Belly Dance Workshop and Conversation with Brenda “Alexandra” Alpar

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC | Brenda Corman Alpar '62 will give a belly dance workshop featuring basic steps, veil work, cane dance, zill (finger cymbal) playing, and characteristic costumes, while sharing her experience as a professional dancer, musician, and teacher in the vibrant Middle Eastern music and dance scene of New York City in the 1970s. The workshop extends from the Usdan Gallery exhibition “Collective Affinities: Personal Collections from the Bennington College Community,” which showcases 100 belly-dance albums from the collection Alpar shares with her son, Joseph, an ethnomusicologist and member of the Bennington music faculty.

Performing and teaching under the stage name "Alexandra", Brenda Alpar founded the Alpar Mid-East Dance Center on New York’s Upper West Side and played keyboard in the band Trio Anadolu. Her interactive presentation will provide a vivid account of a multiethnic world of performers and audiences at a time when Middle Eastern music and dance were at the height of their popularity in the city and across the United States. Workshop participants will listen and dance to a number of music examples from the albums on view in Usdan Gallery.