Thread: Separating fact from fiction

Our own Brea Morgiane was gracious enough to contribute this article to my web site, on separating fact from fiction when reading about belly dance "history":

Yes, But Is It History? by Brea Morgiane

I had asked her to write it for me, because I had liked a lot of what she posted on bhuz on the topic of history, and I also liked the idea of asking someone with academic training in history to talk about research methodology. I like the article, and thought she made some good points.

I thought it could be interesting to throw the question open to a wider audience - how do YOU, when reading about "history" of belly dance, decide what to believe versus what to dismiss? When you see conflicting points of view on belly dance history, how do YOU decide which one is more credible?

I love that article! I ran into a Middle Eastern woman here who told me that American girls cannot dance, only Arab girls because it is "their dance". I have since seen this person perform and her show simply looked like someone social dancing who happened to be in a costume, and she was off beat, to boot! And her music did not have any of the trappings of a real show, it was just a hodgepodge of songs tossed together. This person also undercuts to get gigs, or offers to work for free!!!

So Shira, when are you going to write a book?

Originally Posted by damiena

I ran into a Middle Eastern woman here who told me that American girls cannot dance, only Arab girls because it is "their dance".

I went to a Persian restaurant and joined in the social dancing with everyone else. During the band's break, a nice older Persian man with a very confused look on his face stopped me. "Are you from Afghanistan?" he asked? I tried not to burst out laughing. Me? A tall, red-headed, frecklefaced northern-European backgrounded American from Afghanistan???

Although it was never said, I know why he was so confused. You see, I had to be from somewhere in the Middle East because I could dance. Certainly no westerner could just get up and dance socially like that (!). I guess if one tried hard enough, as he had done, one could make the case for me being Afghani -- some of the folks in that region are relatively fair.
It does go to show that many ME folks are very ethnocentric about their dance!



As far as determining what is history and what is herstory: well, the more you study the culture, as well as the dance, the easier it becomes. You can just kinda smell it, you know?

Deborah

Originally Posted by casbahdance

I went to a Persian restaurant and joined in the social dancing with everyone else. During the band's break, a nice older Persian man with a very confused look on his face stopped me. "Are you from Afghanistan?" he asked? I tried not to burst out laughing. Me? A tall, red-headed, frecklefaced northern-European backgrounded American from Afghanistan???

Although it was never said, I know why he was so confused. You see, I had to be from somewhere in the Middle East because I could dance. Certainly no westerner could just get up and dance socially like that (!). I guess if one tried hard enough, as he had done, one could make the case for me being Afghani -- some of the folks in that region are relatively fair.
It does go to show that many ME folks are very ethnocentric about their dance!

I had a recent experience like this at an ME restaurant. The dancer (who I did not know personally) got me up to dance, so I boogied around a bit, but was trying not to show off too much or take the attention away from her. When I returned to my table, a middle aged ME woman sitting at the table next to me tapped me on the arm and said "What country are you from?". I said "This one" and she said , "No, I mean originally". I told her I'm half Irish and half Italian, born and raised in America - but, that I'm a professional BD instructor and performer. She just looked at me and said, "Are you sure?" ..l;,

Originally Posted by laura 2

I had a recent experience like this at an ME restaurant. The dancer (who I did not know personally) got me up to dance, so I boogied around a bit, but was trying not to show off too much or take the attention away from her. When I returned to my table, a middle aged ME woman sitting at the table next to me tapped me on the arm and said "What country are you from?". I said "This one" and she said , "No, I mean originally". I told her I'm half Irish and half Italian, born and raised in America - but, that I'm a professional BD instructor and performer. She just looked at me and said, "Are you sure?" ..l;,

If I fleshed out my story, it would sound very much like yours! The man first said, "Where are you from, Afghanistan?" I said, "No, I'm from Los Angeles." I felt bad after I had said that 'cause I didn't intend to be flip, but it probably came across that way. Then I went on to explain that I'm of mostly Swedish ancestry.

You just never know.

Now,

Deborah

Yep, I frequently get "Turkish", unless the asker is Greek-then it's Greek! When I demur (come on, I'm a European mongrel!)(French/Ukranian/Welsh/German and very fair skinned) the come-back is "you must have had a Turkish teacher"!

I find it flattering if a bit odd.

Kitty

..g.:

Originally Posted by *Shira*

How do YOU, when reading about "history" of belly dance, decide what to believe versus what to dismiss? When you see conflicting points of view on belly dance history, how do YOU decide which one is more credible?

All history is fiction. It's all mediated. All of it.

For me, I will go with what I have objective evidence for. That's why I don't go near anything prior to the 19th century, history-wise. But I am also conscious that every piece of that objective evidence is subjective, and it's only *a* history. Not *the* history. I'm also conscious that the bits of history I gravitate towards are the ones that support the way I tend to think. You can find plenty of sources that "prove" BD is a goddess dance/fertility dance/sacred women's space/yadda yadda. I prefer to look on those sceptically. Another person might not.

Part of the reason I look at history this way is because I have training in social sciences.

I trust Morocco generally. I feel like she's done a lot of research in the field and can provide more concrete proof.

I don't trust people who base their research on their family or add that they think x is true because they really like it (like people who are into the idea of the goddess or super into fertility traditions). The former is because the scope is too small, the latter makes me believe there is a bias.

Anyone who takes the time to really research it, can provide many examples, understand counter examples (just don't simplify the answer), and doesn't pretend to know it all is someone generally to be trusted by me.

Prime sources. Where did the idea come from and who is telling the person that's telling me. But isn't ALL history somewhat subjective?

I have a book called "Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and " OK, I forget the exact title, the author is Barbara Walker. It's a very thick book, and I keep it around because about half of it is verifiable and gives a pretty good start of where to look for answers. Now, I have had people that believe everything in it; it is, of course, elaborately skewed toward the notion that women are the start of everything and once ruled the earth with their great wisdom and proceeded to invent everything. Anyway, their arguments tend to be "look at all the footnotes". I have; they tend to reference other folk that are referencing more people that have the same viewpoint. Prime sources are very lax.

I find most dance histories to be much the same. Most have nuggets of wisdom, but must be carefully read and researched. Even then, how can we ever know for certain the past? 5 people see a car crash and 5 different versions of the story are produced.

BTW, a friend pointed out that with the Walker book referenced above the trick is to read the first part of the definition. It's generally accurate. Once a line like "but we now know that what this actually means is" appears, we're moving into colorful speculation. I suspect that the same kind of trick is generally true in any history.

Kitty

Originally Posted by *Shira*

..g.:

I am sorry; I started the trend by going on a tangent sparked from something in the article, not your discussion questions.

Originally Posted by *Shira*

I thought it could be interesting to throw the question open to a wider audience - how do YOU, when reading about "history" of belly dance, decide what to believe versus what to dismiss? When you see conflicting points of view on belly dance history, how do YOU decide which one is more credible?

When there are conflicting points of view, I typically decide what is more credible based on the person/persons disseminating that information. Are they credible, did they do solid research, etc. Are there points of view backed up by solid facts or is this simply their interpretation? When I am reading about the "history" of the dance, I tend to take everything with a grain of salt unless they have some irrefutable proof.

For part of my Masters Degree I am reading a lot of books on belly dance. everything from Snake Hips to Grandmother's Secrets (my advisers favorite) to Bellydance by Kati Sharif. A differnet book every month.

I am finding it interesting what is out there for consumption by the GP. When ever i come across anything about temples or fertility rituals, I shrug my shoulders, because common sense says that we do not know what was going on in the ancient temples and we don't know what the dances looked like. (I actually wrote a paper on this regarding ancient Greece and Rome and the images on pottery. There is no proof that the images were used to record dance movements. There doesn't seem to have been any dance notation at the time.)

Many of the writers really are selling romanticism at its best. Menstruation huts, temple dances, harems, you name it. Even things which are easily verifiable such as the Melya Luff. many still believe that it is a specific dance which originated in Alexandria and can only be done in a short dress with a ruffle at the shoulder. . .

And so it goes.

{{{HUGS}}}

God, why does your advisor like Grandmother's Secrets?

Originally Posted by zumarrad

God, why does your advisor like Grandmother's Secrets?

No idea. But she did her PhD on the Healing effects of Belly Dnace in Women with Cancer. *shrugs*

I am looking for a copy of A Trade Like Any Other.

{{{HUGS}}}

It amazes me that some dancers are trying to extrapolate specific "belly dance" movements from old pictures, paintings, and sculptures. WTF???

Originally Posted by Arwen

It amazes me that some dancers are trying to extrapolate specific "belly dance" movements from old pictures, paintings, and sculptures. WTF???

I do think that SOME artwork could plausibly be interpreted as showing a belly dancer. For example, the woman in "Dance of the Almeh" by Jean-Leon Gerome:
Dance of the Almeh by Jean-Léon Gerôme

I think her posture and the positioning of her hips do make it plausible that she *might* be belly dancing.

In another painting by Gerome, "Sabre Dance in a Cafe", I also think it's plausible that the dance style she's doing is belly dance:
Sabre Dance in a Cafe by Jean-Léon Gerôme

In this case, the fact that she has a sword balanced on her head makes it plausible that her dance style is belly dancing as opposed to something else, simply because the torso control of belly dancing makes the balancing possible. You wouldn't be able to keep a sword on your head while doing Saidi-style hopping!

But you'll notice that in both of these examples, I said PLAUSIBLE. There's a big difference between saying something is "plausible" and saying it's "fact".

Originally Posted by *Shira*

I do think that SOME artwork could plausibly be interpreted as showing a belly dancer.

I agree that some pictures can definately show a belly dancer, but not exactly what her dance was like. The further back in time we go, the harder it gets to make the connection to what we do today.

I think it's crazy to try and guess a specific movement based on a static image. It's just too far of a leap.

This is an example of some of the stuff I've been hearing lately from a website trying to show historical belly dance:



"Figure 14 is a 2nd century Hellenistic bronze statue from Alexandria. This fully veiled dancer has an upraised hip with a flat foot. This is exactly how a “hip snap” or “hip bump” is performed today. She also looks over her hip, as is common in some Egyptian and Turkish styles today. Note the garment under her veil is quite full and it seems her hair may be in a bun. Because of the position of the body, I firmly believe this is a dancer, but some have wondered whether this is actually just a model, and the sculptor was simply exhibiting his/her skill by showing the lines of the body under layers of cloth. Perhaps the model was a dancer and this stance was a natural one to display."

How do I decide?

It's a mix between the creditability of the source and number of sources with the same info. Say for Bdance, Morroco, Artemis, Hossam and Serena Ramzy, and Shira ..g.: etc. have info on their websites and some publish others stuff that I'd probably trust. And if I can find something in more than one book/credible web source, I'd be more trusting of it.

I am however also a big cynic anyway ,r:;

I just found this post! I wanted to thank Shira for putting my article up on her site.

While I agree on some level that history is in the eye of the beholder, so to speak, there are also things that we can be pretty certain did happen (such as JFK was once the president of the United States, etc). For myself, since I study a great deal of romanticized history, I tend to want to know not only who said it, but why. Since I study things like the history of absinthe and the Scottish Highlands, as examples, I run into a lot of interesting beliefs all the time, some of which (for instance, those about absinthe) can be physically harmful.

The thing I encounter most is that people often simply believe what they are told, which is where urban legends come from. I feel this is important particularly when you are dealing with a subject like bellydance and a great deal of the books and information published about it are questionable at best. I think frequently people see what they want to see. For instance, in the statue Arwen posted, it could also be interpreted as 'a woman who might have stepped in something and is looking over her hip at her foot'. ..g.: I'm mostly being silly but the point is that things like that can be interpreted in several ways.

I believe I've seen Morocco refute the idea that bellydance started as a birthing ritual, which is interesting because I think it is a misinterpretation of something she wrote about once, but correct me if I'm wrong with that.

For Tahira: I have noticed that some professors will not like it if your historical research clashes with their own; I'd be interested to hear what happens if your thesis turns out to show a rather different story than hers did.

Thanks to those who read the article also!

Originally Posted by Arwen

This is an example of some of the stuff I've been hearing lately from a website trying to show historical belly dance:



"Figure 14 is a 2nd century Hellenistic bronze statue from Alexandria. This fully veiled dancer has an upraised hip with a flat foot. This is exactly how a “hip snap” or “hip bump” is performed today. She also looks over her hip, as is common in some Egyptian and Turkish styles today. Note the garment under her veil is quite full and it seems her hair may be in a bun. Because of the position of the body, I firmly believe this is a dancer, but some have wondered whether this is actually just a model, and the sculptor was simply exhibiting his/her skill by showing the lines of the body under layers of cloth. Perhaps the model was a dancer and this stance was a natural one to display."

Arwen, thanks for posting this example! I think it's plausible to interpret this statue as depicting a woman executing a belly dance move, but I think it's equally plausible to interpret it as representing something else entirely - such as Brea's example of looking back at her foot to see whether she stepped in dog poop.

I would not consider this statue to be "proof" that belly dancing existed in the time and place in which it was created, but I would probably point to it as raising interesting questions.

I HATE that people - Wendy Buonaventura, j'accuse!! - use that statue's posture and drapery as "evidence" that she's a dancer. Yes, to us as BDers she could be executing what we recognise as a BD movement. And yes, she's wrapped in a veil, which to us as BDers is a BD thing. She's also a Hellenistic figure exhibiting the typical interest in motion and drapery of the time.

This woman also has her weight on one leg, the heel of the unweighted foot raised and is looking at her bum. Is she a belly dancer, do you think? Or is she just standing in contrapposto - a huge artistic development in the classical period which was very useful for Hellenistic sculptors because it adds dynamism to the figure (which they were way into?)

Is this female torso also "obviously" a dancer because her pose is very similar to the Gerome painting and she's got something wrapped around her a bit like a melaya?

Is Leda here a belly dancer? Is Donatello's David? For that matter, is Michaelangelo's David? Or are they just images of people arranged in a dynamic and aesthetically pleasing manner that suggests they might be taking a step or relaxing on one hip?

I can tell you straight that before I ever belly danced one step in my life, I stood with my weight on one hip and my other heel raised. It's a thing people do.

Originally Posted by BreaMorgiane

For Tahira: I have noticed that some professors will not like it if your historical research clashes with their own; I'd be interested to hear what happens if your thesis turns out to show a rather different story than hers did.

Thanks to those who read the article also!

The nice thing is that all I have to do is report that I read these books as opposed to doing a lot with them. This part of my thesis is a practicum!

{{{HUGS}}}

Originally Posted by BreaMorgiane

I just found this post! I wanted to thank Shira for putting my article up on her site.Thanks to those who read the article also!

Great article Brea! We've been missing you on Orientaldancer..cr.:

Thanks to Shira too for putting it on her wonderful site! It's one of the first places I send people.

Originally Posted by zumarrad

I HATE that people - Wendy Buonaventura, j'accuse!! - use that statue's posture and drapery as "evidence" that she's a dancer. Yes, to us as BDers she could be executing what we recognise as a BD movement. And yes, she's wrapped in a veil, which to us as BDers is a BD thing. She's also a Hellenistic figure exhibiting the typical interest in motion and drapery of the time.

This woman also has her weight on one leg, the heel of the unweighted foot raised and is looking at her bum. Is she a belly dancer, do you think? Or is she just standing in contrapposto - a huge artistic development in the classical period which was very useful for Hellenistic sculptors because it adds dynamism to the figure (which they were way into?)

Is this female torso also "obviously" a dancer because her pose is very similar to the Gerome painting and she's got something wrapped around her a bit like a melaya?

Is Leda here a belly dancer? Is Donatello's David? For that matter, is Michaelangelo's David? Or are they just images of people arranged in a dynamic and aesthetically pleasing manner that suggests they might be taking a step or relaxing on one hip?

I can tell you straight that before I ever belly danced one step in my life, I stood with my weight on one hip and my other heel raised. It's a thing people do.

Yes, this is exactly what I mean. Even if it were certain that any of the people depicted were belly dancing, it would be impossible to tell if they are doing a movement, pose, or in a transition. It is equally impossible to tell what move is being done. If you place your body in the same position, there are several things you could be doing or preparing to do. Worse, try to pinning down how the music, even if we knew what it souded like, is being interpreted by these alleged movements. Islamic miniature paintings make it even harder by being highly stylized and two dementional.

Many of the writers really are selling romanticism at its best. Menstruation huts, temple dances, harems, you name it. Even things which are easily verifiable such as the Melya Luff. many still believe that it is a specific dance which originated in Alexandria and can only be done in a short dress with a ruffle at the shoulder. . .

This is the stuff that I take with a grain of salt. Anything that hints of stereotypical mysticism I tend to toss out. I was once told that belly rolls were performed by ancient dancers to massage their organs. I smiled politely and wondered (to myself) why they would need to do such a thing.

ahhh, duplicate post

Originally Posted by adeylah

I was once told that belly rolls were performed by ancient dancers to massage their organs. I smiled politely and wondered (to myself) why they would need to do such a thing.

It is pretty common for people who do yoga to claim that one of the benefits of yoga is that it massages the inner organs. I think that usually these comments are a reference to the practice of nauli kriya, which is pretty much an extreme version of side-to-side belly rolls. Now, every time I've heard that claim (which I've heard many times over the years), I too have wondered why one would need to do such a thing!

I asked a yogini once, and she said it prevents constipation. Well, that's plausible, but a person can also prevent constipation simply by eating a suitable diet.

I'm guessing that the belly roll claim you heard was from someone who also does yoga and decided to transfer yoga claims to belly dancing. Because, you know, India and Egypt have identical cultures thanks to the migration of the Gypsies that occurred thousands of years AFTER the era of those ancient dancers.....

--Shira

PS: For those reading this message who don't know what nauli kriya is, here's a youtube link. Don't worry about the fact that it's in the "adult" area, all his manly bits remain safely covered, he just lowers his pants enough to give you a good view of his frisky ab muscles:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6B5yQdvyDM"]YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.[/ame]

That yoga bellyroll stuff has always freaked me right out! It's impressive muscle control though.

I do notice some crossover with the yoga beliefs and bellydance as well.