 About Jenna
Dance History / Influences / Milestones / Zill Discography
On the stage and in the street, around campfires, in church, and for celebrations, Jenna Woods has been dancing for over 30 years. Live music is her inspiration, and she loves making the music visible, dancing on the very edge of the edge, in the moment.
Her dancing is subtle and precise, playful and soulful. She has also sung and played musical instruments since childhood, and has been involved in music, movement, healing and spiritual arts all her life. Known as a creative, masterful and entertaining teacher, Jenna has taught in Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado.
She began focusing on finger cymbals with dance in 1987, and developed the original practice sequences of the Nur Method to deepen her own finger cymbal practice. After years of testing and refining the work, she began teaching Zillfest workshops in 2004, and in 2007 published her book, The Dancing Cymbalist.
In 2001, Jenna began developing the Oyna Tribe format, an approach that is rooted in the performing and spiritual traditions of the Middle East and integrated with state-of-the-art fluid biomechanics. She is professionally trained as an Aston-Patterning® movement specialist and bodyworker, able to see the subtle interplay of movements in the body and guide her students into awareness, strength, coordination and technical ease. Trained in Sufi teaching methods, she incorporates practices that clear the mind and involve the heart, so that her students can play music and dance in freedom, and become more authentically themselves.
Since 2003, she has been experimenting with improvisational zill music in venues outside of the bellydance community, including sound healing, duet zill meditations, multi-instrumental music meditations, "zill haiku" and rock opera.
She lives and teaches in Boulder, CO.
Dance History
My education has been wide-ranging and fruitful; I did get a BFA in art, but the main significance of college was that I discovered bellydance there. During my first six years of bellydancing, I studied with five different teachers in the Austin area, and attended virtually every workshop within driving distance - including Özel Turkbas, Ibrahim Farrah, DeeAnn, Horacio Cifuentes, Ayesha Gamal, Jodette, and many others.
My first teacher had learned from an Algerian native whose style was very flowing and graceful; we didn't play zills, and I learned to move my hands in expressive ways. My second teacher had studied with Jamila Salimpour, and her style was very different. I started playing zills in her classes; they got in the way of my hand movements, so it took me a while to learn to enjoy them. She also taught us to play dumbek, and all the basic Middle Eastern rhythms.
We performed often, doing street performances, festivals, and a weekly gig in a small club - all of it improvisation, all of it with live music. When she eventually asked me to take over her classes, I agreed, even though I'd been dancing less than three years. Teaching changed my life.
After a couple of years, I realized I didn't know enough about anatomy or movement to be able to help my students get what I saw they needed from me. I started looking for more information, and began studying Tai Chi. I started reading everything I could find about dancing and peak performance, especially anything written by performing artists. I wanted to be a better teacher, and needed to know more; I decided to go to massage school in Boulder, CO.
With the move from Austin to Boulder, I found my Sufi teacher almost immediately, another life-changing experience. I began studying Ki-Aikido, and taught dumbek and dance classes. While in massage school, I was introduced to a smorgasbord of other healing movement forms, including Feldenkrais, Rolf Movement, Contact Improvisation, Continuum Dance Meditation and Aston-Patterning®.
It is difficult to describe the magnitude of all this deep education: I became more aware and aligned in my body, more subtle in my perceptions, more articulate in my teaching, more skilled in my movement, more relaxed and open in my life. I began to understand that my learning and evolution never ends - I can either do it consciously and purposefully, or be passive. Everything I learned then, and everything I learn now, I take back to my students and integrate into my teaching. My dance classes have always been the proving ground for my new learning.
I moved back to Austin after graduation, and worked as massage therapist for women faculty and staff at the University of Texas. I continued to teach dance and drum classes, still experimenting with all that I learned in Boulder. I started the Spirit in Motion study group to explore the nature of presence - spirit embodied in expressive movement. I facilitated the group, drawing from my experiences in dance performance, martial arts, healing arts and Sufi work, as well as my readings about dance and peak performance.
I burned out from massage work, and from 1986-1993 I did not teach. Instead, I committed myself to the Sufi Work with my teacher, seeking physical, emotional, mental and spiritual recovery. When I began teaching again in 1994, I was looking for ways to integrate my long healing journey into a new way of teaching.
Finally, in 2000, I became clear that I wanted to teach using everything I know, and work with students who were looking for what I had to offer. Within two days of my achieving clarity, five students approached me independently. So the Oyna Tribe began.
Now, my inspiration is churning to experiment with a performance style that springs from the format of the Tribe. I don't know what that will look like, I just know I want to foster the beauty and creativity that comes from dancing on the edge of the edge, in the moment, de-emphasizing glamour and costume and spotlighting humanity.
I feel the need to lift the veil of orientalist fantasy that has been such an integral part of so many expressions of bellydance for so long, and reveal how this dance is relevant to our day-to-day reality. Shireen Malik's fascinating presentation, "Salome and her Dance of the Seven Veils - The Evolution of a Myth", really brought home to me how much the myth of Salome has fed the fantasy, from Oscar Wilde's time until now.
So I am inspired, and the experiment continues.
Influences
Yoga
The summer before I turned 16, I started doing yoga every morning from a book. It introduced me to mind and body connections. Being fit for the first time changed my life, gave me confidence in myself. Now, I like to do yoga in the dark, often in the middle of the night when it's quiet.
Dune
When I was 17, I discovered the Bene Gesserit sisterhood in Frank Herbert's Dune. I was inspired for life: I wanted to have that much awareness, subtlety, and control in my body. I became a seeker.
Music
I have always loved to sing. I'm an alto, and sang in choruses from childhood through high school. I grew up with a piano, and my parents often gave us musical instruments. I always wanted to learn percussion, but was too shy to ask the right questions; that came later. I settled on a guitar at 15, and began singing by myself, eventually able to do solo gigs in coffeehouses in college.
I've had vocal training off and on, notably with Emily Derr, Beth Quist, and Meagan Chandler. I think my early background gave me a musical ear that has given me treasured access to the sublime subtleties of Middle Eastern music. Because I can hear them, I can spill their secrets into my dancing.
Middle Eastern Dance
When I was 21, I signed up for my first class without knowing what I was getting into, and fell in love. Here was the control, awareness, and subtlety I wanted, where I could come close to my Dune aspirations. Bellydancing is the arena where I've been able to integrate all of my other experience - first as an artist, professional seamstress, and musician, and later as a bodyworker, healer and dervish. I would not be who I am without it.
Martial Arts
From Tai Chi, I learned how easy it is to learn in a natural, organic way, doing without thinking. Because of this experience, I chose water for my primary role model. From Ki-Aikido, I learned how the focus of my mind affects the presence, stability, and strength in my body - and how my mind and body can become unified or divided in a micromoment.
Massage Therapist Training
Giving and getting massages frequently, I learned that my thoughts and emotions get anchored in my body, and that they can be dislodged, and that when I am free of them, I am freer in my dance. I found Continuum, and learned that the boundary between imagination and movement is exquisitely subtle. I also found Aston-Patterning®.
Aston-Patterning®
In all the sessions I've had since 1980, I've learned how to find the most effortless way to do anything, taking into account the natural, asymmetrical tendencies of my own body. Aston bodywork painlessly opens up new awareness and possibilities for me, helps me unwind pieces of history so I can keep evolving, and helps me adjust to impacts and changes in my life and body.
I took classes and workshops, and completed certification coursework between 1980-2004. I learned to discern different learning styles and adjust my teaching approach accordingly. With Aston visual assessment skills, I can quickly grasp alignment and movement patterns in others, with all their individuality and subtle detail. This allows me to teach so that students learn more quickly, because I can accurately see what is physically needed to advance technical skill and ease, and can tailor my instruction to their individual learning styles.
The wealth of detail in The Dancing Cymbalist is largely a result of applying my Aston-Patterning® skills to zillwork and dance.
For more info, see Aston-Patterning®, Articles and Links
Sufi Work
The Work took me into deep states of calm and clarity. It showed me how moving through the world can be effortless. It took me to into wild truth, hard places, sweet nuances of love, inspiration for my zillwork and dancing, and appreciation for my companions on the Path.
I learned how to take care of myself, and that when I do I can do anything - and when I don't, I can do nothing.
I learned so much: how to toss my head in zar movements - after hours of chanting practice; to love my veil - from the meditations - and to read poetry and stories aloud; what it is to be centered in this single moment, with space spreading out in all directions, outside of time; to perceive states of absorption and states of distraction; to discern the needs of others in the moment, and let solutions come out of me to meet them, in my life as well as in my teaching; to accept what is, in this moment; the value of being completely myself, and the value of helping others find it too.
In the Sufi Work, I gained deeper access to the nuances of expression in Middle Eastern music, dancing from a more integrated place of listening, with more exuberant freedom. The Sufi way of teaching is an organic flow, like Tai Chi, that comes from following the inner light that knows who needs what in this moment. The emphasis is on creating experience - the best teacher.
For more info, see Articles and Links
Nature
It feeds me to watch the motion of water as it coils over rocks in mountain creek beds; the motion of grass in the wind; trees and their branches - how the movements quicken as the branches get smaller, down to the leaves fluttering like coins on a dancer's hips. My research into the scientific foundations of Aston-Patterning® turned up fluid dynamics - the mechanics of fluids in motion. While conventional biomechanics are based in solid mechanics, that's just because it's easier to understand and apply.
Fluid motion happens in spirals - undomesticated, asymmetrical, constantly shifting spirals. Appreciating this as part of the Aston training, and knowing that every living thing is formed and maintained by the wild actions of fluids in motion, I am constantly enthralled by the grace and beauty of nature's fluidity.
I resonate with Isadora Duncan, who saw this grace and built her dance on its foundation. I see it in plants, I see it in fish swimming, in birds flying, in animals and people. It is my privilege to help others find their way back to this natural state and express it in motion.
Drums & Zills
The sound of a Scottish drummer soloing on three huge timpani vibrated into my bones when I was 10, and I was hooked for life on drums. As young as 17, I was always the only one dancing when the drummer in a band took his solo. I started playing zills and dumbek at 23, and played in an all-dancer drum ensemble. Playing for dancers, I learned to hold down the rhythms with cues and transitions and to improvise at my own skill level; I started teaching beginning dumbek in the early '80's.
Everything changed when I heard my Sufi teacher drum and play zills for meditations. The flow and sonic subtlety inspired me to focus on zillwork in the late 80's. Then, when I noticed how often I heard other dancers complain that they could play zills fine until they started moving, the seeds for the Nur Method and The Dancing Cymbalist were planted. Adnan's playing has also led to the zill meditations I play in now, and to the cd that Amina Salah and I are releasing in November 2010.
SCA
At Society for Creative Anachronism camping events, camping with the gypsies in Darbukistan, I felt free and timeless wearing a period costume all the time. I had my first experiences of Guedra - not in a workshop, but in context with a huge circle of women, drummers, and two leaders who taught us the chants and movement cycles, and then we did them until everyone who wanted to dance was done. Those who danced in the Guedra did it for their own healing, not as performers. We learned from experience, and I have co-led Guedra rituals from time to time since then.
In the evenings, it was time for music and dancing - and I loved dancing around fires with my friends, dancing under the moon and stars with improv live music into the wee hours. Dance came to feel like a natural part of life, and dancing for hours in costume to live music was so supremely satisfying that conventional bellydance performances - getting dressed up to dance for a few minutes to recorded music - lost their appeal for me.
Not that I don't love to perform, I just want to keep on dancing - it feels unnatural to stop...
More about SCA
Milestones
April 14, 2010
Began playing zills in music meditations with Kailin Yong's Peace Project, improvising with a wonderful, ever-changing mix of other musicians.
Sept. 11, 2009
Recorded the first cd of duet meditative finger cymbal music with Amina Salah, The Sound of One, to be released November 13, 2010.
Aug. 19, 2008
A thought-provoking performance of "zill haiku" with Amina Salah, in the Boulder International Fringe Festival; short improvisations with finger cymbals on concepts suggested by the audience.
June 13, 2008
Love & Mystery, Dairy Center for the Arts, Boulder, CO. A sound journey of duet meditative finger cymbal music with Amina Salah, celebrating the release of Jennifer Heath's book, The Veil: Women Writers on Its History, Lore & Politics. Performed in conjunction with a book signing, a traveling art exhibit, The Veil: Visible & Invisible Spaces, and Shireen Malik's lecture/presentation, Salome and her Dance of the Seven Veils - The Evolution of a Myth.
Nov. 6, 2007
Played dumbek, zills & other percussion for the first staged reading of Magdalene, Woman of Light, a new rock opera written by Michelle Wagner and composed by Kama Devi.
May 1-2, 2004
Performed with members of the Oyna Tribe in The Spanish Muse, produced and composed by Steve Mullins. A grant-supported collaboration of music, dance and art based on poems by Garcia Lorca. A culmination, performing Middle Eastern dance with Flamenco dancers in a powerful piece about the Spanish Inquisition.
Dec. 2003
Played the first duet zill meditation with Dunya Dianne McPherson, at her Winter Movement Monastery in Texas. A very inspiring surprise.
2001-2003
Danced and played percussion with Ojaleo, a fusion ensemble performing Flamenco & Middle Eastern music & dance, as well as original music by director, Steve Mullins. Fulfilling a dream to see what kind of creative cauldron it could be to perform with Flamenco artists. Also recorded Joke, an improv zill duet with myself, on the Rhythm Muse cd release, Ojaleo!
2001- present
Founded the Oyna Tribe and developed Interactive Freestyle Bellydance, combining all my experience into teaching classic improvisational raqs sharqi, helping dancers to grow in both skill and expressive freedom, within and beyond traditional forms.
2000-2007
Researched, wrote, and published The Dancing Cymbalist: How to play music with finger cymbals & dance at the same time.
1987-2000
Researched and developed the Nur Method, the first versatile, multi-sensory method of practice for coordination of playing music with finger cymbals while dancing.
Zill Discography
Eyes Behind the Veil with Billy Woods and Daveed Korup (Lights-On Productions, 1995)
Ojaleo (Rhythm Muse Records, 2003)
The Sound of One with Amina Salah (Mystic Cymbalism, 2010)
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