Thread: The ongoing belly dance identity crisis

Just saw this article posted on the GS:
Paola tells of 2 conferences for the Gilded Serpent, journal of Middle Eastern Music and Dance, including Bellydance

I found this interesting on a lot of levels.

The ongoing debate over "what are we?" or "what should we call ourselves?" reminds me of this quote: "A house divided against itself cannot stand." But it makes me wonder, SHOULD this house continue to stand as it is?

We talk a lot about naming issues, what is belly dance, what isn't belly dance, etc. and what impact naming has on audiences, prospective clients, etc. This article offers some good examples of the impact of our internal confusion among non-BDers. I was struck by the irony of the ethnomusicology professor labeling the author "orientalist" while at the same time regurgitating the same tired old Orientalist stereotypes of belly dance. Yet if WE don't know what we are, how can we combat stereotypes and educate people???

I feel like the lack of definition we have WITHIN the belly dance community makes it impossible for us to maintain any kind of coherent, let alone positive, perception of belly dance among the public at large. And I think the crux of this is that there are just too damn many things under the belly dance umbrella. I think that to defend the legitimacy of all the various offshoots of belly dance, we really, really need to start defining all those offshoots on their own terms, rather than in reference to one another.

I guess what I'm saying is that maybe the "belly dance house" NEEDS to be divided in ORDER to stand. I don't know...thoughts?

BTW, the only thing that really bugged me about the article was the sisterhood bit at the end...

I think that getting Egyptian dance, both Oriental and folkloric, recognized as a legitimate intangible cultural heritage would be a place to begin. Likewise Turkish Rom dancing, both nightclub and folkloric, might be recognized as legit. Both of these dances have a culture of origin and a long history in those cultures.

As others have mentioned, when the culture of origin is not too interested in honoring and supporting their cultural heritage as embodied in these dances, it's difficult to gain recognition from other cultures.

I am glad that the Western dancers have taken up the dance. I don't know what the answer is to getting our art form recognized as "legit." Most of what we do is more in the realm of show business or entertainment, I think. Not that we don't have some great artists who deserve recognition. People like Dalia Carella, Amaya, Aziza and many others are artists as well as entertainers. But our art form falls more into popular art rather than high art.

While I deplore the many offshoots of the dance that appear to have no connection to any Middle Eastern culture any more, like pirate belly dance or some of the others (farting robot music and the ilk), and I wish they would use a different name, how can we enforce anything on anyone?

Secretly, in some ways I like it that we are kind of an "orphan" art with no big patrons, no strict definitions of what we do. I must be a bit of an anarchist at heart. I like a certain amount of recognizable tradition in a dance performance, I don't care for the avant garde stuff except in special cases, so the line is fuzzy even for someone like me, who is fairly immersed in "belly dancing" as a way of life.

i don't think we need to divide the 'belly dance house'.
i just think it needs to be properly organised and labeled in such a way that makes everything clear.
personally, this is what i'd do:

- refer to the different "traditional" dances with their proper names: raks sharqi, beledi, etc.

- group these "traditional" dances under the name 'Middle Eastern dances'

- the term 'bellydance' regroups both the "original" ME dances, as well as the modern adaptations of the dances and the fusions (tribal etc).

because to me the fusions have a right to share the name 'bellydance'. i'm not talking about those dances that call themselves bellydance but you never see more than a couple hip drops and the occasional hip circle, but rather, those that really come from ME dance, share many moves and dance vocabulary with it...
(i know i'm going to be flamed for having said that, but oh well)

Waiting eagerly for more responses

Originally Posted by dunyah

As others have mentioned, when the culture of origin is not too interested in honoring and supporting their cultural heritage as embodied in these dances, it's difficult to gain recognition from other cultures.

Really good point.

Most of what we do is more in the realm of show business or entertainment, I think.

I am on the fence about this. Folk dances in general originated in social contexts, so their purpose wasn't to be artistic, yet I think that many of us would quickly agree that other folk forms, like hula, flamenco, etc. have artistic merit, even though they often also serve an entertainment function (there are a couple of restaurants here where flamenco dancers perform, yet I don't feel this undermines the artistic legitimacy of flamenco). I think it can be the same for belly dance. I think belly dance has both artistic merit and entertainment value, and which of these dominates depends a lot on the performance venue.

Originally Posted by Kathiya

i don't think we need to divide the 'belly dance house'.
i just think it needs to be properly organised and labeled in such a way that makes everything clear.
personally, this is what i'd do:

- refer to the different "traditional" dances with their proper names: raks sharqi, beledi, etc.

- group these "traditional" dances under the name 'Middle Eastern dances'

- the term 'bellydance' regroups both the "original" ME dances, as well as the modern adaptations of the dances and the fusions (tribal etc).

because to me the fusions have a right to share the name 'bellydance'. i'm not talking about those dances that call themselves bellydance but you never see more than a couple hip drops and the occasional hip circle, but rather, those that really come from ME dance, share many moves and dance vocabulary with it...
(i know i'm going to be flamed for having said that, but oh well)

I pretty much agree with you here. Maybe it's more an issue of "putting the house in order," to press the house analogy to its absolute limit...

I came up against exactly this problem with regards to naming and umbrella terms when writing my thesis. I wanted to differentiate, but not oppose, belly dance as it's done and received in cultures where it's "normal" ie the ME etc, and belly dance as it occurs in our own synthetic communities/culture that revolve around the practice of belly dancing. I found "Middle Eastern" far too narrow, especially given that it's normal for us in non-ME cultures to include a lot of North African dance/ritual etc in our studies too. "Arabic" left out the poor Turks and Persians. I didn't want to create a sense of BD in those cultures being something "ancient" either - I wanted to make it clear that BD there is living and growing and hybrid just like it is elsewhere, but in different ways because of its cultural normativity and ambiguous status, all of which are culturally inscribed things. So in the end I picked Shay and Sellers-Young's definition for BD, which is (paraphrasing from memory here) solo dances from Morocco to Uzbekistan that involve moving the torso and hands in circles and shimmies, PLUS group and solo dances based upon them and/or meant to be representative of them that have clear kinaesthetic similarities. That is a massively broad definition I used on purpose because it pretty much encompasses both indigenous BD (the term I ended up using) and globalised BD in all its permutations - classical raqs sharqi, American Cabaret, Egyptian folklore, fantasy ritual dances like presentations of zar and guedra, tribal.... the lot.

I think one of the problems we face, in truth, is not that BD has become too broad but that it's become simultaneously enormous and very narrow. It used to be that a BDer was a BDer and what she did was not necessarily "authentic". The Gypsy Trail myth made it easy for a dancer to say "oh it is a hybrid of various things" WHICH IT IS "because the gypsies travelled blah blah India Persia Greece Turkey Egypt Spain blah" - which is highly contestable but is a nice fantasy.

Now, we demand authenticity and purity and standardisation and boundaries of something that cannot be bounded in these ways. On a personal level, I find the new BD hybrids intriguing and postmodern but also threatening to me as a fat older woman who loves to dance in a ME style. It appears that I am a **** dancer now compared to these heel bouncing robots, and it hurts that I'm not physically capable of all the things they can do. Simultaneously I am highly conscious that I am NOT authentic, that I should NOT be TRYING to be authentic, that the only authenticity I can claim is personal authenticity. TF girls can go "I am authentically this or that because Carolena/RB/whoever taught me this move." I really can't go "I am authentically Egyptian because I do this move Suhair Zaki does, or at least my version of it" because I recognise that Egyptian dance alone is highly idiosyncratic and keeps changing and there's a lot more to it than moves, and...

(cont)
The new-style dancers have more "authenticity" than we do because they recognise their hybridity while simultaneously being able to trace their dance's roots. Of course they can, it goes all the way back to 1967, and didn't really kick off till the late 80s. The people who created it created it consciously, with concepts of themselves as artists and creators, and they're *still alive*. The nearest we get to that is Reda et al, and they don't speak the familiar language of personal training, diet, exercise, technical superiority and sisterhood, because the cultural contexts of Reda et al are totally different.

Originally Posted by zumarrad

I wanted to differentiate, but not oppose, belly dance as it's done and received in cultures where it's "normal" ie the ME etc, and belly dance as it occurs in our own synthetic communities/culture that revolve around the practice of belly dancing.

YES!

I think one of the problems we face, in truth, is not that BD has become too broad but that it's become simultaneously enormous and very narrow.

YES. THis is what I was grasping for but I couldn't find a way to say it.

To quote from the article: just what is this "fear of women's bodies and women's expression"??????

According to the article, there doesn't seem to be such "fear" when women do asian courtly dances or balkan folk dances, just with "belly dancing."

I don't get it.

Is it the fact that BDers (sharki, et al, as opposed to folkloric) have more skin showing? If so, then does this fear of the female body extend to polynesian dance or hawai'ian dance?

I'm with you, too, Nisaa, on that "glowing sisterhood" clap-trap. Makes me gag every time. If we're going to discuss, debate, argue, agree, disagree, ad nauseum, about BD, let's not do it because we're girl-victims, but because we're people with a common interest! For heaven's sake, I'm so sick of this us vs them (female vs male), "they don't understand us" c**p!

Deborah

PS: sorry about the not-so-nice wording . . . must be hormonal.

Originally Posted by zumarrad

(cont)
The new-style dancers have more "authenticity" than we do because they recognise their hybridity while simultaneously being able to trace their dance's roots. Of course they can, it goes all the way back to 1967, and didn't really kick off till the late 80s. The people who created it created it consciously, with concepts of themselves as artists and creators, and they're *still alive*. The nearest we get to that is Reda et al, and they don't speak the familiar language of personal training, diet, exercise, technical superiority and sisterhood, because the cultural contexts of Reda et al are totally different.

Right. Because those of use who are focused on raqs sharqi and more strictly Middle Eastern forms are operating in the realm of fuzzy cultural things.

Let me go out on a limb here. I think this is why fusion forms sprung up in the first place. From a Western perspective, something like belly dance, with an ill-defined history and fuzzy perceptions in its cultures of origin, isn't "real" in the sense of forms like ballet (where terms are standardized, the lineage is clear, etc.); the "reality" of belly dance in the West is a constructed reality suffused with elements of a fantasy "East." Thus belly dance is fair game for adaptation/modification/mutation, moreso than other dance forms where there is more concrete definition according to Western standards.

Personally I think the "sexy and laughable" BDer issue is nothing to do with our costuming or anything else concrete, but rather the cumulative effect of a century of images of hawt exotic maidens writhing in a come-hither manner that hints of ancient, mystical yet sordid pleasures as yet unexperienced, backed up by several centuries of "the east! It's a bit exotic and mysterious you know! Totally different from us!" The belly dancer symbolises the "revealed" orient. As my supervisor pointed out, when you want to represent the ME in a movie or a restaurant or anything at all, what do you see? A camel, an oasis, a belly dancer. Maybe some wibbly music and a chap in a turban. Or if you don't see the BDer, you see a woman in the blackest most enveloping hijab possible, preferably with dark, khol-rimmed, alluring eyes looking at you.

Lots and lots of people believe BD is a sexual dance ONLY, created by bored harem housewives as a way of getting Mr Fat and Lucky Sultan to choose them for a night of hot lovin'. That includes some ME people btw. Textbooks for dance are full of stupid articles that talk about BD being "the oldest dance" and harems and fertility rituals and exotic hoohaa. So not every academic in the world, not even a dance one, is going to "get it".

Btw I hope those ethnomusicologists aren't trying to "save" the "authentic and original" music and dance, cos that's totally Orientalist of them.

Originally Posted by casbahdance

I'm with you, too, Nisaa, on that "glowing sisterhood" clap-trap. Makes me gag every time. If we're going to discuss, debate, argue, agree, disagree, ad nauseum, about BD, let's not do it because we're girl-victims, but because we're people with a common interest! For heaven's sake, I'm so sick of this us vs them (female vs male), "they don't understand us" c**p!

Right! It's not really pertinent to the issue at all.

You're right, in that "belly dancing" (not my favorite term) is not really standardized, hence much of the confusion.

I don't really think it needs to be, though.

As a dance form, I personally think it's great to have so much freedom of expression, and being able to pull from so many traditions and create a fusion dance-- OR to carefully research and recreate a specific type of ethnic dance. The choices are endless!

The trouble is, the public at large isn't so comfortable with fuzzy borders; the world of sound bytes and two-word headlines prefers to lump everything together with a memorable label, and leave it at that. (Witness any top news story, ever.)

Such is the burden we must bear!

So, the way I see it, with such a varied and individualized dance form, it is up to each dancer to advertise herself and her dance as she sees fit-- and to be careful not to lump "all bellydancers" into her definition.

Originally Posted by Sasheen

This is why I call my dance "women's ethnic dance". Many ethnicities have contributed to this dance form, and although I realize that men also bellydance, the majority are women-- as am I, so the term makes sense for me.

Just nit-picking here.

The majority of folks who perform theatrical-style belly dance publically are women, but men are very active in the social dance aspect of it. Thus, I don't favor "women's ethnic dance." Additionally, "ethnic dance" is an extremely broad term that encompasses dance from every region of the earth, so which women's ethnic dance are we discussing? Not meaning to pick on you, Sasheen, it's just a problem of definition when we get so broad.

Deborah

ETA: Welcome to Bhuz, Sasheen! I just noticed that your post above was your first!

I've been severely told off for using "ethnic" on a number of occasions. It's Very V Bad and also Doesn't Mean Anything, apparently.

I also think the "women's ethnic dance" thing unfortunately hints at "anciente women's fertility dance performed since neolithic times by primitive peoples all over the world", which means hula is BD for instance. Which it is not.

Besides, I have an ethnicity. Just cos you're not brown doesn't mean you're not ethnic.

It annoyed me that the "expert" confused Orientalism with (Danse) Orientale (which is one of the reasons I often include the extra 'e'). The former is a way of looking at the world/colonization etc coined by Said. The latter is a French term used by professional dancers in Egypt to describe non-folk dance. I wish I had been there so I could kick his arrogant ankles.

Actually Said used an existing term, which is another reason it gets hairy. It's why we had that bloke on here a year or so ago going "oh you say Orientalism like it's a bad thing!" because for him it just meant pretty paintings. Orientalism is technically the study of the East (suitably vague term), and also the art movement that represented the East, and also the discourse that separates East and West.

But yeah, that expert didn't know anything about anything, clearly. Moreover, academics in such fields often have little theoretical interest so they don't question their assumptions very often. In a group of post-colonial types or sociologists you would assume he was making a joke, but NO.

At a sociology conference I was at recently, someone talked about a conference they attended that had "too many historians" making lots of massive assertions about things that would not stand up in a different academic milieu. It's why theory IS useful.

Originally Posted by zumarrad

(cont)
The new-style dancers have more "authenticity" than we do because they recognise their hybridity while simultaneously being able to trace their dance's roots. Of course they can, it goes all the way back to 1967, and didn't really kick off till the late 80s. The people who created it created it consciously, with concepts of themselves as artists and creators, and they're *still alive*. The nearest we get to that is Reda et al, and they don't speak the familiar language of personal training, diet, exercise, technical superiority and sisterhood, because the cultural contexts of Reda et al are totally different.

Whew...yes. I jsut wanted to say I really enjoyed your post. I have so many of these thoughts in my own head.

Don't have time to read the article at the mo, but just wanted to stick my head in here to say:

Originally Posted by zumarrad

I am highly conscious that I am NOT authentic, that I should NOT be TRYING to be authentic, that the only authenticity I can claim is personal authenticity.

Yes!!!

OT: Zumarrad, I've love reading what you've said on this and other subjects recently - will your thesis be available at any point?

Well, it has to be marked first, but once that's done and any corrections are made (which should be February) it will eventually become available in the University of Canterbury library, and also on its electronic repository,which means if you're enrolled with a university with a reciprocal deal you *should* be able to view it directly. Otherwise there would be interloan.

Not currently academically attached Let us know if there will be layperson access at any point!

Originally Posted by zumarrad

Actually Said used an existing term, which is another reason it gets hairy. It's why we had that bloke on here a year or so ago going "oh you say Orientalism like it's a bad thing!" because for him it just meant pretty paintings. Orientalism is technically the study of the East (suitably vague term), and also the art movement that represented the East, and also the discourse that separates East and West.

If I remember correctly, that "bloke" was Z-Helene's husband, Rick. Not exactly a stranger to either the world of Belly Dance or the misconceptions that swirl around it. Another example of how a word that one set of people sees as a denunciation another set sees as simply an adjective with no good or bad meaning.

This "identity crisis" as Nissa describes it is nothing new, just growing as the popularity of not only the underlying form but the hybrid forms grows across the world. Just as we often disagree about what to call a certain movement and even how to break it down, we are not likely to agree about how to compartmentalize or label facets of the dance.

oh, I had such a ball trying to categorize this for my students... I started with this neat little powerpoint presentation that turned into a mess when I started putting arrows between what had influenced who etc. It got totally wacked out crazy to read/understand... And I wasnt even focusing heavily on the WORLD category of Bellydance, I was merely trying to structure out BD in the US.

Havalook if anyone is interested: http://www.the-eda.com//images/stori...bd1/slide1.jpg (change the number on the slide to see 2 - 7 - it's still in development).

Zumarrad: I want that thesis! You've mentioned it a few times on Bhuz now and I am itching all over to get my hands on it. You are just going to have to make it available for us BD-atics :)

Originally Posted by zumarrad

Besides, I have an ethnicity. Just cos you're not brown doesn't mean you're not ethnic.

Exactly. I AM including my own ethnicity here! My dance is a combination of the influences of various Middle Eastern and North African cultures, viewed through my own lense and interpretation. That is why I like the term; it is very broad. But, as you say, too broad for some people.

I actually don't think a perfect term for this type of dance exists at all; if anyone finds one, please let me know!

Originally Posted by casbahdance

The majority of folks who perform theatrical-style belly dance publically are women, but men are very active in the social dance aspect of it. Thus, I don't favor "women's ethnic dance." Additionally, "ethnic dance" is an extremely broad term that encompasses dance from every region of the earth, so which women's ethnic dance are we discussing? Not meaning to pick on you, Sasheen, it's just a problem of definition when we get so broad.

You're right, I did not express myself very well. The point I was trying to make (and not very eloquently!) was that I AM a woman, so therefore what I do is women's dance. That's all. I don't mean to be gender-exclusive.

I agree, "ethnic" is broad, but then so is "belly dance". There are some parts of "belly dance" that I would never incorporate into my own dance, as I am sure is the same for most dancers. Therefore, I think it is up to each dancer to make it clear what her particular style is-- through photos, write-ups, videos, etc.

I originally chose the term "ethnic" because my dance is such a blend of ethnicities: my own, several Middle Eastern ones, and all the influences of my instructors as well-- all combined! To me it seems a joyous blend and celebration of cultures.

But, I am getting the sense that from the larger BD community, this is not a good term. ,f:: And I thought I had it all figured out. I may have to do some serious thinking to see if this is still the best term for me, or if I should tweak the wording.

I appreciate all your helpful comments.

Originally Posted by Sasheen

True. But I AM a woman, so therefore what I do is women's dance. That's all.

Using that logic I perform engineers' dance and New Zealanders' dance and ... add any group that I belong to. But none of which describe the genre of dance I actually study and perform. It just describes me.

Originally Posted by kashmir

Using that logic I perform engineers' dance and New Zealanders' dance and ... add any group that I belong to. But none of which describe the genre of dance I actually study and perform. It just describes me.

Woo, I do engineer's dance too! New Orleanian dance! Pregnant back ache dance!

Iconoclastic, incomprehensible arthritic foot and shoulder dance, that's me!

This thread is fascinating... I mean no disrespect to you, Sasheen, just getting caught up in the name game.

And Zumarrad, once again I must bow down before you...

Awww. As a practitioner of graduate student New Zealander dance, now revisiting my old dole bludger dance roots, I accept your worship graciously, as with all compliments!