Putting Together a Digital Workshop, “The Birth of Bedlah” – Part 1

Hello gang! This week I’ve begun work on translating my “Birth of Bedlah” workshop into digital form. I was invited to join the Belly Dance Bundle 2018, and my contribution to this group project is this fun and informative hour-long workshop. I thought I would take a moment to share my process in putting together this workshop.

I’ve been using the title The Birth of Bedlah for workshops for many years. Over time, I’ve continued my research on the cut, color, materials, and construction of the bedlah set. “Bedlah” is the Arabic word for “uniform,” and today is used to describe the glamorous costume of the working professional belly dancers. This workshop focusses on a 40-year time span and traces the development of the modern dance uniform.

Art History Methods

My passion for research began in college where I studied art history, with a focus on costume history. As a graduate student, I learned to prep and present lectures using the art historical method. Back in the ’90s, we were still using slides, light tables, and loupes to layout our lectures. noisy projectors for presentation.

Today, everything is digital and that means that presentations are no longer limited to a single room. Teachers can now share their information with students around the world. This year, I’ve made it my mission to develop new methods for putting together digital workshops. It’s been a year of experimentation and I feel like I’m finally dialed in.

Research Review

For me, costume history is the art of stringing together images and piecing facts together like puzzle pieces to create a cohesive story that supports the understanding of our past. I do this by sifting through the ephemera and teasing out new information from the archive and asking key questions of how and why. Why did people choose these materials, shape, style, and how did they put these garments together. On my research journey, I’ve collected thousands of vintage images, including photographs, artwork, and ephemera. 

To organize my research, I use Evernote, a cloud-based information organizational tool. Here’s a sample from my “Salomania” notebook. Evernote allows me to save digital information from across the web and make notes related to the content. The best part is that it’s totally searchable, so I work in keywords into the labels and text and I can find things easily.

Prep the Outline

Because I’ve taught this workshop many times before, I already had a fully developed outline. But I like to take it from a text document into a more flexible and visual format that relates to the style of presentation. Each sticky note represents a single slide and because they are easily moved around, I can adjust and play with the flow of the talk.

Money Saving Tip: These post-its and 3 brightly colored folders at my local Dollar Tree.

Select Images to Illustrate the Themes

As time has passed and my visual reference collection has grown. Each time I prep for a new presentation, I like to freshen up the slide deck. Since my work and research is ongoing, I often find images that are better quality or simply illustrate the points better. Over the past four years, I’ve been lucky to work with professional dancer Shalimar on a trio of pink three-piece bedlah sets. I like to include examples of recent designs at the beginning and end of the presentation.

Love those pink sleeves on the left? I used my sleeve pattern to make them! Read more here.

Build Slides

I’m a “Mac Girl” and my computer came with built-in presentation software called Keynote. You might have access to PowerPoint which is a Microsoft product. Google Slides is a free, web-based alternative. I take my sticky note outline and start to build my slides, choosing the images from my digital files, and dropping them onto the slides. My two rules of thumb are: use less than 5 images and keep text to a minimum.

Find out more about Constance Collier in this blog post.

My goal with each slide is to tell one mini-story. I look for interesting images that my attendees will find interesting, informative, and inspirational. The slide above is from a lecture called “Orientalism on Stage.” This presentation includes dancers, actresses, and opera singers from 1875 – 1940. Miss Constance Collier portrayed Cleopatra in Shakespeare’s “Anthony and Cleopatra” of 1906.

“The Birth of Bedlah” Workshop in The Bellydance Bundle

Are you interested in the “The Birth of Bedlah” digital workshop? Visit the Belly Dance Bundle website and get on their mailing list. This week-long sale begins on October 4th and includes a tremendous collection of belly dance information, tools, classes from industry leaders located around the globe.

Get a Free Digital Guide
Just for joining the Bundle email list

If you have questions about all the things that are included in The Bellydance Bundle, visit their website. There is more detailed information about my contribution, the “Birth of Bedlah” digital workshop, visit this page here on my website. I still have some work to do with this presentation. Be sure to check out my next blog post to see more details on how I put this workshop together.

Back to work on my workshop!
Happy Dance and Costuming,
Dawn Devine ~ Davina
September 14, 2018

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