A long-time Bay Area Middle Eastern dance festival attracts teachers and performers from throughout the United States as well as from Germany, France and Israel.

And from Benicia, as well.

Rakkasah West, which takes its name from an Arabic word for dancer, began 35 years ago, and last weekend it turned Richmond into a Mecca for dancers, musicians and vendors.

The dance form primarily is Middle Eastern, a style that has been called multiple names — raqs sharqi, baladi, danse orientale and the often-used term “belly dance,” one translation of another of its names, “danse du ventre.”

Middle Eastern music and dance have many styles, as varied as the countries and regions from which they originate — Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Iran, Israel, Morocco, Lebanon, North Africa, with influences from Spain, India and other Asian countries, as well.

While visiting Westerners in past saw performers during their travels, America got its first real introduction to belly dancing when Fatima Djemille, billed as “Little Egypt,” appeared at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.

Later, in the 1950s, the dance form took professional turns in its originating countries. It blossomed in the United States in the 1970s. From more traditional motifs, the dances received infusions from classic forms in New York and elsewhere.
The San Francisco Bay Area has put its own stamp onto belly dance, too.

In the 1940s, pioneer Jamila Salimpour started a school for the dance, and her style has been carried on by her daughter, Suhaila.

But, of course, there are variations.

American Tribal-style Belly Dance contrasts with the “cabaret” style of glittering coin accessories, swirling chiffon skirts and solo dancers. Created in the Bay Area by director Carolena Nericcio, it encourages ensembles dressed in folkloric fabrics and jewelry.

An outgrowth of that is tribal fusion, started by another Bay Area choreographer, Jill Parker, and popularized by Rachel Brice, who also studied in San Francisco and frequently returns to the Bay Area.

This year’s Rakkasah West was a venue where enthusiasts could see multiple interpretations in one place. Among the musicians who performed is Debbie Fier, who provided percussion for the artist, Sharon Page Ritchie, who may be best known in Benicia for her textile art and participation in Open Studios exhibits, where she has shown her hand-painted and hand-dyed scarves.

But Ritchie also is a dancer and choreographer who uses her fabric painting and stitching skills for her performance costumes.

Fier lives in Oakland, though she and Ritchie have been collaborating for years as musician and dancer. As a Jewish girl growing up in New York and later living in Colorado, Fier said she was familiar with Middle Eastern music’s beats and rhythms, but she also grew up playing piano with world-famous instructors. In her youth she toured, giving concerts throughout the United States and Europe.

But at 17, she spent $30 in a pawn shop, buying a conga drum. And drumming drew her in, she said.
She learned to produce Afro-Cuban, Indian and African beats on her drum, and “then I went full circle,” she said, learning Middle Eastern music and expanding her collection of drums as well as her personal repertoire.

“Once I got started, I was hooked,” she said. “I’ve been playing 15 to 20 years. I’m still hooked.”

Fier started her performance with Ritchie last week by playing the chalice-shaped darbuka, also called a doumbek or tablah, that resembles the North African djembe. Partway through the performance she picked up a tar, a frame drum that looks something like a large tambourine without cymbals, or the Celtic bodhran. She also plays the Egyptian tambourine, called a riqq.

“There is so much to learn — rhythms in 7, rhythms in 10,” she said, counting the types of measures in Middle Eastern and North African music that vary extensively from Western music’s primary use of 4-4 beats or the three-count of the waltz.
“It’s exciting, interesting, even super-slow. Some say, ‘How fast can you go?’ But what does the dance look like when it’s slow? It is so limitless.”

Fier has a percussion band with two drums, darbuka and riqq. Her group’s name plays a pun on her last name — Fier and the Flames.

Ritchie also has a troupe, which specialized in Egyptian style dance, Fier said. “I like it. It’s so rich.” But Fier likes other styles, too. “Tribal is fun. Everyone doing the same thing.”

Fier and Ritchie had no other accompaniment when they performed in the Cabaret Room at Richmond Memorial Convention Center — but with this dance form, no accompaniment is needed.

During their performance, the two illustrated what it looks like when moves and rhythms are slowed dramatically even as dancer and drummer remain synchronized.

“She and I work together,” Fier said. In fact, the two have collaborated for 10 years, dating from the time Ritchie also lived in Oakland.

Fier said she and Ritchie relate to the rhythm as dancer and musician, and they create performances that become stories.
“It’s different from what you see there,” she said of other Rakkasah performances. “We do a really different thing. Belly dance doesn’t cover what Sharon does. She does North African, and does storytelling. I drum, she dances.”
Each performance becomes a different experience, she said, with the two “building pieces” rather than a specific song.
“To me, it’s so exciting,” Fier said. “I like to do varietal things.”

Fier said she’s happy to be in the San Francisco Bay Area and to participate with Ritchie at Rakkasah West. “It’s all high quality. I am so spoiled! All the teachers live in the Bay Area. It’s not just available, it’s high quality. And the people are incredible.”

Also appearing at Rakkasah this year, Charisse Garrett, who dances as Saiedah, brought her troupe, Grateful Sirens Belly Fusion, who practice at Benicia Dance Studio. She also teaches twice a week at Dance Unlimited, 510 Georgia St., Vallejo, the city that also has been the home of her “Grateful Siren” world music radio show on Ozcat Radio.

While Garrett has danced for many years — starting at 4 with ballet, jazz and tap — and started teaching at 16, she didn’t explore belly dance until she moved to Benicia from San Diego in 1996.

“I wanted to try something new,” she said. She started dancing with Loa Kirkbride, who was teaching locally. And she fell in love with the dance.

“Belly dance is a combination of all other things I had done,” she said. “It’s an open field.”
In recent years, the field has opened even wider, she said.

“Before, it was Egyptian or Arabic. Now it is readily fused with other dance styles. You can use other dances.

“It’s an opportunity to be creative, and to be entertaining,” she said, adding that she, too, emphasizes an entertaining production when her troupe performs.

Her love of belly dance developed with Sirens In Sanity, classes and performers that appeared throughout West Coast dance festivals.

That continued until one of the leaders, Yasmine, moved to Chico. Garrett, meanwhile, continued in Benicia and Vallejo, and decided to adapt her radio personality name to her dance organization.
And she continued to make appearances at Rakkasah West.

“Rakkasah is the biggest belly dancing festival in the world,” she said. She went both Saturday and Sunday, and the dancers performed Saturday.

She enjoyed the music, the dancing and the shopping at an array of vendors whose wares ranged from brass, silver and copper finger cymbals to music and performance recordings — from jewelry, coins, metal tokens and beads that could decorate costumes to full costumes of any color and design.

But that isn’t all that attracted Garrett. “It’s the camaraderie,” she said. It’s a place where dancers and musicians readily applaud each other.

For her troupe’s performance, she opened with a familiar song by American singer Lionel Ritchie — “All Night Long.”
In between, they danced to “Shosholoza” by Ladysmith Black Mambazo, the South African a capella choir.
They finished with music with a reggae sound, Balkan Beat Box’s “Dancing with the Moon.”

“I’m interpretive,” Garrett said, saying she designed the dances with “choreography diversity” in mind. At times, rather than dancing in unison, she had some of them moving one way while others moved another.

Diversity for the Grateful Sirens is more than the musical selections to which they dance, or the dance elements Garrett combines into the performances. Her dancers come from a wide age range, with two attending Benicia High School and others in their 60s.

“I have some mothers and grandmothers,” she said. “Belly dance is the fountain of youth!”
Those interested in lessons may call Garrett at 707-330-4361, or visit her Facebook page, www.facebook.com/gratefulsiren.