Thread: Fusion popularity theory...thoughts????

aloha ladies and gents

i read the well discussed and thoughtful thread about 'when is it not bd' with deep interest, because i too have seen the proliferation of fusion styles, sometimes at the expense of eclipsing 'traditional' and folkloric styles of bd.

as for myself, when i do a 'fusion' piece, i simply call it modern, freestyle or contemporary dance.it feels disingenuous to call it anything else....

but on a different note... i was wondering if any one else sees a coorelation between the rising popularity of fusion dance and a post 9-11 world.

right after 9-11, many newer to bd students cited the incident (9-11) as a reason to learn about middle eastern culture.(it sounds 100% nuts in 2008, i certainly remember that in my community and even discussed on bhuz...)

however, i wonder if people now do not want to 'burden' themselves with learning the theory, techniques and cultural approaches ( and sometimes political) ramifications of traditional 'oriental' belly dance?

could it be that people don't think m.e is as 'exotic' as they did in the 50s-80s?

could the rise in fusion be a subconcious 'this is my dance, my body and i'll use the art to express what i want to"?

sometimes, fusion dancers perform with music that appears to be what i call 'sonic wallpaper'. it's not simply ignoring or avoiding the dum and the tek ( or not using m.e music at all).but sometimes, there's little RELATIONSHIP between the dancer and the movement. it's movement for the sake of cool moves ( a simplification,of course).

thoughts on this complicated topic????

i AM the queen of bhuz kill!!

come on folks, doesn't anyone want to share their thoughts here?

or is this the pink camel in the room noone wants to discuss???

Good lord don't flounce!!!!!!!!!

Seriously, though, I have been focusing on the "when is it bdance" thread because I feel much of this is being discussed over there.

RE: the 9-11 issue, though, I think the roots of Westerners' affection for fusion go much deeper historically than 9-11. Perhaps 9-11 just offered yet another convenient justification for the ongoing "sanitizing" of belly dance by stripping all things Arab out of it.

Generalizing here, I think there are at least 2 factors at work. Nisaa is right that it goes way back beyond 9-11, having seen fusions of various sorts over the last 30 plus years. There have always been those who would ignore the cultural background of the dance and the music and those who really don't like middle eastern music and middle eastern culture but who want to dance and, for a number of reasons, pick belly dance for their self-expression.
Two factors:
1. "..."sanitizing" of belly dance by stripping all things Arab out of it", might make the dance more palatable to a non-middle-eastern audience, especially in recent years with the middle east in turmoil.
2. By "sanitizing" the dance, not only does it become less Arab or middle eastern, it becomes easier for dancers to get to the level of performing because in the "sanitized" version, non-middle-easterners would no longer have to really learn the subtleties of middle eastern music and culture and how the dance relates to it.

Looking for my asbestos balady dress...

Originally Posted by honoluluhabibi

however, i wonder if people now do not want to 'burden' themselves with learning the theory, techniques and cultural approaches ( and sometimes political) ramifications of traditional 'oriental' belly dance?

I think that this is a deep part of it, not just because of 9/11 and subsequent events but also because it is mentally hard and requires discipline to take on that 'burden' (kind of a funny twist on Kipling there). As a former anthropologist, I feel comfortable saying that most people don't like to be challenged to think outside the bounds of their own culture, and so something like belly dance becomes reinterpreted and repurposed to make sense within their non-ME culture--it becomes about goddess worship or female empowerment or performance art or whathaveyou. And of course this is not at all limited to fusion dancers. They just come across as the most obvious example because their costuming and music is the furthest removed from the ME.

I think fusion is popular because it's fun, creative and doesn't require years of classical training to be good at.

I like the eclecticism and I love seeing a new, expressive (and potentially artistic) popular dance form being born.

I think it's still in a young and "faddish" stage as yet so it gets a lot of its power from those with perhaps more enthusiasm than solid background but I don't care! I do sometimes wonder about the deeper meanings of its occasional flirtation with stuff like burlesque - is it trying to be deconstructionist or is it just playing with sexy stuff under the guise of irony? But does it matter? That's the fun of it.

I wonder if the "belly dance" label is still used because of the "naughty", subversive, slightly bad-girl image that some people have of BD. A belly dancer with tattoos and fishnets - Ai ai ai!

And I still don't want it called belly dance.

I've notice this pattern a lot in my class for BD, where the level 1 is SO much larger than level 2. I think a lot of girls get into it thinking that they're going to learn to be super-sexy and then they realize that no, not only does your sexiness have to come from within (ie. who you are and how you behave), when they find out that the dance is actually not easy at all (let alone understanding the culture behind it), then they drop out.

I got into bellydance for different reasons; I realize now that I had a fascination with Western Orientalism and I wanted to try bellydance as an extension of that interest and that image I always resonated with. When I actually started learning the dance and learning what it truly is/where it comes from, that image was shattered, but I found myself liking the real thing just as much.

Call me odd, but it's been a bridge to cultural understanding that I'm very grateful to have! As a Western girl who is about as pale as you can get, I do find some tension between my culture and ME culture as a whole, but person-to-person I find that we have much in common and shouldn't fear and hate each other so. Really, BD has been my way of reconciling myself with a culture that sometimes frightens me, but person-to-person often appreciates my dancing and only has kind words to offer me. That is what warms my heart and lets me know that at the end of the day, we're all just people.

Okay, so that wasn't exactly about fusion....but hopefully relevant, after reading the points above? lol!

I do think fusion can be a good way of bridging from bellydance to explore other cultural dances - East or West African, Japanese Kabuki dances, etc.

However, such a mix is *not* bellydance, per say, and I think fusion should definitely be marked as a 'fusion' of "middle eastern dance and _(fill in the blank)_"

I must admit that it's really fun, though. ;) A great way to relieve some of the stress of having to get everything 150% perfect in classical bellydance!

Two-part post coming up:

I think part of it is that the women who would have taken up BD in the 70s because it was an exciting way to explore sexuality, ideas about being female, the body etc *in the terms of that time* are firstly different - they have a big fat wad of second and third-wave feminism behind them now - and secondly, may be MUCH more aware of the reality of ME dance than the women in the 60s and 70s were.

Think of it this way. In the late 60s you could be one of two things - a professional dancer in the clubs, fighting association with strippers, or a "housewife" looking for a fun way to express herself and her sexuality. The pro dancers were specifically employed to add an air of "authenticity" to the clubs - which were no more or less "authentic" than anything else, but the owners were well aware that they could sell aspects of their culture to white-bread America as an exotic night out, so they did. The pro dancers pretended to be Arabic (because it was their job to do so) and dug around trying to find out as much as they could about the dance they were doing. They were in the US. Most could not up sticks and go to Morocco or Egypt. There was no video. There was only ME diasporic people to teach them movements and traditions here and there, and the lingering fantasies of "exotic lands," temple maidens and seductresses that those dancers would have grown up with via movies, TV and their own dancing teachers. (Serena Wilson, for instance, was a student of Ruth St Denis and "oriental" dances were popularly taught at dancing schools, so many trained dancers would have had a go at being "oriental".) Because those dancers were trying to distance themselves from the topless bar dancers, *and* because it was the 60s and the hippy trail was just opening up, *and* because the second wave feminist movement included ideas about patriarchy and suppressed matriarchal pasts, *and* because Morocco et al went to the REAL ME and came back with a few birthing moves and ritual dances, BD started to become figured as something "sensual not sexual/women's ancient ritual dance" and that fitted the needs and wants of the times really well.

Pt 2:

Today, there are two factors at stake. One is the sense of proximity generated by globalisation that means what used to be distant and other is right next door. I can go onto YouTube *right now* and watch some random Saudis dancing in their living room. It is WAY easier to go to Cairo or Istanbul because of air travel, and air travel is now so normal, and travel to those countries has been so comfortably set up that now *anybody* who has the money to pay for a flight can and will go. It's not like the hippy days when they flew to Europe and then went overland without travel agents booking things for them in advance. I can buy a real Afghan ring or necklace on Ebay. And there have been real belly dancers dancing in clubs for a long time now, and real ME people telling them what they should and shouldn't do. More and more people from The Lands of BD are living in 'Western' countries, and in general, people are much better informed about them and their lives. I would guess that most people who take up BD are *quite* middle class and have at least *some* post-compulsory education, so they are MUCH more likely to have an understanding of world politics. All of them have grown up in times where racism and stereotyping is at least nominally a no-no, thanks to the civil rights movement, and any instances of it make media headlines and are fiercely debated.

Meanwhile, there has been the sex-positive movement. Girls of today do not have to worry about sexual harrassment on the job, or if they do, they know they have a legal right to stop it. Girls of today "can do anything" and do not have to use their sexuality to get by. Some are now saying, well, yes, that's great but actually, I kind of like that if I take off my top and kiss another girl I get free drinks from boys. Watch me manipulate them! Etc.

What we now have is an environment where you can get everything you want from foreign lands, and not really think of it as foreign. However, you also know that it's bad to stereotype and appropriate. You know that in the world of belly dancing there are "authenticity police" who will tell you off if you do it wrong, and you're also scared to do it wrong and hurt ME people by mistake, because that is not what liberal thinking people do. It's hard!

And 3!


And then, what fantasies do you really want to explore? Is it harem girls any more? I think, no. I think women who didn't fight to get out of the kitchen are less attracted by the "sisterhood in the living room" model. I do think they are attracted by past expressions of sexuality. I think it is significant that the Indigo are playing round with the idea of Coney Island cooch girls/saloon girls from Gunsmoke, and Tempest is playing round with the idea of Theda Bara, and lots of other dancers are playing round with burly. What is actually happening is that some young US women are exploring some of the roots of belly dancing and the fantasies attached to it *in their own culture*. So rather than pretending to be the reincarnation of Cleopatra, they're pretending to be US performers who pretended to be the reincarnation of Cleopatra. There's a layer of awareness and distance. It's not orientalist performance, it's conscious performance of orientalist performance. Suhair Zaki is not American. How can we ever *really* be like Fifi? On the other hand, Ruth St Denis was a strapping Irish American girl and Theda Bara was some kind of ordinary US chick. These are, perhaps, more relatable models who thinking dancers feel are safe to borrow from. Does that make sense?

*reads posts above*

I got into bellydance for different reasons; I realize now that I had a fascination with Western Orientalism and I wanted to try bellydance as an extension of that interest and that image I always resonated with. When I actually started learning the dance and learning what it truly is/where it comes from, that image was shattered, but I found myself liking the real thing just as much.

*points* SEEE?

What I hear from some fusionistas is that they understand that they need to express the music in their dance. So they choose music that they can relate to and feel confident about - and that means it is often not Middle Eastern music. It's less about rejecting elements of the culture, and more about bringing something personally meaningful into their dance.

From my experience as the "stuffy traditionalist", I see several possible lines of explaining why so many dancers feel drawn to fusion.

First is, people don't like "cabaret", and there are many aspects to it, including a perceived showiness/overly sexiness of the costumes. Interestingly, most of these dancers love my beads and sequins and swooshy silks. Likewise, it seems that many dancers who are drawn to fusion don't like ME music.

Second, some dancers honestly think that traditional bellydance is too limiting and that they add versatility by fusing. I also notice a certain "we're badass" culture, which I have not been able to wrap my mind around. (I am too old, perhaps.)

Third, some dancers may not quite understand what oriental-style bellydance can be. Recently, a friend told me "We're doing a cabaret performance". As it turns out, "cabaret" was a nice class choreography to Amr Diab. It combined many different elements that tend to remind people more to classic dance traditions, including head tosses and skirt swishes. To me, it was a nice choreography to an upbeat tune, and I enjoyed the performance, but I don't think it qualified as oriental-style.

Fourth, fusion especially around here has some dancers that have great charisma and who are really amazing and creative. For many years, I took classes with one of the best fusion troupes in the country - it was great fun, and I sure learned a lot.

Fusion goes back a long time. In particular, tribal style got it's start in the late 70s and has been growing steadily in popularity. Tribal fusion is a more recent spin-off, but both styles, with the help of youtube and BDSS, have become very popular and are now likely to be a new student's first "belly dance" experience. That was certainly my case.

Not only do I think that some of the fusion styles resonate, in particular, with younger women more than traditional (it seems cooler/ more avant guarde/ music easier to understand) but with the rise in the 90s of political correctness. A lot of dancers don't want/think they can do more traditional styles of belly dance because they're not middle eastern. So they feel safer in fusion styles, that they're less likely to offend others or appropriate some else's culture. I know I've seen several posts about this topic over on tribe.

the whole bad girl fusion thing reminds me of when Madonna was first a big deal & department stores reported that push up bras & garters belts that had sat on shelves molding were suddenly selling.

social observers theorized that liberated women now felt it was safe to get in touch with their inner slut.

i *think* what drives SOME people to do fusion & burlesque is the desire to be some unabashed sexpot but within a *safe* space.

i do think there is a latent racism at work too but it was there before 9-11.

of course it is problematic that trying to be *authentic* can make you look like an Arab minstrel.

i think i'm old enough i just find it all tiresome cause i feel i'm watching the same social sexual mores & politics playing over & over.

oh & the "young women" like fusion & i guess that means cranky old bats don't bugs the chet outa me cause i know of plenty of menopausal tribal / fusion bders out there. tinah

For me fusion happens as more of a melding of things I already know well
with what I have learned about ME dance. Those decades of other dance and music training just don't go poof. But ME adds a new softness to dance, and more scales and rythms to music. Ahhh, 9/8 and 6/8 are back.

For others, maybe fusion seems more familiar. Baby steps into bellydance with music they know?

of course it is problematic that trying to be *authentic* can make you look like an Arab minstrel.

True, VERY true. I invented an excuse for that the other day. It's the same as the dance name thing - it has its roots in us all learning to BD *as if professional*, and back in the day BDers had to have Arabic names, and now, BDers don't have to have Arabic names but they need to know how to dance for an Arabic audience, and if they are a pro dancer in Cairo, they need to know certain kinds of body language etc that their audiences will recognise and feel at home with. Especially given they're competing with Egyptian dancers, who have an advantage on that score. I, of course, am not now nor will I ever be a pro dancer in Cairo, though it's possible my students might be down the line, who knows? I don't have to know how to do Arabic Thing X, actually. It really doesn't matter, and if I dance for some Egyptian migrants here they will understand that I'm not Egyptian. But otoh I must make sure my students know it, just in case they ever find themselves being pro dancers in Cairo, and especially what NOT to do since they could easily be pro dancers here in front of Arab people and be really offensive by mistake, and WORST OF ALL other belly dancers in the future might see that one of my students doesn't know Arabic Cultural Thing X and oh my God the shame.

I agree with those who say fusion has always been there. So what's different now?

• Mass media. The Internet went public in 1996, and started really gaining traction around 1999-2000. Suddenly, it was much easier for dancers to promote their "alternative" projects.
• The rise of Burning Man and the unique genre of performance art it fostered.
• The rise of Tribal Fest and its ethic that anything EXCEPT traditional raqs sharqi was welcome. The more offbeat, the more welcome it was at Tribal Fest.
• The fact that certain popular ATS groups veered away from ATS and started experimenting with fusion "dance theater" - I'm thinking of Ultra Gypsy and Urban Tribal as early examples who led the way.
• The convergence of Gothic subculture and belly dance. This particularly gained traction when Rachel Brice was added to the Bellydance Superstars in 2004.
• The fact that tribal, with its pierced and tattooed aesthetic, attracted a younger crowd that embraced those cultural elements - and young people often feel a certain rebellion toward tradition. Heck, the tribal fusion crowd is rebelling against not only Egyptian but also against the ATS establishment.

I don't think 9/11 had much to do with any of it.

Originally Posted by tattood1

social observers theorized that liberated women now felt it was safe to get in touch with their inner slut.

i *think* what drives SOME people to do fusion & burlesque is the desire to be some unabashed sexpot but within a *safe* space.


i think i'm old enough i just find it all tiresome cause i feel i'm watching the same social sexual mores & politics playing over & over.

Ha ha! I love you Tinah! ..l;,

I was born tribal fusion and I was attracted to it because it seemed cool. All the dancers I'd seen in my area were belly bunnies or the teachers of belly bunnies, and I didn't know my ass from my elbow dance-wise but I knew that I didn't want to dance like them.

I'm not a sequin kind of person and I absolutely hate those ATS turbans so tribal fusion seemed to be more my kind of thing.

Also, a really good friend of mine was studying with the tribal fusion teacher in town and I wanted to be able to hang out with her.

Sometimes I think the decision to study one dance style over another are simple things like that.

Originally Posted by badriya_al_ahmar

I think that this is a deep part of it, not just because of 9/11 and subsequent events but also because it is mentally hard and requires discipline to take on that 'burden' (kind of a funny twist on Kipling there). As a former anthropologist, I feel comfortable saying that most people don't like to be challenged to think outside the bounds of their own culture, and so something like belly dance becomes reinterpreted and repurposed to make sense within their non-ME culture--it becomes about goddess worship or female empowerment or performance art or whathaveyou. And of course this is not at all limited to fusion dancers. They just come across as the most obvious example because their costuming and music is the furthest removed from the ME.

You were in my head. Well put!!!

Originally Posted by *Shira*

I agree with those who say fusion has always been there. So what's different now?

[*]The convergence of Gothic subculture and belly dance. This particularly gained traction when Rachel Brice was added to the Bellydance Superstars in 2004.

Fact correction - RB has nothing to do with the convergence of the Gothic subculture and bellydance- she's not Goth, she doesn't dance Goth, she's not part of the culture nor does she bring the specific elements that define GBD to the dance - and I would say any Gothic influences you find with her are post-2005/6. The only part of the SF Dance Company (which became the Indigo) that could be considered Goth was Ariellah, and I would say those influences rippled back around/after the release of the first GBD DVD - and the Noir performances I was developing back then in the Bay Area. And again, I think the DVD, despite not being what I would consider an entirely shining example of what I would hold up as a total example of GBD, it brought it more consciously to the forefront of the community and inspired people - and the DVD was inspired by the Gothic Bellydance Resource - founded in 2003.

Rather I would say RB is responsible for the popularity of Tribal Fusion with her addition to BDSS, but Tribal Fusion does NOT equal Gothic Bellydance.

Originally Posted by rosehips

Fact correction - RB has nothing to do with the convergence of the Gothic subculture and bellydance- she's not Goth, she doesn't dance Goth, she's not part of the culture nor does she bring the specific elements that define GBD to the dance - and I would say any Gothic influences you find with her are post-2005/6.

That does not mean she is not seen as Gothic by the GP. I certainly can't define what makes belly dance Gothic, but what I can say is that for someone who has no idea what Gothicism is, or where it comes from, RB appears to be it. In comparing her to the other BDSS, she has a darker image - from costuming to demeanor to movements, there are elements of finding beauty in the abhorrent. (Assuming that her cabaret counterparts are the examples of traditional beauty in that context).

So to someone seeing the show, she may come across as Gothic and that person may then be drawn into that subculture. I don't know if that is what Shira meant, but that's how I took it.

So to clarify: I'm not commenting on RB's Gothic leanings, but to the average person who believes Gothicism is no more than black nail polish and eyeliner, she was (at one time at least, now I don't know) as close to goth as BDSS was going to get.

I wonder how much of it has to do with wanting to be an innovator or different. There are a lot of raqs dancers out there and so much has been done that it's hard to do something totally new. However, if you're the first to blend belly dance with something, you're going to get some recognition.

It takes a hell of a lot of talent to stand out among the hoards, but if you can carve your own niche, you stand a better chance of being at the top of the game. Further, it feels hard to be an individual when you're doing something similar to what so many others are doing.

Originally Posted by LeylaFahada

So to someone seeing the show, she may come across as Gothic and that person may then be drawn into that subculture. I don't know if that is what Shira meant, but that's how I took it.

So to clarify: I'm not commenting on RB's Gothic leanings, but to the average person who believes Gothicism is no more than black nail polish and eyeliner, she was (at one time at least, now I don't know) as close to goth as BDSS was going to get.

I'm sure it's because of my background (and having been there as this was all going on) that I have a hard time seeing RB's image back then as Gothic, or thinking that the GP would automatically go "oh, that's Gothic." But you can see it's equally as frustrating as the people who see her and go "THAT's what bellydance is" and then don't see traditional bellydance for what it is.

Mainly, I classified her back-in-the-day as "inspired by Gothic", but she didn't present herself as such, and as I said, besides looking different than both ATS and Cabaret, that doesn't it must be Goth. I think it could only be mis-identified as such because Gothic Bellydance was already out there and being discussed, but not as readily seen or known physically.

RB got her look mainly from Urban Tribal (whose costuming was precisely what the Indigo started out as, since Mardi Love and Melodia were part of Urban Tribal then) before they went modern/slick (which was in response to having THEIR look appropriated) and part Ultra Gypsy - who was also experimenting with their look and slimming down on the ATS look. Really, Urban Tribal, Ultra Gypsy, and Frederique's troupe (whose name I'm blanking on at the moment) were the fore-runners in that part of Tribal Fusion look - which I think is best classified as toned-down ATS with a dash of Burning Man/California aesthetic. From the Gothic subculture, I brought in synthetic dreadfalls (which ironically were first used for a cabaret performance, NOT a tribal one), as prior to that (2003), then only folks who had dreads, had them 24/7, not as a costuming element, and of course my corset belt designs.

Really, if we're going to discuss what was happening and what's developing now, I think it's very important to get all of these details straight. It's OK if you're not familiar with it - I don't expect everyone to know this, but as we've been discussing with the fusion trends and lack of education about traditional dance and what's happened with it in the last 60 years - it's just as important to know what the ladder of influence with fusion was in the last 8 years.

Originally Posted by rosehips

I'm sure it's because of my background (and having been there as this was all going on) that I have a hard time seeing RB's image back then as Gothic, or thinking that the GP would automatically go "oh, that's Gothic." But you can see it's equally as frustrating as the people who see her and go "THAT's what bellydance is" and then don't see traditional bellydance for what it is.

I agree with you completely. I don't see her as Gothic either, but since "Gothic" is confusing to most people when not in a belly dance context, that added layer means all bets are off.

I teach British literature to high schoolers, and whenever we get to the Gothic Romanticism unit (my favorite one btw) we begin with a discussion of what "Gothic" means. Every year I get eager hands raised to tell me about black nail polish, lipstick on boys, trench coats, The Matrix ...

So my relationship with Gothicism is an academic one. I do know that it's different though from the contemporary Gothic subculture, which for me is a bit confusing. Then, I hang around with a lot of people who identify with the Goth subculture, so that's educational as well, but just as in belly dance, there are a lot of different opinions of what is and what isn't. I need to stop confusing Post-Romanticism Gothicism with the contemporary Goth subculture. The website you gave me yesterday gave me a much clearer picture of Goth culture in general and it's relationship to that genre of dance, so I need to keep that in mind.

Knowing the details is important, but inaccurate information clearly affects us just as much as - maybe more than - truth. So I'm not defending her as Goth (though I would say that she has some elements of the Post-Romantic Gothic movement, though that's probably a different conversation), I'm just thinking that to a non-Goth(ic) onlooker - and that means GP and fellow dancers alike - she may come across that way. I just want to be clear that I'm not defending inaccurate info, just trying to explore its role in this.

Does that make sense? Hmmm, maybe we need a myths of Gothic Belly Dance thread.

Also, I sympathize with the frustration ... I mean really, The Matrix?!

Originally Posted by Albertina

I was born tribal fusion and I was attracted to it because it seemed cool.

I'm not a sequin kind of person and I absolutely hate those ATS turbans so tribal fusion seemed to be more my kind of thing.

Also, a really good friend of mine was studying with the tribal fusion teacher in town and I wanted to be able to hang out with her.

Sometimes I think the decision to study one dance style over another are simple things like that.

I agree with you that usually the simple answer is the most accurate. Yes, I've known many belly dancers over the years who do something because it's "fun" or "cool" - and I've done fusion myself because it was "fun". And yes, going to the same class your friend goes to is attractive - if you're belly dancing just for fun, then hanging out with your friends is absolutely part of the fun.

Regarding your comment that you're not a sequin person... that's fine, many people aren't. We talked about the fact that some people just aren't on another thread - http://www.bhuz.com/forum/rest-belly...omen-post.html .

I'm with you - I'm not a big fan of the ATS turbans, either! In fact, I'm not a big fan of the ATS costuming style in general. I much prefer the tribal fusion aesthetic, costuming-wise.

Originally Posted by rosehips

Mainly, I classified her back-in-the-day as "inspired by Gothic", but she didn't present herself as such, and as I said, besides looking different than both ATS and Cabaret, that doesn't it must be Goth. I think it could only be mis-identified as such because Gothic Bellydance was already out there and being discussed, but not as readily seen or known physically.

Let me try to clarify what I meant when I linked Rachel with Goth subculture.

A lot of people seeing BDSS dance saw "something" in Rachel that resonated with them - something different from what FatChance or Gypsy Caravan or traditional belly dance forms had offered. It really doesn't matter what marketing claims Rachel did or did not make about herself because most people had no idea what claims (if any) she made. Similarly, people didn't necessarily know anything about her personal life (ie, whether she hung out in Goth clubs and immersed in the subculture) - they just knew what they saw in her dance. There is a certain mystery about her stage persona - enough to be attractive to people who like the Goth aesthetic.