Thread: American Cabaret vs. Turkish from the same era

Originally Posted by david

That's Aiiiiida Al Adawi - Jamilah Salimpour's protege of maaany years. So, that's definitely Salimpour stylization of American Cabaret and "folkloric" combined. Isn't she just awesome?

Shira - GREAT points. I would like to point out that just like in any other style - what you describe is what a GOOD, educated and aware dancer would be doing....:) Not all examples we'll find will obide by the guidelines you give very well.... So, guys, dont be all shocked and confused if you see Khaleegi movements to Debke or Turkish music. If it looks good - call it artistic freedom, if it doesnt - ...well, you choose your term yourself - Im not taking the "creds" for THAT one lol :)

DaVid

Oh, THAT'S the famous Aida. Boy, I would love to see her videos as well.

Dilek, thank you so much for taking the time to answer my long list of questions! I really appreciate the information!!!

Originally Posted by turkishdancer

this looks more folkloric to me. Were they moving with figure 8s, shimmies, or more feet work, because if they looked like they were belly dancing then I would call Turk Oriyentali, if more feet work, that would have been more folkloric.

Yes, this was a folkloric performance. The one dressed up as a man chased around the one dressed up as a woman, using rapid footwork. The dancers were young men with the faces painted on their bare chests and bellies. Their arms were crossed behind their heads, with the hats covering their arms and heads. So I think the reason this was called gobek dansi is because the dancers' stomachs are bare.

The actual dancing is mostly simple footwork, with the male character chasing the female character around the stage. Occasionally the characters end up face to face (ie, the men's bellies touching each other), and they do belly rolls to make it look like their characters are kissing. It's highly entertaining!

Originally Posted by turkishdancer

Yes this is how it should be spelled. Oriyental or Oriyantal Dansi.

Really? It's correct to spell "Oriyental" with an "e"? I thought the correct spelling was with an "a" right after the "y". Although I realize the word entered the Turkish language from the French, which does use an "e"...

Originally Posted by turkishdancer

Yes that is correct, of course "i" does not supposed to have the dot on the top, so the sound is different, "i" is a soft your lips need to be more expanded to the side like you are smiling, "i with no dot" is deeper, more like your lower lips stretching down instead of like smiling. I know it is hard to describe.

Ah yes, I'm familiar with the dotless ı - for example I know it's used in the Tarkan song Şıkıdım.

Once again, thank you so much for answering all my questions! I love learning about languages!

I'm reading this thread a little late (I saw it a few days ago, but it's so interesting that I had to have a long moment to read it carefully !)

I would like to hear from some of the dancers in Europe, the UK, Australia, etc. Was there a Turkish influence as well as Egyptian and Lebanese? Of course, the US is know for being a melting pot, but I'm curious if the clips of Cory and Alexandra King 'era style' were represented in other countries too.

Here are my infos about the French scene : as far as I know, there is no Turkish influence here, everybody does Egyptian style. We do have one Turkish dancer/teacher, Melisdjane, who is fantastic (I take workshops with her whenever I have the opportunity), but she is very isolated, I mean very different from all the French dancers. She has no clips on the internet, but to give you an idea when I saw Artemis Mourat dancing she reminded me of Melisdjane.
We also have a few dancers who teach Turkish Rom, but really not many.

France seems to have more of a wider range in their dance scene with Tunisian, Morroccan, Algerian influences. One of the most fab dancers I've ever seen was Mounira Yagobi from Paris. Another was Saadia Souyha - a practitioner of "Les Autre danse" (sp?) - the other dance... a dance style that has somewhat of a following in Paris from what I understand. I havent been to France, so I couldnt tell you how Turkish or AmCab or Lebanese the scene is... but my impression is that it's rather Maghrebi focused.

There are indeed a lot of dancers here from Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria, but they all refer clearly to Egyptian style, I never heard any of them claiming that they do "Algerian bellydance", nor Tunisian or Moroccan. Maghrebi people had a very strong cultural influence from Egypt, and to them bellydance is definitely Egyptian. Some of them do teach dances from Maghreb, but as something different, they don't call it "danse orientale". So I wouldn't say that there is a Maghrebi influence on bellydance in France. Except maybe on the fact that those dancers are often particularly good in interpreting Egyptian classical songs, because they really understand and feel the lyrics.

I don't know Mounira Yagobi, but I took a workshop with Saadia Souyah a few years ago, and as far as I understand, she is very much into the Suraya Hilal style.

Of course we also have a strong influence from the US through the BDSS (but are they AmCab, I'm not sure, except for Ansuya...). I don't know anything about a Lebanese influence.

Hope that helps, and thank you all for this great thread !

Originally Posted by Lauren_

maybe we should just call it Golden Era Turkish?

Another thought I wanted to add...

When I'm dancing in American style and doing Turkish inspired material such as fast 9/8 (what we used to erroneously call "karsilama"), or s-l-o-w gooey taqasim with lots of undulations, I would hesitate to claim I'm doing Turkish style. It's not that I'm trying to avoid affiliation with Turkish - I'll cheerfully acknowledge the strong Turkish influence. The reason I don't call it Turkish style is that I have not made the concerted study to determine which of the movement vocabulary I have learned over the years actually was done by Turkish dancers versus which was made up somewhere along the way by someone on the western side of the Atlantic.

It was pretty common for American-style dancers to take a song and experiment with what moves they could make fit. I remember classes in which the instructor would teach how to take a 4/4 move we already know and adapt it to work with 9/8.

I *have* done such a study of Egyptian, so I feel comfortable saying that certain dances of mine are Egyptian style. But I don't feel comfortable saying that my American-style dances are "Turkish style". I'd be okay with calling them "Turkish inspired", though. It's a truth in advertising rationale.

That makes sense, Shira.

I'm feeling a lot clearer about where the similarities/differences lie. I was so surprised -- and pleased! -- to discover just how deep the Turkish roots really go in the American Cabaret style. But I can see why it wouldn't be accurate to call it Turkish style, because the dancers weren't *trying* to be accurate to Turkish style.

An awful lot of the defining characteristics of American Cabaret style (which I'd been taught were fantasy or Hollywood elements) are clearly turning up in these older Turkish clips, though, and as an American I feel strangely vindicated by that.

I'm looking forward to more of the 'golden era Turkish' clips showing up on youtube. I've never had access to learning/seeing this style before!

I thought this would be an nice addition to the thread, a classic American dancer that's very clearly pulling from an Arabic repertoire Dahlena:

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lv1J_CGo6aU&feature=PlayList&p=94CE6E14CC4 4134E&index=0&playnext=1]YouTube - Dahlena American Bellydancer[/ame]

Originally Posted by sylvie_aziyade

I don't know Mounira Yagobi, but I took a workshop with Saadia Souyah a few years ago, and as far as I understand, she is very much into the Suraya Hilal style.

Of course we also have a strong influence from the US through the BDSS (but are they AmCab, I'm not sure, except for Ansuya...). I don't know anything about a Lebanese influence.

Hope that helps, and thank you all for this great thread !

Thank you so much for posting sylvie! This is great information. Your insight on Saaida Souyah makes great sense. I, personally, had a problem understanding what the difference between her dance style and Hilal style was in the first place aside from the fact that Saaida has a flashier taste in costuming at times. There was an article about her in the national Norwegian Bellydance Association's magazine back in the day where she talked about "les autre danse" that messed me up. I'll see if I can find it again and give you the info the article gave. It'd be fun to run it by you since you are in France :)

In regard to the BDSS...the dancers on tour have any kind of training from Egyptian technique to American Cabaret Bellydance (ACB) technique to Suhaila Salimpour technique to Jazz and HipHop and Tribal Fusion. I deliberately segregate the technical training from "style" when it comes to the BDSS because their choreography work is what defines the style of each piece, not the dancer's preference. All of the dancers conform to other technical expressions and adapt themselves to what's needed in the various pieces in their shows. Ansuya, Petite Jamilla and Jayna have ACB backgrounds. Jillina studied with various LA teachers back in the day and she's visited through quite a few technical expressions....instead of defining HER to a style - I'd just start calling in Jillina-eque as she also has huge influence upon the expression of the BDSS as one of the main choreographers from the initiation of the BDSS concept. Kind of like Fahtiem - you cant define Fahtiem as anything else than... Fahtiem. And when anyone dances like her you cant define them as anything else than Fahtiem-esque. (going further on that one we could get to Dina-esque, Reda-esque, Rom-esque, Raqia-esque, Aida-esque, Rachel-esque, Kami-esque, Suhaila-esque....Davi-Desk.. etc etc).

Sylvie - would you bother to posting some clips of French dancers for us, maybe? That'd be fun! Promotion de danse du ventre de France...OK, I probably just shamed my French teacher from high school again...

*Du* danse du ventre de France, je crois.

Originally Posted by zumarrad

David thank you so much for the detailed info about Europe. A look at belly dance that is *not* centred solely on the two poles of the ME and the US is long overdue.

Hopefully some of the Aussies will chime in with more info about how things are for them, but I've been told that Australian BD did not have the same strong US influence as NZ BD has, originally, because of its much larger and more cohesive ME diasporic communities. Amera told me that when she first started dancing in Sydney everything was dictated by the musicians. I think the influences there are largely Lebanese, Egyptian and Greek (and Turkish).

Not sure how relevent this still is to the discussion but a short not too inaccurate summary won't hurt.

I'm from the west coast of Aus and oriental dance was primarily introduced via arabic immigrants in the 70's-80's. We had a teacher that studied with Bobby Farrah and a european woman, French I believe, start teaching at about the same time or shortly after a syrian born dancer from egypt did.

The influence of the turkish community came later, more into the 90's. We (mum's school) were primarily the ones that would dance at the turkish events and turkish restaurants and learning turkish rhythms was standard for us, but I am sure our style was pretty sketchy definitely not golden era turkish. Other than our involvement with the turkish community most dancers here were arabic style.

Just prior to that we were also the first to officially name our ethnic constructs a created style (Mystique Gyspy Tribal) rather than pass it off as folkloric. Interestingly the dancers we trained in that style went on to be among the first ATS tribes in WA even though that isn't what we did. Mum's focus then shifted to roman dance and she is now the foremost in that style on this side of the country.

Basically I don't think our development parallels much of what was happening in the US, though there are some reflections.

Originally Posted by zumarrad

*Du* danse du ventre de France, je crois.

Yup, I was right. I did just shame my French teacher from high school AGAIN... may the French forgive me.