Castellano / English

ORIENTAL FUSION DANCE

ALCHEMY OF MOVEMENTS

Oriental Fusion Dance is the integration of related elements, co-existing in dance with the objective of salving a unique dance, where distinct ancestral energies are combined in a harmonic form. These dances belong to a time long ago, when women would dance to celebrate life, for the sake of honouring their gods, creating odes to survival with their bodies, provoking awakenings of sensations, to communicate and above all, using dance as an instrument to reach immortality.

This alchemy of movements is fruit of the serpentine universe, characteristic for femininity. It talks to us of the infinite movements of the pelvic circle, characteristic for classic Arabic dance, of Roma authenticity and carelessness, the perfect connection between body and mind omnipresent in India, of the vividness of Flamenco dance…

The creation of this innovative dance method pretends to make these ritual and ethnic dance forms accessible.

This dance can bring the Orient closer to the Western world, transcending cultural barriers. Through a coherent fusion of concepts used in ancient dance, it seeks to recover a legacy. Oriental Fusion searches for leftovers of movements apparently lost in time, to reconstruct them and take them into the present, fixing them as the basis of an ever evolving language of dance, which led to the creation of artistic dance, always in motion.

THE CREATOR OF THE LANGUAGE

Patricia Passo, creator of the Oriental Fusion method, is a graduate in Scenic Arts from Rio de Janeiro University. She received her diploma in dance at the ‘Escuela de Danza Contemporánea “Espaço Novo Ángel Vianna”’ where she specialised in Choreographic Creation. She holds a Master’s degree in Theory and Practice of Learning Dance from the Complutense University of Madrid and a Master’s degree in Scenic Arts from the King Juan Carlos University. She is currently preparing her Doctor’s thesis based on research into ethnic movements and their application to her didactic method.

She was brought in touch with Oriental dance through the school of Regina Ferrari in Rio de Janeiro. Once she settled in Spain, she started to study under Shokry Mohamed. Her passion for popular dance, the dance lived in the streets and which conserves its ancestral essence took her on visits to numerous countries in the Near East, where she got to know the people, their gesticular richness and their expressive dances. Her interest in field research made for her to live in India for three months a year. There, she has been studying classical Indian Odissi dance under her teacher Padam S. Cheer in the school of Colleen Shakti, since 2003. The contact with the Roma people of this region made for her to further study Roma dance, travelling to Eastern European countries. Since 2000, she has been taking Flamenco classes at the renowned Madrid school ‘Amor de Dios’.

From her investigations into ethnic dance, and at the foundation of the creation of a fused and innovative language which seeks to coherently integrate several concepts of oriental dance, a necessity was born to give an analytical view of movement, which would allow them to be systematically integrated by the academic world. This manner of teaching and interpreting dance, has enabled the creation of a style which is studied in the Patricia Passo dance centres, in the academic world and in other collaborating centers. Thanks to this systemization, it is possible to offer the oriental dance the benefit of an analytic vision of its movements.

 

Parallel to the didactic efforts of the school, Oriental Fusion dance is performed by the dance group that Patricia Passo choreographes.

Always connected to the academic world, she started her career when she joined the Gama Filho University of Rio de Janeiro as Dance Coordinator. Since 2001, she has been teaching at Carlos III University in Madrid as Oriental Dance teacher. She also teaches a Choreographic Composition course at the Instituto Superior de Danza Alicia Alonso, accredited by the Rey Juan Carlos University in Madrid.

FUSION ELEMENTS

The scacred and the profane of Oriental Dance

The Raks Shakri has conserved the pelvic movements from primitive dance, associated with ancient rites of fertility and abundance. Its form is ondulating, round and infinite, unequivocally related to the feminine universe. The female form is curved, [proceder indirecto], replete with minute details which sometimes can be extremely subtle. The fundamental characteristics of Oriental Dance do not pertain to one single country, its common traits can be found in the Near and Middle East. It has transcended cultural barriers and reached the Western world in the last centuries.

 

The spirituality of Indian dance

Indian classical dance is endowed with a devotional character, elevating its significance from esthetic beauty to a spiritual level. This aspect of ritual dance was never lost in the large time-suspended bubble which is India from time to time. Hinduism itself places dance at the origin of all that exists, and it is at its temples where students are taught dance as a vehicle to communicate with the gods.

The Roma dance trail

Roma dance continuously expresses emotion. Filled with suffering or incredibly festive, they reflect the life philosophy of this ethnic group: living the moment, the here and now, with joy and carelessness. The Roma, in their centuries-long nomadic wanderings, have integrated into their art elements from other peoples since long ago. Thanks to their capability to acquire, adopt and fuse concepts, they have conserved and kept with them pieces of artistic languages which otherwise would have been lost forever.

The hybrid character of Flamenco

Flamenco is a hybrid art form: it was born out of fusion. Though in part Roma dance, it evolved in Spain acquiring elements which gave it distinct characteristics. It is a dance which has reached the academic world, but without losing its essence. It conserves elements from primitive ritual dance: a great importance is given to rounded movements and a polarisation between the upper and lower body.

THE SCHOOL

The school and Oriental Fusion dance company founded by Patricia Passo are made up of dancers and teachers who received their theoretical and practical training in the Oriental Fusion method. We teach and perform throughout Spain and the rest of Europe, as well as countries outside of Europe, like India and Brazil. Our investigative work is made up of theoretic components and field studies, searching for common traits among ethnic dances and fusing them.

 

This website has been made with the intention of making accessible the theoretical ideas of our school to anyone interested in the history of dance and its origins, and the East's contribution to the West. Our studies are an inseparable part of our creative process and our vocabulary of movements. Given the scarcity of available theoretical sources dealing with ethnical dance, it is our wish as a school which is committed to investigation, to make accessible our dance through publications as well as through practical workshops. Oriental Fusion is only taught at our school as an integral part of our curriculum, in specific collaborating dance centers and through locally organized courses, both within Spain as well as internationally.

Related information:

Patricia Passo´s Dance School: www.patriciapasso.com
Videos: www.youtube.com/ciapatriciapasso