Music | Movement | Culture | Joy
Monica Berini is an educator, folk dancer, percussionist, independent researcher, and writer dedicated to movement arts that are of, by, and for the people.
Her area of specialty is Mediterranean dances and musical traditions, with a primary focus on Egyptian raqs baladi (رقص بلدي) and raqs sharqi (رقص شرقي) and Southern Italian tarantelle and other danze popolari. Each are highly localized and vernacular-driven art forms that are rooted in both popular entertainment and personal expression, and emerged within an often marginalized cultural context. Each has moved from source through diaspora and back again, and remain in a sometimes tense multi-geographic conversation.
Monica's dance work is ancestral, community-oriented, and joyfully liberatory. As a guest in the cultures she moves within (even as a distant but decidedly diasporic member of each), she remains a lifelong learner.
Raised bicoastally between New York and California, Monica has been living and working in Oakland and San Francisco—traditional lands of the Ohlone people—since her teens. She holds a BA in Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MA in TESOL with a focus on Applied Linguistics and Adult Education Theory from San Francisco State University.
Monica draws inspiration from her own diverse roots, including her Abruzzese, Sicilian, Ticinese, Tunisian, Polish, and Ukrainian (Hutsul/Galician) ancestry—echoes of mid-20th century mass immigration shaped by punk rock, art, and activism are woven through her work.
She lives and works on unceded Ohlone Ramaytush land. Respect to elders, ancestors, and traditional caretakers of this place—past, present, emerging, and future.
I am a dancer, percussionist, performing artist, choreographer, educator, writer, and independent researcher.
I immerse myself in movement forms that are highly vernacular, hyper-localized, shifting, alive, and of the people. I explore how folk styles can retain integrity when pulled out of context. I struggle with being a cultural artist in multiple regional and diasporic dance styles and grapple with insider and outsider identities. I'm curious and comfortable in not always knowing what is going on in each moment. I overshare my own learning process.
I play with dance as an intellectual pursuit, a ritualized experience, a personal expression, another language, an improvisation, a community connector, and as part of fully realized human expression.
All art has political, cultural, and historical context, and dance is no different. I decidedly contextualize my work even as I find that beat, move to that melody, express that emotion, and bring my audiences along on an ephemeral journey.
Dance is moving the body. Sometime the movement is purposeful, sometimes it's letting go, sometimes it to music, sometimes to the sounds that are around us.
Never is it a solo endeavor.
When I dance, I am never alone.
Behind me is my personal history — my teachers, mentors, supporters, haters, friends, loves, hopes, community.
Holding me up is collective history — the shifts and development of the disciplines I am working within and all those who have done it before me and do it alongside me.
Surrounding me is an environment — a physical space, music or sounds I am responding to or reflecting, and musicians that are there with me or who are heard via a recording.
In my body are the cultures and places I grew up in.
In my soul are my ancestors.
Authenticity to a dance form also means being honest with and authentic to yourself.
There is no denying who you are when you are moving your body. Like all dancers, I have learned to mimic movement, and then to recreate it, to pose, to shift, grow, and physically change. However, I also remind myself to come back to who I am and where I come from and how and who want to be in this world in order to keep myself honest through my movement and dance work.
The process of making a dance or doing dances is, in fact, the actual dance. The most rehearsed pieces will never be done the same way twice, as that is an impossibility in dance. It is time and it is repetition that allows us to deepen into the work, the movement, our ever-changing bodies and our ever-shifting abilities, so that every time we move there is something being said.
Dance alone (though see above!), dance with others, dance when you are uncomfortable, dance when you feel amazing.
Let it all work itself through you.
Take your time.
To separate these teachings and teachers and courses out from one another is a fools errand, but is how we do it today. These areas of study have all informed one another historically, culturally, politically, and for me, personally, as has my 'day job' and education work. Please see all of my studies, and any work that evolves out of them, as intertwined.
This list is meant to honor those listed for their work and respect that none of us do this alone. Thank you all.
Teachers I work with currently and on an ongoing basis are in bold.
I have taken many, many (many!) Arab+ style dance workshops and classes regularly since I was 17. This is not a complete list of my instructors. I'm sad to say there are many I may have even forgotten, but that does not negate their importance on my development as a mover. I've also been a performer since my teens and worked with many bands and fellow artists in the days when we learned 'on the job', as well as hearing the stories of my grandfather about dancers he loved, and last but certainly not least, doing a lot of social dancing in Cairo kitchens and at Arab and Arab-American weddings!
+ lots of southern Italian and Italian-American social dances at weddings my whole life!
+ lots of Polish social dances at weddings!
+ I also grew up with regional Italian languages, not to mention hearing Polish and Ukrainian regularly
+
Coordinating crew
Comms for the family biz
Former medicine and herb garden intern, current fan and regular visitor to this special spot
Ongoing multigenerational doings and card slinging for and with family and friends. IYKYK.
Heritage Activists, Liberation Artists
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