How to organise your own Hafla

Organising a Hafla.

Hafla's, or Arabic Dance parties, are great fun, but they need careful organisation if you want them to go just right. We've attended quite a few, and organised several of our own, so here are our tips for making your Hafla go with a bang!

Venue

Choose your venue carefully. You need a hall with a suitable floor to start with. Most people dance barefoot and a floor that's too hard, cracked or has splinters will have your dancers in tears within a few minutes. The ideal is a hall which has a floor specially laid for dancing, such as a dance studio, gymnasium, or old-style ballroom. The advantage of the latter is that it's often better decorated than the dance studio or gymnasium which can end up looking clinical or sparse unless you spend some time decorating it. If you're really lucky then you'll find a venue like the one we use at Silsden Town Hall where there's even one of those rotating glitter balls on the ceiling.

Location

Consider the location of your venue from the point of view of public transport, major roads, and ease of access and parking. Don't expect people to travel 40 miles into the wilderness just to attend your event. Far better, if you live off the beaten track, for you to travel 40 miles to a centre of population to hold the Hafla - giving your dancers the easy journey.

Size

As in most things (as the advert says) size is important, but here the main problem is not to have too small a venue. If a venue is too small then it inhibits the dancers who feel trapped and restricted. They find themselves trying to dance whilst avoiding each other, the Souk and the Food Tables, not a good situation. If the venue is a bit over large then you can do things to make the space less intimidating. Set out chairs and tables around a more restricted dance area, site your buffet and any stalls/souk in a separate area. This fills up the space and allows people space to move around the various focal points. Dancers are often slow to warm up - so a souk and buffet are helpful places for people to socialise before they get round to dancing. Most important of all make sure that your venue is adequately heated and ventilated - haflas get very hot and sticky!

Music

Get your music organised well before the day. Don't just bring a box of tapes and CD's and hope that you can find something to suit. There's quite a few Arabic style 'mood music' CD's around but they should be avoided - they rarely have a suitable rhythm for dancing. Get proper dance material. For some ideas you could visit our Music page. Remember that dancers cannot go on forever, and if you have live drummers you will find that they have a limit to their endurance as well. If you are using tapes then set up some specific hafla collections with about 20 minutes of music on them. Make the tapes different types, do some pop tracks on one, then have a tape of slow and moody music, and perhaps one or two with classical pieces. CDs make this easier - and if you have the ability to burn CDs on your PC then you can make your own party selections. It's a good idea to select your tracks for each 20 minutes so that a dramatic track starts the sequence, (encouraging your dancers to the dance floor). The last item can be a fast and furious piece which will send your dancers off to the Food Tables exhilarated and looking for a drink!

Publicity

Publicise your event well in advance. Get some leaflets made up and concentrate on getting the quality right. Keep them light hearted and informative, include a map to your venue unless it's a very well known location that has its own signposting system. Don't go overboard with the fonts, it might seem a good idea to write the whole of the leaflet in an obscure Arabic style font, but if people cannot read it then you're not going to get any dancers at your event. Once you've created the leaflets then make sure that they're photocopied cleanly - a bad photocopying job can make your work look grubby and unprofessional - and implies that the Hafla will be the same. If you can afford it have the leaflets professionally copied onto a light coloured paper - but keep the colour lighter in shade or people will find them hard to read. Don't forget to put onto the publicity if you want people to bring food and drink.

Sound

Some locations already have a sound system in place so in this case all you have to do is familiarise yourself with how it works. Don't leave this to chance, visit your venue in advance and get to know the controls and how the system operates. On the night assign one of your 'organisers' to be the minder of the sound system and don't give this job to a guest. (They've come to dance after all, they will not be happy to find that they're stuck with the technology all night.) If you have to bring the sound system with you make sure it's powerfull enough. For dancing the sound levels have to be quite high in order to create the right ambiance, and if your system just distorts when it reaches that level your dancers will not enjoy the evening and the great tracks you've selected. We use a personal CD player - with 40 second anti-jog, or twin tape deck, playing through a 'separate' amplifier then to 2 x 90w speakers and 2 x 120w speakers - this setup seems to work fine. If you're going to use a CD player then make sure that it has got anti-jog or the dancers could end up making the music skip and bounce! If your CD player doesn't have anti-jog then make sure it's placed on a surface that isn't affected by the movement of the floor - like a shelf on an outside wall. Bring the best quality reproduction of music that you can find - don't use bootleg tapes. As well as being illegal these are usually of poorer quality than the real thing but this often does not show up at the volumes you would use in your own home. Take the tape to a Hafla on the other hand and as the volume goes up the quality drops dramatically - you could end up dancing to fuzz!

Improvisation

There are many schools of thought about what a Hafla should be like. We've been to Hafla's that were entirely improvisation, and some where the event was basically a series of solo dances performed by the senior dancers in attendance. We like to run ours as a mixture of the two styles. We give the dancers, of all levels of ability, plenty of opportunity to practise their skills, improvise, and basically have a good wiggle! Then, when people are flagging a bit, we'll put in either a solo performance, or a group dance. It's quite common for dancers from a particular class to want to show off what they've learned during the term, and as long as these performances are not too perfect they encourage the beginners. Unfortunately technically perfect performances can have the opposite effect - demoralising beginners who feel that because they cannot achieve this level they have no place in the hobby.

Party Pieces

If you want performances during your Hafla this too needs organising in advance. Approach either individuals or groups and encourage them. You may find that there's a bit of reluctance there (especially if the dancer(s) are only of beginner / intermediate level) but push a bit. They'll enjoy it, honest! Nowadays the best medium is CD, where all you have to know is which track the dancer(s) want to use. If they want to bring their music on a tape then ask them to ensure that it's the only item on the tape. The reason for this is that it can be very hard to locate tracks on a tape. Older equipment for sure will not have the ability to 'hunt' for the next track. This results in the embarrasment of hunting backwards and forwards through a tape, playing a bit, then hunting again, in an attempt to find the specific bit of music that's wanted. Avoid all this fuss with a little preparation. One final point - when you're ready to do your Party Piece wait until the current track has finished - we have attended a Hafla where the person controlling the music simply stopped it dead, and announced the Party Piece. This was to a room full of confused people who were enjoying the music and expected to be able to dance to the end of the track! Some were even left in mid move!! If someone has agreed to perform for the hafla they deserve a bit of respect by being properly announced and given a show of appreciation afterwards.

Food

Dancing uses energy, and dehydrates people, so food and drink are an essential at a Hafla. The best way to organise this is to encourage everybody to bring something with them, and provide tables where this bounty can be laid out for all to partake. As the organiser you however need to provide a core set of things to get the Food Tables started. Buy water and soft drinks and get some juicy and refreshing fruit. Don't buy alcohol - it dehydrates people - and avoid too many salty, dry snacks. Be careful not to buy too much - it's amazing how generous people can be at a Hafla - you'll end up trying to pursuade people to take food away with them at the end.

Getting people to go!!!

You may have a problem, particularly if your Hafla has been a great success, in getting people to go at the end of the evening. If you've booked the venue overnight, or if it's a venue you've been given access to for free then this may not be a problem - otherwise it is. Firstly make sure that your publicity states the finish time as well as the start time. People often forget to do this and your dancers will all come with different expectations of what consititutes a 'normal' night out. Avoid dissappointment by stating, for example, that the evening finishes at 11:30pm. Next, turn off the music system and announce that it's the end of the evening. If you can prepare people by telling them earlier that 'this is the last dance' then all the better. Once you've turned off the music then unplug the system, or remove some connections, whatever. This stops someone who was out of the room when you announced the end from starting up the music again. Thank people for their attendance, say that you hope they'll come to another of your events, then start on tidying up in a very positive manner.

Tidying up.

The last job of the day, and if you're not careful, one which you'll do on your own. To avoid this becoming a chore make sure that you've talked with a few people about helping to tidy up. Then it happens quickly, the effort is shared, and you can all be off home within about half an hour of the end of your event. Tidying is made easier if you use disposible cups, plates, forks, etc. but you may not consider this eco-friendly, so do as your conscience dictates. Remember that some organisations that hire venue's will offer a reduced price (typically half price) for the time when you're setting up at the start and tidying up at the end. Make sure you take advantage of any such offer.

Lost Items

After almost every event we have run someone has left something behind. Often where people have come from far afield it's tricky to work out who the lost items belong to and we have acquired a number of odds and ends simply because no one has asked for them. Plates, knives, tins and items of clothing are the most common. As an aid to reunite these items with their owners Wiggle is starting a lost and found page.

So there you are, simple really, a few basic bits of organisation and you've got a classy event that people want to repeat in the near future. It may seem a bit too organised for you but remember that all over the world, where quality entertainment occurs, apparently spontaneous, happy events, where everything goes smoothly and everyone has a good time, are usually the result of careful planning and meticulous attention to detail.

Contributor: Stephen Blakelock
Contact: stephen@cosgb.globalnet.co.uk

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