Thread: Bellydance elitism?

Is it ever ok for artists to blatantly criticize other art forms in order to advance their own? Ballet has been taking quite a hit from the world of egyptian dance elitists. Recently, Gilded Serpent posted an editorial in which the author just blasted ballet as being unfeminine (amongst other perceived atrocities) then the author admitted she didn't know much about ballet personally.
This has been a pet peeve of mine. I cannot support the view that one must prove the inferiority of another art form in order to prove the superiority of our particular art form. It's a petty move. Art is a personal experience. Art is also a cultural experience. Ballet is cultural. Would we dare slam other dances of other cultures? Or is it open season on ballet simply because it's not "foreign" to us?

I don't think it's ever OK to slam anyone/anything in order to feel better about oneself. But this does bring up the interesting question of the relationship between bellydance and ballet, and why there seems to be a sort of growing rivalry among certain camps. It's a purely emotional issue, as far as I am concerned. My own experience of ballet was being forced into it as a little girl, and then being continuously berated for having the wrong body type. It really fed into my insecurities and took me much of my life to get over. A few years ago I started taking jazz classes with this great teacher who also taught ballet and I thought, why not give it another shot? I went to a few classes and while I enjoyed the stretches, I discovered myself getting in a bad mood by about the middle of class and then I would be grouchy for the rest of the day. Once, I dragged my DH with me. He grew up in Russia and was also put in ballet when he was small, but didn't enjoy it and was ultimately rejected because of his body type. He said that the class made him feel really angry, especially because of the music. There's another woman in my jazz class who also doesn't go to ballet for similar reasons. Ballet's long-standing reputation in the west as the epitome of feminine grace is bound to chafe at women who feel burned by that ideal, which is also at the root of body dysmorphic illness and eating disorders that are a plague to women today. Of course, for women who are naturally slender and fit into the narrow window of acceptance in the world of ballet, this mindset is completely foreign. I don't hate ballet, and would never say that it's unfeminine. In fact I think a lot of the more graceful movements in bellydance are related to ballet. I do think it's a little creepy how ballet fetishizes prepubescent girls, especially considering its murky origins. But a well executed ballet is a work of art that I can appreciate even if I will never be able to do it myself.

Thank you Kozmique. A lot of the problem with ballet is the context in which it's performed. It's a business. The business of ballet has made it difficult to appreciate the actual dance itself. I was never forced into ballet. My first class was with a Vaganova instructor who was in her early 20's and I was in my mid-20s. So, I took it by choice, as an adult. I loved the discipline and difficulty yet also the rewards of that hard work: better posture, stronger core muscles and a genuine sense of beauty. May be if I'd been forced into it, I'd feel differently.

My main issue with the criticism ballet receives so often in our dance community is that most of the critics are "respected" instructors, usually of egyptian-style. An instructor should be respectful of other cultures and it always seems immature and small when a comparison is made between two very different dances.

I wonder if the original ballerinas were simple village girls with a profficiency for jumping and twirling and balancing. Maybe once the dance was marketed, it lost it's original accessibility.

Maybe egyptian dance can learn from ballet's history.

A couple short (I hope) thoughts:

1) re defining: It's hard for dancers because it is hard for people. The majority of people define themselves not by stating/thinking what they are, but rather what they are not. Defining a line is usually done by exclusion.

This is why things like regionalism and (the relatively recent idea, from the Medieval period) nationalism can be felt/adhered to so strongly by people. These concepts usually come from an experience of 'other' and a strong reaction of 'we are not that other'.

[Note: the end result isn't always bad. I love diversity rather than a global uniformity just as much as the next person. But you can get to the same result from "this is what we are" as you can from "that is what we are not" -- there's still exclusion, though.]

2) re ballet

I don't want to go into the whole history of ballet here, but will note that the majority of initial ballet dancers were male. The dance did, and still does, incorporate folk and traditional dances. These dances show up in certain Ballets (the productions) and in the training regimes.
Usually, though, a dancer doesn't decide to focus exclusively on, say, Russian folk dances and then continue to call themselves a ballet dancer. Ballet dancers dance ballet -- perhaps they specialize in Ballets with that Russian folk component, but if a dancer only wants to dance Russian character dances, that dancer would go join a Russian folk dance company.

3) Re. a thought of dance development based on thinking about ballet

A lot of the innovations in ballet *came from inside the world of ballet*. As a blunt example, take pointe shoes. They're part of how we define ballet now (what people picture), and they were 'created' by a female dancer who wanted to enhance her ethereal dance qualities. What started with heavy darning and gave one dancer an 'edge' has turned into an industry.

And that's a good thing.

Were there ballet traditionalists who said that this was all dumb and we needed to get back to the roots of dance traditions? more French court dancing and less of the tricks with the funny shoes? Sure. I hope so. I hope there are still people in the community who bemoan the overuse of tricks in exclusion of content and strive for 'authenticity'.

But the innovators are important as well. We need both. We need historians, teachers, dancers who keep traditions alive and dancers who find something new in themselves and in the traditions. We need sticklers for terminology and dancers who can do the movements beautifully, no matter what they're called.

My only worry about the Oriental dance community is if we lose the capability to recognize that validity of approaches. Yes, let's all discuss and argue and take firm standpoints (and be willing to change them if the evidence is shimmying in front of us), from an educated perspective rather than our feelings (for real, guys!), but let's also be aware of and willing to watch innovation.

Hope this doesn't take the thread off-topic:

Also, re. Kozmique's comment, I'm sad to hear that that experience happened in a ballet class. (I'm sad that that experience happens anywhere.)

I have a more 'ballet' body type than a 'belly dance' body type. I've started to hear/feel more pressure the other way (I finally realized that I've been more stressed about my shape/food intake and it's just because I've been trying to gain "a few pounds" and my body doesn't go that way).

I would be very sad to go into an Oriental class and have the teacher tell me I'm too thin. Back to the definitions. I agree that this dance looks wonderful on bodies that are larger than mine. But please don't make me the 'other'.

Let's learn this lesson from ballet; let's put into practice all the wonderful diversity messages that we hear and say.

Soo... how do we not exclude (by body type, nationality, hair colour...) AND maintain a clarity of form and style?

[I rely on the torso-articulation definition from Andrea Deagon and the identification with music and dance vocabulary from the mid-East/North African region to define Oriental dance. Lots of threads going on about this right now :)]

I'm not sure it's elitism you're seeing. I think it's reverse prejudice and defensiveness.

Ballet has the respect of the world. Mothers put their daughters in ballet classes and take them to see the Nutcracker, little girls wear play tutus and dream of being ballerinas.

A professional ballet dancer doesn't have to steel herself before she answers the question 'so what do you do for a living?'


Are we a little jealous? Of course! I can't help but think 'why do people act like I'm some kind of sex worker while a ballet dancer is a high artist?' I might even say something like 'heck, their panties show most of the time, and they open their legs so wide' If I say something like that, I don't mean to denigrate ballet (personally I love ballet!). I'm just expressing my puzzlement and frustration -- I cannot see why the two dance forms are received so differently by the general public -- that's all.

Were there ballet traditionalists who said that this was all dumb and we needed to get back to the roots of dance traditions? more French court dancing and less of the tricks with the funny shoes? Sure. I hope so. I hope there are still people in the community who bemoan the overuse of tricks in exclusion of content and strive for 'authenticity'.

Different times as well. Ballet was changing a lot in the 19th century; it was becoming popular entertainment, not a court dance for one!

My ballet history is limited to 1970s ballet annuals and the peerless "To Dance, To Dream" - a lovely Lives Of The Dancers for kiddies that I adored - but it's worth pointing out that when Marie Taglioni was being all spiritual and sylphidey and weightless, at the very same time Fanny Essler was being Miss Flashy Feet, and there were a couple of other divas at the time whose names elude me who had their own schticks. The theatre experience was different then too, as I've realised thanks to Ozma sending me her spare copy of "Horrible Prettiness". I mean, they didn't start lighting the stage and dropping the house lights till quite late in the 19th century, I believe. So the conditions we are used to when watching ballets, or plays, is not what audiences who watched Taglioni were sitting in.

I would just like to point out that ballet doesn't HAVE to be evil and exclusionary and mean. I have been attending an adult class weekly with a very good teacher, who has had a very good career with some very good companies (Sydney Ballet, Joffrey, Met Opera NY). He teaches proper ballet dancers. He also teaches these adult classes, which are NOT performance oriented or really anything other than a class that is nice to do. He doesn't make it extremely easy. He does simplify *some* things. The students range from people who are fairly highly trained in ballet, who like to keep their hand in, to people who have never done any ballet ever but always wanted to, and everybody in between. Some people in class are pretty good, a lot of us are fairly suck. But Glen just encourages us to do what we can, praises what is getting better, corrects what is not quite there yet, and makes it all a great deal of fun at the same time. For me it is good for balance and strength and flexibility, and a workout. I get heaps of technical information that I can process to compare and contrast with belly dance. Because we are grownups we get quite a bit of technical info, since we can be expected to understand it. And he says we actually take a lot of things on faster than kids do, which is interesting.

Glen never disses ANY other dance form and will even poke fun at how ballet says that only X aesthetic is beautiful, but he is also really confidently able to say "this is how you do it in ballet. That is how you do it in jazz. This is a ballet arm. This is not" because he danced professionally for 30 years and he should know...

... but you can get a belly dancer who danced professionally for 30 years who says "this is belly dance this is not" and at least half of us would take it with salt and say quietly 'that is your opinion'.

Ballet as a codified art form is a long way ahead of oriental dance or all its spinoffs. I would say that we are currently in the late 19th century. What WILL we become? None of us will be here to know!

I never heard anyone I know who does belly dance critizise ballet. Instead I know many people who start taking ballet classes in addition (including myself) for cross training.
If it does happen I would go with Lauren's explanation: Must be defensiveness or jealousy.

I just wanted to clarify that it wasn't my ballet teacher who belittled me for my body type when I was small, but the people who made me take the class. I actually adored my teacher, whose tap class I was also in, but by age six already had a distorted body image and was embarrassed because I had to wear a leotard and wasn't allowed to wear a skirt. Now that ballet has become a real moneymaking industry, little girls are allowed to go to class wearing anything they want, the frillier the better, it seems.

Originally Posted by LindaBintFarah

I never heard anyone I know who does belly dance critizise ballet. Instead I know many people who start taking ballet classes in addition (including myself) for cross training.
If it does happen I would go with Lauren's explanation: Must be defensiveness or jealousy.

Wendy Buonoventura's book Something in the Way She Moves is pretty disparaging about ballet, to the point where it felt like she had a real axe to grind. But I think there's a natural cross-pollination that has occurred between bellydance and ballet. I was really surprised when I first took ballet as an adult and discovered I knew half the terms already, from 3 years of raqs sharqi. The thing is, while bellydance is by no means easy to do well, it's easier to fake it than it is to fake ballet, because bellydance is about natural, rhythmic motions, and ballet is about stylized, sometimes quite unnatural poses. I once saw a video on YouTube, oh I wish I had saved it, of some Egyptian Golden Age dancers doing a medley of dances including raqs sharqi, samba, jazz, and ballet. They looked fantastic in all the numbers except the ballet, where they came out very awkwardly in toe shoes, and it truthfully was more gawky looking than pretty or graceful. Ballet has historically taken a certain kind of dedication, almost an asceticism, to become really good at it, which is why I think it's considered an elite form. But times are changing and all the dance forms are fusing, not just bellydance. People aren't all taking ballet as seriously anymore, and I don't think that's such a bad thing. Look at this!
dancing in pointe shoes with taps on - YouTube

I had posted a comment on the article when I originally read it, but somehow the comment didn't go through... I didn't really have the patience to go through each of my points thoroughly again.

But, here we go...

Although the article had a few good points here and there, I thought the main argument was deeply flawed. I disagree with belly dancers who are "against" ballet out of principle, to prove a point that belly dance can stand on its own, without ballet. Ballet is good cross-training for almost any dance form if you want to dance professionally. This doesn't mean you have to do it, only that if you want to do it, it'll probably help.

I also believe that the argument that ballet and belly dance are so opposite that ballet has no place in belly dance, that the push to cross-train in ballet is coming from Western dancers who want to Westernize belly dance, is deeply revisionist. Yes of course, ballet and belly dance are opposites in many respects. However, it is my understanding that when belly dance was taken from the homes and streets of Cairo and adapted for the stage, many concepts of ballet were applied to make the transition. So from the creation of raqs sharqi, there was some ballet influence in belly dance, coming from the Egyptians themselves. From that creation and up until today, countless Egyptian dancers--the influential ones for sure--have been trained in ballet and used that training to further advance their dance and belly dance as a whole. They did not use enough of it to necessarily make it a "fusion," and for the most part belly dance did not lose its essence in the bit of intermingling with ballet, but do not deny that it is there. From Samia Gamal to Mahmoud Reda's dancers to Randa Kamel.

You can say what you will about Western dancers putting too much ballet in their belly dance, you can say what you will about ballet fusion... but don't deny that much of the push for cross-training in ballet comes from Egypt. At least this is where MY own decision to cross-train in ballet came from. It didn't come from wanting to make belly dance more Western. It came from wanting to make it more Egyptian.

The other major flaw in the article is the bit about ballet being unfeminine, the moves being fighting moves, etc. I don't remember everything else that was written and can't go back and read it again, but it smacked of ignorance and trying too hard to bash another dance form. That bit made it seem like the writer had never seen a ballet in her life. Nothing wrong with that, but then don't go and write about what you think of the aesthetic of ballet if you have never seen it. That's exactly what a stereotypical ballet elitist would do to belly dance, bash it as just sloppy shaking of the hips without any technique, without even having watched a real performance. We complain about people doing that to us all the time... why do it to someone else?

Belly dance attracts a lot of adult students, some of whom dreamed of being ballerinas as young girls. Maybe they started down that path and later realized a professional ballet career wasn't in the cards. Maybe they wanted to take ballet lessons and their family couldn't afford them or they were talked out of the idea because of some other limitation. There are quite a few students in our community who have had this simmering desire to be an ethereal dancer in the backs of their heads for a long time, and there's frustration toward ballet in the mix, because that's where the dream felt thwarted first.

Egypt itself has a chip on its shoulder. The dance went through an evolution at the hands of people (e.g., Russian dancers living in Egypt during the Cold War, and to some extent, even Mahmoud Reda himself) who looked around and said, "This dance is too coarse. Ballet has respect; therefore, this dance needs the discipline, refinement, and carriage of ballet, if it's ever going to get respect of its own." People who want the dance to be "good enough" and "accessible enough" without the ballet influence chafe at this idea.

Some of the older BD teachers are realizing that the way they learned no longer satisfies today's students. Many students expect ballet, yoga, and all these tangential subjects as part of a comprehensive classroom experience, and teachers without those qualifications are naturally defensive. It's legitimate to ask, "How could I have been a good teacher before without those things, and now I'm not?" If you like the older, softer, less formal style, the dance evolved without you, but not everyone is eager to retrofit other skills onto decades of experience without them.

Western students don't always want to hear, "If you want to be good, you'll have to cross train in ballet, too." It's more time and more money to spend on something that isn't directly what they want. We're not a full-time dance program, where it makes sense to expect students to take other classes as part of a "core" education. We're largely a standalone pursuit. I think it is a huge hole in our educational system that we can't do a better job of training our own dancers (serious students, obviously not the casual once-a-week-ers) to be professional caliber without having to farm some of the work out to another dance community. Cross training is wonderful, but you don't have to play baseball to be good at hockey, and you don't have to learn French to speak German. We've had approximately half a century to figure this out and, not to say there aren't useful ideas to be adapted from ballet, yoga, etc., but we still haven't gotten very far in developing our own systems to meet our own specific needs. How many established ballet programs expect their students to take belly dance in the name of competence and well-roundedness? If our shoe doesn't fit on their foot, why should theirs fit on ours? Why aren't we a successful, closed system?

Originally Posted by LindaBintFarah

I never heard anyone I know who does belly dance critizise ballet. Instead I know many people who start taking ballet classes in addition (including myself) for cross training.
If it does happen I would go with Lauren's explanation: Must be defensiveness or jealousy.

(waving) I will! criticize ballet that is. I took a couple of months of it (along with tap/jazz or whatever it was!) when I was about 13, so at least I have some personal experience, fwiw. I consider ballet "interesting" but unnatural in posture and effect. Maybe it didn't start out being quite so extreme, but it is now; pointe harms feet, turnout isn't good for hips, dancers are pressured to be thinner, etc. etc.
There's a lot of good in the technique in terms of spacial use, arm positions, turns, and of course our favoite ballet move, arabesques... but otherwise, as a dance form I find it unappealing.
I'm not defensive or jealous, but I'm glad I didn't continue with the dance back then. I'm bellydance start to finish and like it that way

Originally Posted by Zumarrad

Different times as well. Ballet was changing a lot in the 19th century; it was becoming popular entertainment, not a court dance for one!

and

"They looked fantastic in all the numbers except the ballet, where they came out very awkwardly in toe shoes, and it truthfully was more gawky looking than pretty or graceful. Ballet has historically taken a certain kind of dedication, almost an asceticism, to become really good at it, which is why I think it's considered an elite form. But times are changing and all the dance forms are fusing, not just bellydance. People aren't all taking ballet as seriously anymore, and I don't think that's such a bad thing. Look at this!
dancing in pointe shoes with taps on - YouTube "


Yep yep! Wanna talk about how our faves, 20-40s movies, affected ballet? Vaudeville, baby! Check out some old movie clips from the time, and you'll see the range of body shapes, amazing and/or awful costumes, and what seems now to be embarrassing technique.

Some of those 30s-era dancers even did tap on pointe! That surged back into popularity a few years ago (and now the shoes are sold with specially-shaped taps), but there's been a small subset throughout who knew of it and would use it as a gag.

And let's not forget that Gene Kelly was our Reda, bringing a lot of different types of dance into movies (MGM musicals in the Freed unit are still outstanding and in a class of their own) but also a lot of ballet.

Yet "An American in Paris", which was one of Gene's most ballet-heavy (and a lot of modern dance/staging ideas) musicals, is not as 'accessible' or popular as, say, tap-heavy "Singing In the Rain".

Geek out.

Originally Posted by kozmique

Now that ballet has become a real moneymaking industry, little girls are allowed to go to class wearing anything they want, the frillier the better, it seems.

True. This makes me so cranky. I've seen (too much of) studios who allow too much into the classroom, usually with the result of in-class clique/elitism (the little girl whose mother wants her to learn and not have the newest/flashiest/pinkest thing) or even injury.

[Yes, injury. I've seen kids smacked in the head because fancy-pants was looking at her 'costume' instead of paying attention to her surroundings. I've also seen people fall because their uber-cool too-loose legwarmers (worn low on their ankles throughout the ENTIRE class) fell over their heel and they slipped. Awful stuff.]

Safe clothing for all!

Originally Posted by anthea

(waving) I will! criticize ballet that is. I took a couple of months of it (along with tap/jazz or whatever it was!) when I was about 13, so at least I have some personal experience, fwiw. I consider ballet "interesting" but unnatural in posture and effect. Maybe it didn't start out being quite so extreme, but it is now; pointe harms feet, turnout isn't good for hips, dancers are pressured to be thinner, etc. etc.
There's a lot of good in the technique in terms of spacial use, arm positions, turns, and of course our favoite ballet move, arabesques... but otherwise, as a dance form I find it unappealing.
I'm not defensive or jealous, but I'm glad I didn't continue with the dance back then. I'm bellydance start to finish and like it that way

Anthea, I am sorry that you had this experience.

However, I disagree with your comment. I agree that there is a lot of 'extreme' in ballet now, and some teachers (who lack either the training, the self-discipline, the teaching technique, or all of the above) push for things that harm their students. Little girls going on pointe too regularly, too long, too early can be harmed. There can be a lot of pressure to be thin. Heck, there's a lot of pressure now to have an extremely flexible back and to be able to do a bunch of tricks.

[Again, we're talking about ballet stereotypes, the things that are seen in most of the schools, in most of the productions. There are ranges. The requirements of the Sylphides are different from playing "Coffee" in the Nutcracker. What about modern ballets that are done barefoot?]

BUT if taught properly, turnout comes from the hips and should not result in any ankle, knee, or hip stress. Pointe, if taught starting from feet strength, can be done safely, without continual black toes or raw spots or any of the other things we see in the movies.

I do not like to see an entire dance form criticized based on one, likely inaccurate, experience or personal taste. It's fine that you find it unappealing, but I don't think that calls for a full-on criticism of ballet.

As I alluded to earlier, I've felt pressure to gain weight. How often have we talked about people teaching a shimmy wrong and people having knee problems. Or back problems from what I've heard an "Egyptian squat" (?). However, I think that those are individual problems and pressures, and I feel no need to throw away belly dance as a whole.

Originally Posted by anthea

(waving) I will! criticize ballet that is. I took a couple of months of it (along with tap/jazz or whatever it was!) when I was about 13, so at least I have some personal experience, fwiw. I consider ballet "interesting" but unnatural in posture and effect. Maybe it didn't start out being quite so extreme, but it is now; pointe harms feet, turnout isn't good for hips, dancers are pressured to be thinner, etc. etc.
There's a lot of good in the technique in terms of spacial use, arm positions, turns, and of course our favoite ballet move, arabesques... but otherwise, as a dance form I find it unappealing.
I'm not defensive or jealous, but I'm glad I didn't continue with the dance back then. I'm bellydance start to finish and like it that way

Hi Anthea,
I really hope you were not offended by my words. I totally see your point. I was rather thinking about the critique that ballet is not feminine.
I also think that anything you do in extrem ways gets to the point where it becomes unhealthy.

Some of the desire for balletetic influence and cross training has to do with trends in Egyptian style, but I think some of it is simply the desire to have some basic stage/theatrical professional dance concepts in a dancer's foundation. I think that as a community we have a very uneven distribution of experience and background in our teacher corp, so as we want to present ourselves in environments outside of a casual hafla or restaurant with limited space, dancers are realizing that they may not have a foundation that incorporates specific technique for things like footwork in turns (for example,) a memory for choreography, and other dance principles that other disciplines have developed and incorporated and give to dance background. I think ballet just becomes the best known example, or most accessed form at an early age in this country.

ballet for children = social skills and body awareness, learning grace and, for many of us, something physical to do because soccer was not considered a feminine option. Most mothers did not and still do not want their little girls to grew up to be ballerinas. When I was 12 my mother pulled the funding for my classes. Baby sitting money became my ballet class fund.

If you are experiencing body dysmorphia due to ballet, this is more about the judgments of others which you have agreed to carry forward into your adulthood than it is about BALLET. I was a Character dancer when I was in Uni and weighed 170#. trust me, I was a good enough dancer that the fact that I was chubby was not considered to be a problem. Had I moved into a higher level - full professional - yes, there would have been pressure to drop the weight. But chances are that the change in life style would have taken care of that, as it did anyway once I had graduated, moved out of my mothers house and started cooking for myself. Amazing what happens in those circumstances.

My point in all of this is that the objections above are very subjective, looking from the outside in. Ballet training helps to teach posture, musicality, carriage, transitions, discipline, structure and theatricality to name just a few points. yes, these can be taught in other disciplines, and if ballet doesn't resonate with you, that's cool, too. But set aside personal feelings and childhood issues and look objectively at the art. See if you can learn something, take something positive away. And if you can't, it's okay. Don't go to the ballet and don't incorporate it into your belly dance. You'll be fine.

{{{HUGS}}}

Originally Posted by Lauren_

A professional ballet dancer doesn't have to steel herself before she answers the question 'so what do you do for a living?'

This was not always true. If it is true now (and I'm not so sure in all cases), that's a great thing.
But the history shows us that this end result has developed from a not-so-great history. That should give us hope that Oriental dance can one day command that respect as well.

Well, rebellion against and attacks on ballet are nothing new. This was a prime directive of the Modern Dance movement as well.

Read about Isadora Duncan and other Modern Dance matriarchs.

Anyway, I started ballet age 5 and aspects of it are valuable to me today.

Other aspects of ballet are really murder on the oriental dance though. In fact it's designed to more or less lock the hips and torso, bring the weight up in the chest, the leg is very straight, and this is all completely opposite to basic oriental dance, and I bemoan the advent of "too much ballet" for that reason. It's true that a lot of this comes from Egypt, from within Egypt - but long before Reda upper class Egyptians were aware of European culture and admired many aspects of it (and why not?)

But, it's an uneasy marriage with oriental dance strictly from the aspect of the movements themselves. I think it's completely fair to criticize this aspect of modern Egyptian and other forms of belly dance that use "too much ballet."

As far as body types, that's another ball of wax. I see some prejudice lately against thin women.

Enough already.

One of the great things about belly dance, aren't we all beautiful? This includes slinky ladies and ballerina types!

PS absolutely we should try to get the same respect as ballet but we shouldn't INCORPORATE ballet in order to get that respect. IMO. We should work hard within our own medium. That means admiring it for itself and working within the idiom of the movements, not against them.

Originally Posted by Eujenia

Some of the desire for balletetic influence and cross training has to do with trends in Egyptian style, but I think some of it is simply the desire to have some basic stage/theatrical professional dance concepts in a dancer's foundation. I think that as a community we have a very uneven distribution of experience and background in our teacher corp, so as we want to present ourselves in environments outside of a casual hafla or restaurant with limited space, dancers are realizing that they may not have a foundation that incorporates specific technique for things like footwork in turns (for example,) a memory for choreography, and other dance principles that other disciplines have developed and incorporated and give to dance background. I think ballet just becomes the best known example, or most accessed form at an early age in this country.

I agree about the foundation.

Ballet is more standardized than many other dance forms. It's not completely standardized, and there's a range of vocabulary and movement in the dance and especially in the instruction (hoo boy!). But while there are a lot of non-accredited studios, etc., there are also a significant number of professional schools. [To me, school means multiple classes per week, usually with a regular faculty, not just one instructor, plus additional workshops.]

There's not much of that for Oriental. Maybe you can join the Tunisian national troupe or the Reda troupe, etc., but those are few and far between... and there's not the same thing for the modern dances. I don't know about the training process of the BDSS, but that doesn't feel the same to me as joining a dance company with associated school.

I think we're hungry for a level of excellence that can be attained by communities of advanced professionals that not only talk together but train in the same thing together (that's why workshops are so important for us). That goal is different from the goal of informal hafla. Neither is bad, but there is a difference.

This has been a very interesting discussion. My original concern was of certain instructors needing to diminish other dance forms, especially ballet, in order to convince themselves and others that egyptian dance is the superior dance form.

Your art should speak for itself. Your life should speak for itself. It's disturbing that people need to focus on "the other" when they should just "do it" for themselves. It's not a competition when you truly love your art and yourself.

I don't think it's right to slam other forms of dance. But I do get a little "slammish" when one dance form calls itself another dance form. It's a personal preference for everyone. My pet peeve is when someone says a dance form is dead, which is never true because art doesn't die, it rises up again and again.

If we are looking to have more respect in the general dance community, we need to carry ourselves with a certain dignity as instructors. We need to temper our criticisms of other dances and dancers. Instructors are the public face of our dance. We are belly dance ambassadors and should not lower ourselves to uninformed biased declaratives. We can teach a lot by our behavior.

I teach ballet and belly dance. I don't believe you need to cross train with ballet to do belly dance. The whole argument is as relevant as "should a flute player cross train on a saxophone?" I'm sure there is nothing wrong with cross-training on a sax and it may have some benefits. But it won't necessarily produce a superior flautist. And let's not allow the discussion dissolve into "sax players are oppressed and sad".

I know Randa Kamel took ballet and she uses it in her dance, but she isn't executing her kicks as a ballet dancer would. It's adapted (and occasionally I find her style a little too hard-edged for me). What you CAN get from ballet is body awareness and mechanics that are helpful with belly dance.

Here are a couple of examples.

What I do: I teach my dancers "ballet arms" where we do a simple port de bras to get the students to feel the back muscles that support the arms and to feel the stretch of the arm in a relaxed but graceful position. Then we move on to doing arms Egyptian style, but the muscle awareness helps keep the arms from going gawky, especially when the dancer gets tired.

What I don't do: I don't teach my students to point their toes like a ballet dancer. I teach them to work through the foot to produce a "soft point". Hard pointing needs the leg muscles to lengthen and hold and this is counter to how the body works in Egyptian style. That sort of muscularity actually hinders the flow that Egyptian needs.

***As a teacher knowing ballet is fantastic. Every little bit of knowledge and input helps with understanding how the body moves. Assisting with technique it is invaluable. But I don't think my dancers necessarily have to that background to be great dancers.***

Originally Posted by Teophania

BUT if taught properly, turnout comes from the hips and should not result in any ankle, knee, or hip stress. Pointe, if taught starting from feet strength, can be done safely, without continual black toes or raw spots or any of the other things we see in the movies.

Even with a good teacher, both do depend on bone configuration to achieve. The angle, position and length of the neck of the femur for turn out and the length of the toe bones for point. I understand many reputable balley companies now screen for skeletal restrictions on turn out and Morton's short toe among other things that make it impossible to achieve much in ballet (let alone consider it as a career)