Belly Dance Traditions & StylesFrom traditional folk to modern performance, there is a lot ot discuss regarding the characteristics of Middle Eastern dances.
Our troupe is having a discussion about how much "orientale" you can do in a Lebanese Debke number. We have a choreography that has line dancing interspersed with mini-solos, and the director is concerned about looking too "orientale" during the solos.
I guess I think of Debke as being subject to the same cultural environment as other forms of Middle Eastern dance, namely that a woman would always want to display herself as a delicate, charming, and graceful flower, and not as a strong, foot-stamping, athletic maniac like a male Debke dancer might portray himself. This is not to say that Debke doesn't maintain its energy--it does, but I see it keeping its energy in the same band of the movement spectrum as Raqs Beledi, which is to say, more funky and slightly less polished than Raqs Sharqi. (There's no danger we are talking about picking up balletic influences here--none of us were formally trained in ballet, and we don't use those elements.)
Does anyone have a link to a good example of women's Debke that our group can use for discussion? I'm looking for actual Middle Eastern (preferably Lebanese) folkloric troupes or TV presentations, not belly dance groups who learned something from someone who learned something from someone who learned something from someone...
The best one I found was this one of Tony Hanna and a group:
If you look at the women's hip lifts/arm framing around the 4:00 mark, I am not seeing that it looks substantially different from what you would see in Raqs Beledi. How much "orientale" is too much? Is too much heavy-footed, stampy goodness unfeminine?
This is one of my favorites. This is a Palestinian group out of Houston. The ladies are just as energetic and athletic as the men in this clip. But with debke there are always so many qualifiers to take into account...nationality, the degree of conservatism of participants and audience, the peformance context, etc. Like, in this clip, these are young adults living in the US (girls not veiled) doing a public theatrical performance...as far as I know, never in a million years would you see a more traditional Palestinian lady "over there" doing debke like this. Also, there are always differences between theatrical debke and social debke. You see women doing stuff in a theatrical troupe that that you might not see them busting out in a normal social situation.
We are doing Lebanese Debke, and Lebanese Christian Debke at that (if it makes a difference). I don't know much about Palestinian Debke beyond the 20 minutes of material Roxxanne Shelaby taught on the subject the last time she did a workshop in our area. I know there are a million different flavors of Debke, and the one she taught was much more sedate than the ones in your videos. I imagine that a lot of the variation depends on the people. I wouldn't expect a group of older dancers to be doing the same kind of acrobatic, joint-pounding moves as a group of teenagers (although, I think Roxxanne said she learned that particular dance from some young girls.)
I guess what I am really looking for is a video of what goes on when a native dancer breaks out of the line to bust a move. How much does that look like what we think of as "belly dance"?
I guess what I am really looking for is a video of what goes on when a native dancer breaks out of the line to bust a move. How much does that look like what we think of as "belly dance"?
It's not going to look very "belly dancey" (look at me, makin' up words!) at all when they're doing straight-up debke.
In social debke, in general (but I would never say "as a rule"), women do tend to be a little more restrained/subdued than men. But in theatrical debke you see women sometimes doing reasonably exuberant/athletic moves.
Here's what appears to be a Lebanese group out of Australia (I'll confess to never having seen the pointy princess hats before, though)...
I think that you can get away with a lot under the umbrella of "theatrical," though. Like in the first video you posted. It's like a "sharqified" debke. You just have to make the inclusion of the oriental stuff a conscious artistic choice. But if your troupe is trying to put on just straight-up debke, I would try to keep the belly dancin' out of it.
Hope this helps. I just taught a bazillion classes and my brain is mush.
That's the thing--there are parts of the choreography that are straight-up, folkloric, social Debke, and then there are the mini-solos, which, as far as I can tell, are pretty much what you would call "belly dance" with the exception of one step where you turn in a circle in sixteen counts, kick to the back on the pick up and step-step-step, four times. Everything else is the usual stuff (e.g., Salimpour "Arabic" step family) with a scarf, and occasionally layered with a small shimmy. In my solo, which was intentionally supposed to be different, I had a six-count combination of step R, step L, lift R foot on L hop, step R-L-R in place, and that move was stolen from some dude dancing in the crowd at an Assi al-Hilani concert on YouTube (you can't get more Lebanese than that!).
I wish I had a video of the performance so you could see what I am talking about, or for that matter so *I* could see what I am talking about because I didn't think what I was doing wasn't in the same ballpark as the rest of the choreography. I wasn't doing figure eights or undulations or snake arms, so I'm not sure how I was "too sharqi." I'm back to the feminine posture thing--how "delicate" is un-Debke? Actually, the more I look at this, most of the men look like they are pretty light on their feet and not trying to be too heavy, even on the stampy parts. It's a shame the soloist in your third clip was male. That's the kind of information I'm looking for.
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