Quote:
Originally Posted by gwinity
(This post is not drected solely at A'isha, despite using her quote.)
So what, I wonder, makes a person a bellydancer? What is that fine line a person must cross from being someone who dances in their spare time to being able to say "I'm a bellydancer"?
Is there a certain number of performances one must do? Is the title only for the pros who earn a living from dancing, or are students also entitled to add "bellydancer" to the list of things-they-are?
Regarding Shakira, she obviously has a huge love of the dance, and appears to have studied it (given the sheer number of different clips in which she uses BD movement), so what makes her less of a bellydancer than, say, any of the non-professional dancers (are we even considered bellydancers?) on this very forum? Is it simply because she fuses bellydance with other danceforms, or what? And if a 'true' bellydancer did the same, would she be stripped of the "bellydancer" title?
*runs from exploding can o'worms*
|
Gwinity, your post isn't an exploding can of worms; to be that it would have to actually relate in some way to what is being discussed here.
We are talking about dance genres and what defines them; not whether only persons of X experience level can call themselves a belly dancer. Perhaps you made an irrational connection to other, unrelated events in your life; people do this all the time. Back up and reread what is being written here.
A'isha and many of us here consider belly dancing to be a dance with a particular cultural context in addition to a particular movement vocabulary and musicality. I really like A'isha's idea that dance is more than the sum of its movements.
Shakira may actually BE a belly dancer -- as I have no idea how or what she dances off camera from her music videos. However, she isn't belly dancing in her music videos, although she does execute (very nicely sometimes) some movements that are also used in belly dance.
Sedonia