Dear Gypsirose.
Lydia is right, gossip is not only typical for belly dancers, but you will find it everywhere, especially among artists of all kind. I heard for example that concurrence and gossip are lot more extreme among ballet dancers and even worse among opera singers. But I saw some very bad things also among martial artists (fortunately I was not involved myself), where the concurrence went so far, that they started beating each other, in order to prove that their fight system was better than that of the other.
So just ignore those things and concentrate on the actual subject, the dance. And you will always find people with who you get along and whose motives are similar like yours, this means, the love for the dance
