 20 countries, including 76 U.S. cities. He has taken his dancers to Morocco and Dubai, where natives expressed disbelief that American women could dance so well and so authentically. What's more, Copeland says he thinks the Superstars could help world peace.
"If you're an Arab in America, you keep your head down. There is nothing of yourself to see in the culture. We have become inadvertent ambassadors between these cultures at a time when we're at war."
A vocal opponent of the Iraq war and an "embarrassed Republican," Copeland was brought to the Pentagon three times to advise the Bush administration on propaganda plans in the Middle East, including the notion of filming a Bon Jovi concert in Damascus with the crowd waving tiny American flags. Copeland told them they would be better off filming Arab performers playing before enthusiastic American audiences. At least they canceled the Bon Jovi concert.
The Superstars saga started in Paris, when Copeland heard rai music, a fusion of Arabic and Western music practiced by Algerian musicians. He persuaded Sting to experiment with Arabian music, and the resulting 2000 top 20 hit "Desert Rose" was Sting's last chart single. "That proved to me that Arabian music could work in this country," he says.
He wanted to produce a dance number for a video by Oojami, an Anglo-Turkish band that recorded the album "Bellydancing Breakbeats" for Copeland's Ark 21 label, and was astonished when 180 dancers showed up to compete for his $1,000 prize. He started Bellydance Superstars with three of those dancers. His agent booked the untried troupe for the 2003 Lollapalooza festival, but before the dancers could play that date, the Superstars got another festival offer and made their debut performance before an audience of 100,000 in Bali.
Copeland insisted on eliminating any flagrant sexuality from his show. Although he admits that in some countries belly dancing is associated with prostitution, he says the audience for the Bellydance Superstars in this country is overwhelmingly female.
"When a woman is dancing for women," he says, "you're going to dance a different way than you would if you're dancing for men. We avoid dancers who are overtly sexual because that demeans the art form and takes it in a different way. Beauty - that's what we're selling, and we're selling it to your 6-year-old daughter as well as your 80-year-old grandmother - beauty and the love of dance."
The Superstars bring together in one troupe exponents of both major schools of belly dance: cabaret and tribal. San Francisco is a center for tribal belly dance. The Rakkasah Middle Eastern Dance Festival has been taking place in Richmond for nearly 30 years. Tribal dancers wear extravagant costumes, often with dramatic headpieces; larger jewelry and lots of tattoos. Copeland calls the tribal style "the dark side of belly dance."
Rachel Brice, a tribal-style dancer, comes from San Francisco and is one of the three original members. Sonïa is a Mexican American woman whose athletic routines left Arab audiences breathless. Petite Jamilla is from Alabama. Sabah is a ballet dancer who performs belly dance en pointe, her top half belly dancing while her feet and legs perform classical ballet moves. "I've had ballerinas tell me that's impossible," says Copeland.
Pointing to Madonna and Britney Spears, Copeland says, "Dance is a big thing, but it never had stars."