Thread: Rant...teachers making up "rules" a.k.a. "urban legends" of the dance

Like the middle finger pointing straight down (which is true, as others have said, and which I have also verified with ME folks), is making a very obvious circle with the thumb and first finger, much like the big ol' American a-okay "sign." I believe it has a meaning, or connotation, similar to the middle finger thing.

Deborah

Originally Posted by nisaasaintlouis

So recently I had this one (and not for the first time): "Women NEVER lead a debke line." Well, what if it's a women-only group or party? And never mind that I have seen Lebanese women in my city WITH MY OWN EYES leading mixed-gender debke lines.

That's kind of a tough one - of course if you are a belly dancer at a Lebanese party, you are expected to start the debke line and if you are at an all woman party, duh, someone would have to lead the line and be a woman.

But, depending on the community and how conservative it is, women would not typically lead a mixed gender debke line - it would be a pretty bold thing to do.

For instance, my husband's Lebanese grandmother led a debke line when some friends from Lebanon came to visit and they were a bit scandalized that she would lead the line. But they also understood that things were different in America and no one was too skilled in debke, so she had to start it somehow. And, as they said, she was old and respectable, so that made it ok too. ..l;,

So I guess that's a long way of saying, I can kinda see where this comes from, but it's hard to dish out absolutes like that.

ooo...ooo...how about this one? Coins on the bra to keep the dancers money safe or to display her massive dowery. Anyone "buy" into this one?

And that "halt" palm-out thing? I understand that it can be remediated by covering, even ever-so-slightly, the palm with the thumb.

Here's a true cultural thing, albeit from a place a bit farther east than the Middle East . . . don't go around patting Japanese men on the head! ..c::

Like, who would do that anyway?

Deborah

Originally Posted by phillyraqs

I can kinda see where (some of this stuff)* comes from, but it's hard to dish out absolutes like that.

* edited sentence slightly to make it more universally applicable


That's true.

I think it's a good rule of thumb to always take all absolutes with a grain of salt . . .

Deborah

Originally Posted by nisaasaintlouis

Oh! Almost forgot this urban legend (I don't think this one has come up yet, though I know the "goddess" was mentioned)...the classic: "Belly dance originated as a temple sex rite."

Damn, we really CAN'T escape the phalli, can we???

Yes, the fabled Devadasi connection! How did I forget to lump this winner into my all-encompassing Sackred Wombyn Mystique rant???

Goes along with the sensual kundalini energy hoo-ha, too. "Wake up your kundalini! Repeat after me...."I am a god-dess, wor-ship me!"

I'm surprised Dolphina dances on a giant aspirin, rather than beside a large Doric column with a bulbous cap. bwaaaahahahahaha

Deborah has reminded me of a useful rule of thumb:

All generalizations are false, including this one.

Belly dance originated in womens menstrual huts because the women were bored while they were sequestered.

Belly Dance makes you a better lover.

Women in the ME always dance with belts made from camel tassels

Hollywood created modern belly dance

Anala - the coins as the dowry does have some validity. But we are talking about the Ouled Nail and the Bedouins. Their jewelry was their bank account.

{{{HUGS}}}

Originally Posted by phillyraqs

That's kind of a tough one - of course if you are a belly dancer at a Lebanese party, you are expected to start the debke line and if you are at an all woman party, duh, someone would have to lead the line and be a woman.

But, depending on the community and how conservative it is, women would not typically lead a mixed gender debke line - it would be a pretty bold thing to do.

For instance, my husband's Lebanese grandmother led a debke line when some friends from Lebanon came to visit and they were a bit scandalized that she would lead the line. But they also understood that things were different in America and no one was too skilled in debke, so she had to start it somehow. And, as they said, she was old and respectable, so that made it ok too. ..l;,

I hear you. It definitely depends on the context. Most of the Lebanese in my community are Maronite and pretty liberal when it comes to gender mixing. And there are a couple of Lebanese ladies here who are very skilled at the debke; it seems that sometimes skill outweighs gender, and it's perceived as OK for them to lead the lines (but then, it's a pretty tightly-knit community). But among many Arabs I know, men just tend to DO debke more than women, and end up being more skilled at it, and therefore end up taking over the lines because they are more skilled.

But on the other hand, among those who are more conservative (like Palestinian Muslims), gender mixing isn't really OK. (Though the Palestinians I know seem to be comfortable inviting American ladies to dance...but that's a separate issue entirely and takes us into the discussion of how American women vs. Arab women are perceived).

So I guess that's a long way of saying, I can kinda see where this comes from, but it's hard to dish out absolutes like that

Yep...the issue I have is more with the absolutes than anything else.

Originally Posted by najla86

all Egyptian dancers always lean back.

I just don't get this one. Those who say it can't possibly have watched any Egyptian dancers. Many movements lead with upper body energy, most of them use proper posture, and in proper posture, the ribcage is slightly forward of the pelvis. Leaning back is done only occasionally as an accent.

Your body should be shaped like an "S" when you dance

Well, the spine in proper alignment is somewhat S shaped, but if you are leaning back you destroy that curve, so I am not sure how this fits in with the first part.

Originally Posted by nisaasaintlouis

HA! Yes, I can see it now...STRIPPER CANE!

Cardio strip assaya!!!!!!!!!!!

Wait, something needs to be on fire! Cardio strip flaming assaya!

Originally Posted by ssipes

Wait, something needs to be on fire! Cardio strip flaming assaya!

Cardio strip poi-saya!!!!!!!!!

I coach my students not to dance with their palms forward a lot, mainly because it creates a very ungraceful line and makes you look like a hand puppet.

This is a GREAT thread!

Can I add an anatomy one? Only among bellydance teachers do I hear the upper abs called the 'diaphragm' and the lower abs called the 'psoas.' Close, but very confusingly not quite right.

, something has to specifically represent the penis to be phallic.

Disavowal and fetish: a child (a boy, of course, girls don't matter) sees a lady (probably his mum) getting changed and realises to his horror that *she has no cock*. Instantly, he assumes that someone (probably his dad) has cut it off, because it wouldn't occur to any boy that a penis is a strange growth, rather than the normal and natural thing to possess, no matter how young he is. Naturally the boy is filled with an overwhelming terror of being castrated. To cope with this horrific fear, he instantly fixates on something, anything, that will replace the missing phallus in his mind; this being a 19th century woman's bedroom, it's probably a stocking or a shoe or a hair brush or possibly the mother's long loosened hair. Bingo. No more sexual terror. Later he realises that of course ladies are born without winkles, but the *latent fear remains.*

And that, my friends, is both how we come to be able to believe and disbelieve something at the same time (very important in film theory), and how it is that some men totally require stockings and suchlike in order to perform. Thanks, Freud.

It is entirely right that an assaya is/can be a phallic symbol - it's a woman playing with a man's thing, ffs, a man's thing that is long and hard - but it's not automatically representative of sex. Really, a woman wielding the phallus is the very opposite of heterosexual intercourse, because she's the one with the penis. BUT, saying raqs assaya is a phallic symbolic ritual or something is like saying the same thing about a woman smoking a cigarette, or putting on tights, or brushing her hair, or using a torch, or driving a fast zippy car. Yes, you can analyse it that way if you want to, but it's not generally conscious, and when I pick up a cane I am really NOT thinking "I am so empowered with my possession of the phallus RAR." It's just a fun dance that has the capacity for Freudian analysis, like anything else in life.

Originally Posted by anala

ooo...ooo...how about this one? Coins on the bra to keep the dancers money safe or to display her massive dowery. Anyone "buy" into this one?

yep i was taught that one too. tinah

I'm sure glad you didn't "slip" and say "stimulating" instead. (Running away to hide before I get whacked with a phallic symbol.) ..l;,..l;,..l;,

Originally Posted by nisaasaintlouis

So, if a dancer wears a V-shaped belt and twirls a cane, is she simulating intercourse?

Originally Posted by zumarrad

"I am so empowered with my possession of the phallus RAR."

I am so using this as my pre-performance pep talk the next time I do assaya!

Originally Posted by Lauren_

Can I add an anatomy one? Only among bellydance teachers do I hear the upper abs called the 'diaphragm' and the lower abs called the 'psoas.' Close, but very confusingly not quite right.

YES...any anatomy legends should be added here as well.

Originally Posted by ssipes

I just don't get this one. Those who say it can't possibly have watched any Egyptian dancers. Many movements lead with upper body energy, most of them use proper posture, and in proper posture, the ribcage is slightly forward of the pelvis. Leaning back is done only occasionally as an accent.




Well, the spine in proper alignment is somewhat S shaped, but if you are leaning back you destroy that curve, so I am not sure how this fits in with the first part.

I will just about bet you money that this comes from when US teachers discovered the Banat Maazin via Aisha Ali, and whoever that teacher was probably wanted to teach the Authentickal Ghawazee Egyptian Dance sans dirty old western influences. They definitely do have a bit more of a leanback (or they did - I was watching more modern footage of Khariya Maazin the other day and she's reasonably upright. Because, shockingly, dancers adapt and change sometimes!)

I am so empowered with my possession of the phallus RAR."

wow...takes a little something out of it for me...

Actually what can - and sometimes does - go on in my mind is a bit more like this...so you think you are so good with that thing...watch this! Ha!

TOTAL tangent to the tangent

Re: Freud and penis envy in women

I used to work with children, and I encountered multitudes of little boys around the age of 5 who talked about how they were going to have babies someday. Often they'd say things like 'My mommy had my big brother, my daddy had my sister, and my big brother had me.' When told that men can't have babies, they simply refused to absorb the info.

I can't help wondering if 'womb envy' isn't a HUGE developmental issue for little boys? (I virtually never encountered a little girl who gave a damn about having a penis, BTW).

Sorry for the threadjack.

But, but, ... Jillina calls it the psoas when describing the lift technique for an omi? If you cant trust Jillina....

Hmmm...all phallic joking aside, doesn't it seem that we are all zeroing in on one theme: the need to avoid absolutes...i.e. NEVER do this, ALWAYS do this??? This explains why the EDC rubbed me the wrong way, I guess.

I am not going to be able to check Bhuz again till sometime tomorrow night and I am sure I will go bananas (PHALLIC) wondering what additional gems will be posted here!

I entirely agree, Lauren. The great flaw in Freud is that he made far too many assumptions about the supreme importance of his own manly tool. You'd think that in a primarily dyadic relationship where the boy didn't actually spend much time with Daddy till he was a little older, and in a society where there's not much nudity, if anything he'd be wondering why he didn't have breasts, or what that thing sticking out of his front was.

When I was conducting my research, I discovered that a lot of "rules" - which are OK, actually, just not hard-and-fast-unbreakable - came into NZ belly dance around the same time that people discovered Hilal style, which was briefly popular here (before I started BDing). Rules came in like, you must only wear beads to do oriental, coins are only for folk (tribal wasn't invented yet - well, it was, but it was still six or seven years away for us). Thou shalt not mix coins and beads. And presumably, things like thou shalt not use a veil while wearing a dress, which was one I was raised on. I can see where that latter one comes from - my teacher told me her very first solo involved her swanning about in her gran's antique assuit tunic, doing veil to some highly inappropriate track, and *that's* probably not quite right, but if it's an elegant bedlehfied dress, veil away.

Originally Posted by zumarrad

I will just about bet you money that this comes from when US teachers discovered the Banat Maazin via Aisha Ali, and whoever that teacher was probably wanted to teach the Authentickal Ghawazee Egyptian Dance sans dirty old western influences. They definitely do have a bit more of a leanback (or they did - I was watching more modern footage of Khariya Maazin the other day and she's reasonably upright. Because, shockingly, dancers adapt and change sometimes!)

You are absolutely right -- the Ghawazee's I've seen on video do lean back. I have always thought that 20th century Ghawazee was a huge influence on the early tribal style (ala Fat Chance). You can also see stylized arms, repetitive movements, loose group improvisation in Ghawazee.

Originally Posted by anala

But, but, ... Jillina calls it the psoas when describing the lift technique for an omi? If you cant trust Jillina....

But she's not necessarily confusing "lower abs" with "psoas". Perhaps both are involved. One problem with the anatomy thing -- I suspect that for many movements, "science" does not know exactly how they are generated. A dancer, even one with anatomical background, is not going to be able to 100% accurately know the degree to which deep postural muscles are involve in movement. We've had this discussion before, but often the muscles that are getting tired aren't generating the movement but acting as antagonists and stopping or controlling movement generated elsewhere.

Originally Posted by Lauren_

(I virtually never encountered a little girl who gave a damn about having a penis, BTW).

This reminds me of the first time by oldest took a bath with a neighbor friend, when they were both not quite four. She said, " Mommy, look....he's got a TAIL!"

Originally Posted by zumarrad

"I am so empowered with my possession of the phallus RAR."

I'm soooo glad I didn't have any liquid in my mouth when I read this -- I'd be cleaning my desk for hours!

Like Nisaa, I'm gonna have a whole knew "vision" in my head next time I see raks assaya!

Deborah

Originally Posted by ssipes

But she's not necessarily confusing "lower abs" with "psoas". Perhaps both are involved. One problem with the anatomy thing -- I suspect that for many movements, "science" does not know exactly how they are generated. A dancer, even one with anatomical background, is not going to be able to 100% accurately know the degree to which deep postural muscles are involve in movement. We've had this discussion before, but often the muscles that are getting tired aren't generating the movement but acting as antagonists and stopping or controlling movement generated elsewhere.

That, in addition to my not having actually studied anatomy, is why I tend to avoid using the names of actual muscle groups most of the time.

Originally Posted by zumarrad

The great flaw in Freud is that he made far too many assumptions about the supreme importance of his own manly tool.

Freud was a tool ( just my opinion!) ...But it's funny to put the cane through a freudian analysis. If we did that with belly dancers, well then we'd all be classified as women who have penis envy and daddy issues who need to cause distraction by performing a highly sexual and therefore feminine dance to create womb envy in our male audience....,r:;