Amara Al Amir "MEDLS" MOTHER/DAUGHTER LEGACY AWARD 2009

The following is an article published on Amara Al Amir's website in conjunction with being awarded, along with my mother belly dancer Johanna, the Mother/Daughter Legacy for 2009.

The article mentions just some of the many interesting experiences we have had over the years in the world of belly dance from the old "Greektown" NYC and environs of my childhood and beyond.

Enjoy!

"Aziza and Johanna: The Lost Stars of Belly Dance"
By Amara Al Amir

They say that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree and perhaps one of the best examples I’ve heard of is the fascinating story of “Aziza and Johanna.” Who are “Aziza and Johanna”? Just two “lost” stars of the great heyday of New York belly dance.
Actually, Johanna’s first dance impulse came from her Appalachian heritage. As a child in Charleston, WV Johanna had tap danced while her violinist father James “patted” out the rhythms with his hands in the “old style.”

Johanna began belly dancing around 1961 at the urging of fellow "Alexandro's Studio" regular Carol Dinicu, who had just started her belly dance career as "Morocco." Both girls had been in Flamenco, and Johanna and her first husband Bill, had also been in Ballet, Tap and Adagio in their own act which toured the U.S. As ballet dancers, Johanna and Bill were in The Charleston Ballet (WV) and the Dade Ballet (Miami) and were often given scholarships to study with the masters of Ballet and Flamenco. Their Flamenco "Masters" included Paco Cansino (Rita Hayworth's uncle), Juan Martinez and Antonita, Tony Alba, and Lola Bravo. They even studied ballet with Gavrilov, Vaslav Nijinsky’s understudy.

In "Mid East Dance", Johanna found a special niche, and was the first dancer from “Greektown” to found a dance company on the outside devoted to this genre. Founded around the time of the 1964 World’s Fair in NYC, "Johanna's Oasis Ballet," which also featured her husband, now called "Turhan", dancer "Aiyupa," Turkish Albanian oud virtuoso "Baba Ajdin Aslan," and Turkish singing star/recording artist Lutfi Guneri helped to fill the desire of Americans to experience ethnic folk dance at its best.The “Moiseyev” company and the “Dancers of Bali” were just some of the ethnic dance companies during this period to enjoy great success with the American public when they came here on tour. The love of “variety” was still a part of American culture at this time.

All members of "Oasis" danced and sang in different languages, and enjoyed great success with Americans and foreigners alike, starred in "Tayoun's Mahrajan" in NJ, Waldorf Astoria "Ball of the Year" and other events around the Northeast. "Oasis" was set to perform in Indonesia at the special request of the Sukarno Government and tour Japan when it disbanded suddenly due to the sad dissolution of Johanna and Turhan's marriage. Johanna and Turhan gave one final performance as a duo at the "Paradise Oriental Restaurant" in early 1967. They had started up the occasional belly dance nights there as it had not had any before they initiated it. Aziza says, "As a last "hurrah" they did their specialty adagio: Turhan is a flute playing snake charmer. The audience expects a real snake to show up. Instead, Johanna arrives as the snake. The Greeks, at that time afraid of real snakes, were breathless, then broke out in cheers when Johanna made her appearance. Turhan, at first not wanting to do the show, in the end was glad that he did." Johanna and Turhan had been married for 17 years and Johanna took the loss of her partner hard. Says Aziza, "The company was let down by what he did and it was a waste as he was very talented. Aiyupa stuck to my mother like glue in her hour of need. A man that Turhan worked with in his day job as a printer even came to the "Grecian Palace" to try to convince Johanna to forgive Turhan but the bitterness was too much for her. I think they were a beautiful couple and dance team and it's too bad they couldn't have continued at least a few more years."
In fact, it is little known today that Ibrahim Farrah’s first seeds of inspiration for his own dance company and career came when he saw an exhibit of “Oasis” photos at the University of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia. Johanna was commended by their dance department for her “important work in the field of Middle Eastern Dance.” Seeing Turhan’s strong role in the company as dancer, singer, drummer and oud player, Farrah said that it was then that “he realized that a man could make it in the business.”

Johanna raised Aziza as a single parent. Aziza’s father, recording artist/actor/singer Samir Al-Tawil had left before the child was even born, but Aziza and Johanna had strong ties in the Arabic Community of Brooklyn and the “Greektown” scene in Manhattan and they were certainly not alone. It was in this loving atmosphere that Aziza rose above the sad situation of her entry into this world and learned to shine through dance. While pregnant Johanna had played the darbucky for a party at her friend Serena’s studio and had attended a Flamenco concert. Aziza had kicked Johanna so hard in the womb at the concert, Johanna had to leave-the pain was so great. She says she knew her daughter would be a dancer, too. Her kicks, Johanna says, were in “perfect” rhythm.

Avram Grobard, of the “Feenjon,” was inadvertently responsible for Aziza’s first public foray into dance. When Aziza was ten months old, Johanna’s friend, belly dancer “Turkan,” took Johanna and Aziza to Avram’s own nightclub The El Avram in Greenwich Village. The children that Turkan brought with them were loud and Avram, never a man to mince words, threw them out of his establishment. The party, which included Turkan’s little boy and niece now moved a few doors away to another club where a black man was playing Calypso guitar on a little stage bathed in a blue spotlight. Taken with seeing Aziza dancing to the music on a chair at their table, the man asked Johanna to put Aziza up on the stage with him. She did and Aziza danced to the accompaniment of the man they would forever refer to as “The Blue Man.”

Two months later, when Aziza was one year old, Johanna was booked at “The Parthenon” in Houston. After arriving, like a tale straight out of Vaudeville, little Aziza was “discovered” by the manager of "The Parthenon.” After seeing Aziza rush up onto the stage and start dancing during Johanna’s “run-through” with the band, the manager insisted that Johanna make her a costume so he could put her in the show. Johanna thought he was kidding, but after pestering her continually with, “Is her costume ready?” Johanna finally relented and found supplies to make the child a costume at nearby stores.Aziza’s first veil was just a nylon ladies scarf from a dime store.

Each night in Houston, the audience was entertained and amazed by the little diapered dancer. Johanna had guided Aziza about the order of her act, but many of her moves came from within, and what she had seen her mother and others do in the clubs. It was “Monkey see-Monkey do!” Johanna says of her daughter. Her moves included, hip sways, shimmies, spins, veil work, and darbucky and tambourine playing. A Houston area jeweler gave Aziza her first gifts from fans. At age two, Aziza picked up a pair of her mothers finger cymbals, put them on, closed the lid of a wooden “baby potty” and climbed onto it like a little stage and started playing them and dancing. “Johanna was really freaked out by me at this point!” Aziza jokes.

Johanna jokes that she traveled the country with “14 suitcases and a baby” and says, “I don’t know how we survived!” In the early 70’s Johanna decided to do “seminars/workshops” in Charleston, WV as well as NYC, so she could visit her widowed mother there. In fact, a group of ladies from the St. George Syrian Orthodox Church in Charleston were responsible for that when they specially requested that Johanna be hired in town as they were disappointed in a class that was started up by someone who wasn't a belly dancer and knew nothing about it. Johanna says "Someone was teaching majorette type routines to Tony Orlando and Dawn's "Sweet Gypsy Rose." The Syrian ladies were horrified and exclaimed, "That's not belly dancing!" We ended up with five hundred students during a years stay in Charleston and many West Virginia dancers were "born." Other dancers that had cars took what they learned from Johanna and spread it throughout rural areas of WV, KY, PA and OH. Johanna laughs, "They had cars-and as a New Yorker I didn't, so I stuck to Charleston!" Some of Johanna's WV pupils had as many as a thousand students in rural areas. "West Virginia had a great vibe for belly dance in those days. We are happy to see one of our pupils, "Alexandria" of Beckley is still at it" Aziza says proudly.

Johanna was still a popular “Greektown NYC” dancer and they were still entrenched in that scene when not on the road. By age six Aziza was working gigs with Johanna’s old business associate “Baba” Ajdin Aslan as her personal accompanist on oud. Aziza remembers "Baba" fondly as a "great musician whose style was very heavy rhythmically." She also says that he was "a sweet man who often looked pained because of his tragic life." She relates, "Baba had a large music store with a full line of musical instruments in Greektown back in the 1920's but it was burgled. It turned out that the Greek insurance man he'd been paying was a fraud and he lost everything. His two sons were killed in a bicycle accident and his wife also died. Baba was a survivivor, though. He had two more stores in Greektown NYC over the years. Johanna and I also sold costumes out of his shop. This guy could even play a song from the ancient kingdom of Lydia-he was such an expert on the music. He died sometime in the late 70's. We miss his friendship even today."

Farouk and Inci Fenik of the Turkish Tourism Board and Airlines in NYC asked Johanna and Aziza to appear on their “Turkish Voice” TV show which broadcast in NY, NJ, PA and Ankara, Turkey. Aziza appeared on the show from age six through thirteen and was deeply admired by the Feniks. For Aziza’s last appearance on the show she danced to Marko Melkon’s fast version of “Hanoum Oyono,” and they did a retrospective of her past appearances. “The TV station had a bad habit of taping over previous shows and by this time they had already lost my first clip. I have no idea if any footage remains of this wonderful show today. Many stars from the world of belly dance at the time appeared on this program.” Co-stars on the show over the years included Johanna, Jemile Biljin, Siri, Alexandra and Farhat Alpar, singing star "Princess Cihan Isik" of Turkey and Iraq, and Professor Talat S. Halman, Ambassador of Culture from Turkey to the UN at the time and a distinguished poet and translator. “They even used to show old Turkish movies in serialized form. I remember how neat it was to see a Turkish version of “Fiddler on the Roof!”
Aziza has many funny stories to tell of her childhood. “Eddie Kochak was one of the artists that Johanna sold records to her students for and he had been a friend of hers since her beginning in Greektown. One day my mother said we were, “Going to go see Eddie Kochak!” and I got excited. I thought she said we were going to go see “Kojak,” the TV character played by Telly Savalas. I thought “Kojak” would say to me “Who loves ya baby?” and offer me one of his signature lollipops! I was surprised when we reached Eddie’s office and I didn’t see the Greek TV star I had anticipated but instead saw an old Lebanese drummer! Ha! I said, “You’re not Kojak!” which probably floored him. He gave me one of those little Joyva sesame candies instead of a lollipop to ease my pain.
One time, Johanna and Aziza were doing a Karsilama together on stage in a club, when one of the musicians exclaimed, “Those girls are going to be jealous of each other!” Another musician added in wonder, “Well I heard one of them call the other one “Mother”!”

Johanna had been Aristotle Onassis’ favorite dancer, was the first dancer in “Greektown NYC” to dance with “Kashik” (wooden spoons), to dance with a firepot on her head, to dance with multiple veils, to play her cymbals on water glasses, and the first dancer to be featured in an article in Dance Magazine “On the Gypsy Circuit,” but by the late 1970’s early 1980’s single parenthood had begun to take it’s toll on Johanna. “Greektown NYC” (The hub of the biz on New York’s Eighth Ave. and 29th St.) closed down around the mid to late 1970’s and there was a time where there was nothing going on in Manhattan at all. Aziza says, “I had been beaten up in schools and worse. Psychologists at NYU had tested me and declared that I had “genius level creativity” but sadly the waiting list for the elementary “prep” school for Hunter College was seven years. Johanna was still popular and dancing in other parts of the city, but after a bitter fight with the New York City School Board over the home schooling of her daughter, Johanna, tired from hard work at day jobs as well, had a complete “breakdown” and was eventually diagnosed with Narcolepsy "sleeping sickness".

"She literally could not wake up," Aziza remembers sadly. "Her weight went down to 90 pounds! I thought she would die. My mother was so scared at night- New York City was going through a “sleazy” period-think “Taxi Driver”- she had a few close calls with her personal safety and she just couldn’t take it anymore. We fled New York in 1982. I’ll never forget a dear dance student of ours named Jan who met me on Fifty Seventh Street and gave me fifty dollars for our trip. I was upset about leaving New York-my home. After I waved goodbye to Jan as she went down into the subway I walked into the Coliseum bookstore and bought with a small portion of the money “The Films of John Garfield” as a souvenir-so I’d never forget where I came from. When the train pulled out of Penn Station-I vowed to return one day.”
Johanna recovered from her illness within a year of leaving New York.

Aziza says, “Around this time most of the other dancers had turned to the “seminar” field to fill the void, and today seems to be the main part of the business with a lot of the ethnic venues gone.” Aziza continues, “A strange thing happened before we left New York and it’s indicative of what has happened since. My mother took me when she went to see the owner of The Ibis club. The owner never saw either one of us dance, but at our meeting she seemed so unimpressed. We didn’t realize it then, but the owner of that club had the idea that she wanted only brunette dancers as she was trying to appeal to Saudi customers and Johanna was blonde. I also found out that the owner was trying some other things “to be different” from the competition, throwing out “veil work,” etc. I found out about this about twenty five years after the fact and when I told Johanna she was floored.” Johanna said, “If I had known that I would have told her about Obeid!” Prince Obeid Turjoman of Saudi Arabia was sent to the Columbia School of Broadcasting in the late 1960’s and he loved Johanna’s dancing so much that he threw a party in her honor with the Saudi students association. The Prince, also the Minister of Culture, accompanied her on oud. At his invitation, Johanna and Samir appeared in a show for Saudi TV directed by him, as his graduation piece. The Prince also taught Johanna some steps of the Al-Ard sword dance, a dance Aziza has in her repertoire today. (Johanna’s pupil/protégé’ Aiyupa was the first dancer in Greektown to dance with a sword. Johanna had created “Jezayire” for Aiyupa with input from “Baba” who had played oud for a hundred girls with swords for the 1939 New York World’s Fair. When Aiyupa retired, Johanna added the dance to her own repertoire and was well known for this dance at clubs across the country).

After leaving NYC, Aziza continued dancing in other states. Johanna and Aziza are dismayed at the modern trend toward “cliques” of this style and that style. Johanna herself was a “maverick” of sorts, as far as costuming was concerned. Her style was “very gypsy and free,” Aziza says. “Johanna invented a scarf skirt and sold that to students and dancers in the New York area. Johanna was also into vests and harem pants and did great beadwork, but also loved coins. Johanna also came up with “tie belts.” When she was working “Greektown” no one was wearing that style".

Aziza says, “Recently, I saw a photo of Suhaila Salimpour posing in a tribal headdress with a big feather at the top. Back in the 60’s my mother made an oriental hat with a feather and she was picked at over its authenticity. Only one man, a Greek writer Val Arms, a friend of Morocco’s, complained about it, and the owner of the Mediterranean Room, former Greek ballerina Bellas Mara, made Johanna take the hat off. Bellas patted Johanna’s hand and said in front of Val, “vulture feather or no….she is THE ONE!” Meaning she was a great dancer either with or without that damn hat.” Aziza says, “My mother liked to dance with scarves-traditional scarf dance of the people and my father Samir hated that! He would say, “Don’t do that! It’s like they dance in the villages! As if to say: “you are fellahin!” Even in the old days there were picky people!”

Aziza thinks costuming should depend more on what the music and theme is like and what sector of society you are representing in your act. “What sort of fabric and accoutrements a woman in the Middle East would have worn has more to do with what was available to her. Did she weave her own fabric? Did she trade for it? Was she a nomad? Did she dwell in a city or a town? Everybody in the Middle East dances from “Royal” to “Commoner.” Aziza says that her own costuming now reflects a rather “turn of the century “World’s Fair” vibe because that’s the mood she is in now: “a back to basics.”

Johanna always tells people that there were so many talented girls working in belly dance in the 60's. Each girl, she says, “had the opportunity to express themselves in this art form. Sabah Nissan was the first female to join the Musicians Union as a darbucky player, Serena was the first to dance with candles after seeing “Laz” on a trip to Turkey, Gloria was the first to dance with a water glass, and Lisa “Little Athens” was the first dancer to start regular dance classes in NY/NJ.” Johanna credits the great foreign talent, dancers and singers, who came over here to work at the time as well as the immigrant patrons. “You watched them 8 hours a night, six nights a week and if you had any strength left you went to watch more of it and dance with patrons at another club on your night off.”

Aziza quit belly dancing for a time during a slump in the art form around the mid 1990’s. She found she had a talent with fashion and fabric and worked in retail as a Manager and a Visual Merchandise manager. After living in Orlando a while, Aziza and Johanna decided to start heading north again and ended up in North Carolina.

“I had an unfortunate incident of bigotry while living in a small town here. When I was in Boston in the late 80’s I had done some work related to the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Movement. While working in a bookstore in NC in the year 2000 I was doing their window display and the theme this time was history books about various conflicts in history. I ordered a book for the display that was a children’s book written by Israeli and Palestinian children wanting to make peace. They had illustrated the book with crayon drawings. To make a long story short-this enraged the owners of the store-I was fired for ordering this book-it didn’t fit in with the idea of “Armageddon.” Strangely, the owners of the store were hardly religious, sold violent, sexually explicit books behind the counter. It’s just that it was how they were brought up-“old habits die hard.” I had experienced terrible culture shock on many occasions and was in despair as a human being and an artist. By 2001 I had decided to start belly dancing again to repair my sad life because in the scene I grew up in people who might have been enemies in “the old country” got together to “break bread” in “Greektown” because of their shared music, dance, and food culture. This was the most important factor in my philosophy of life.”

Aziza continues, “It’s been tough, though. There are many younger dancers who have been told by some that none of the dancers in “Greektown” in the 1960’s were any good and this is false. There has been so much misinformation put out there. Sadly, this atmosphere was what I found myself in when I returned to belly dancing. I feel as if our credentials as “good ethnic dancers” has been stripped from us. I have been very vocal about taking up for the dancers of the past and now that I have some video clips up on “YouTube” I believe people are starting to take notice. Audiences from all walks of life like my dancing. It rings true to the music-the most important thing is the music!" She continues, "The other problem now is too many dancers willing to work for free, etc." Johanna remembers how excited Ajdin Aslan was with the pay he received as a member of "Oasis" at the Tayoun's Mahrajan. "It was more than he'd ever seen!" They both say that standards of pay in show biz need to be brought up again.

In 2008 Aziza was honored by The State Museum of Literature and Art in Yerevan, Armenia in their “Armenians in World Dance” research project headed up by Dr. Artsvi Bakhchinyan. Aziza has also been a Jazz singer for many years.

Says Aziza, “At the risk of sounding bitter, I must say that it is sad that Johanna has never received any credit from the belly dance community for all the hard work she put into many of her endeavors which were highly successful at the time. I fuss about it and she says, “Well, I’m a Sagittarian! I traveled a lot. Maybe no one could ever find me to thank me!”

Aziza and Johanna have indeed been down a long and hard road together. Hopefully, their future in dance is bright.

Aziza Al-Tawil is available for special performances. Her website is coming soon. Her e-mail is azizaaltawil@gmail.com.