Thread: The "Feeling" of Egyptian Dance?

I found this on Hulu;
http://www.hulu.com/watch/131207/nat...-belly-dancers
After I got over the "lute" part (seriously, did he just say LUTE? A LUTE!?) and continued listening to this short clip, the teacher said that foreigners don't have the feeling for it. Although it seems that after the lute part everything else seemed a little too discredited to believe.
I know there have probably been threads for this sort of thing before but I would like to get updated opinions and to discuss this clip.
So, are foriegn dancers lacking in a special feeling, or is it complete and utter nonsense?
Talk away please.

To be fair, I have seen oud translated as "lute" quite a bit.

It's incorrect, but "lute" does seem to be the generic popular name of any instrument that looks like that. I know a couple of theorbo players who get really annoyed at being called lute players, but outside of bellydance and a university environment, I don't know anyone who wouldn't look at either instrument and call them "lutes."

Plus it's NatGeo -- and we all know how meticulously accurate their reporting is :/

'Al oud' ('the oud') could be heard to a non-Arabic speaker as 'lute', I suppose, and that is where the word 'lute' originally comes from. And the oud is the precursor to the lute as an instrument (and as a word!).

But yeah, it is a silly mistake on the part of the editors, though given the above it does not discredit the rest of the video for me. So often the voice overs on these kinds of thing are just misinformed annoyances we have to deal with in order to watch authentic footage!

Thank you for the replies. Naturally, as an oud player, I was very offended by that particular comment. However, after reading my original post I relised it's missing an entire sentence, witch was to be the focus of the post.
I'm now editing the original post to include the missing sentence.

Originally Posted by DarkestDesert

So, are foriegn dancers lacking in a special feeling, or is it complete and utter nonsense?

I'm sure we DO lack something: a life lived in the Egyptian culture.

We DON'T hear the music the way a native would because we didn't grow up with it, don't speak Arabic as a first language, and never spent our formative years in school in Cairo.

But the same is constantly argued of Flamenco dancers, blues musicians, southern cooking, you name it. It's never as good when done by "foreigners" as it is by people IN the culture. Your mother-in-law's fried chicken may be good, but it will never be as good as your own mother's (unless she was not a good cook!)

What Aziyade said. And I think there is a love-hate thing over there with dance, in that it's not something many Egyptians like to say they're proud of exactly, but when it comes down to it they think of it as theirs nonetheless. Maybe it's like an eccentric family member who embarrasses them a lot, but in the end they are still family and if an outsider makes a criticism then there's a certain degree of resistance to that. I can ***** about my brother but YOu can't, sort of thing. I imagine it translates.

I'm also very much aware that there's traditionally a slightly different kind of approach to music over there (AJ Racy's book on tarab is telling me this) and a lot of the subtleties - where it's suitable to show off, where it's suitable to pull back - aren't easy for us to grasp purely because of not being so marinated in the music and its conventions, as it were.

Originally Posted by aziyade

I'm sure we DO lack something: a life lived in the Egyptian culture.

We DON'T hear the music the way a native would because we didn't grow up with it, don't speak Arabic as a first language, and never spent our formative years in school in Cairo.

But the same is constantly argued of Flamenco dancers, blues musicians, southern cooking, you name it. It's never as good when done by "foreigners" as it is by people IN the culture. Your mother-in-law's fried chicken may be good, but it will never be as good as your own mother's (unless she was not a good cook!)

True! And just because someone is Egyptian or Lebanese, doesn't mean they inherited the dance gene! But someone who is truly a gifted and talented dancer, and grew up in the culture, and has studied and worked as a dancer, that person will naturally have an advantage over a foreigner who has to learn the music, the moves, the language and finally the feeling.

I see the original poster is new. She might be interested in the "rawness" thread I started a while back. Rawness and feeling go hand in hand.

http://www.bhuz.com/showthread.php?3...hlight=rawness

Okay, I geekily just read that thread Norma! Good stuff in there.

*someone should resurrect that zombie thread*