Originally Posted by Marya

I have been thinking about this a lot actually. I just for the first time saw the Joseph Campbell interviews that were filmed in 1988. I was out of the country when they were aired on Public Television and I never saw them before although I had heard of Joseph Campbell.

While Joseph Campbell doesn't address Middle Eastern Dance he does talk about the Archetypes and the persistance and universality of myth and the role myth plays in our society. I started to think that the myths we encounter as Belly Dancers may or may not be true in the sense that they are historically accurate and can be proven by ancient records, but that Belly Dance somehow triggers a response in us that manifests these Archetypes, especially the Goddess one. We desperately want to be connected to our roots as far back as we can and Archetypes being basically a product of the uncouncious do not yield to logic or scholarship. The myths become true for an individual who needs them.

Coincidentally, I also watched again my video of Suhaila Salimpour's recreations of Bal Anat's dances. Jamilia Salimpour (Suhailia's Mother) named her troup after a Goddess, so we are starting out with myth from the very beginning.

The very first dance on the video is the "Birth Magic" dance with a long haired, topless, masked dancer undulating to a mizmar for way too long. The video also includes a snake dance, a basket dance, and some ethnic dances from Morroco, Tunisia and Turkey. Many of these theatricalized folk dances are still performed almost identically today but are thought to be completely authentic.

In these Bal Anat recreations are just about every myth that we still hear. The question I have is did Jamilia Salimpour create the first theatrical dances to represent these myths or did she encounter them elsewher? There is a lot of writing out there on women and healing through archetypes, for example "Women who run with the Wolves" by Clarissa Pinkola Estés "Daughters of the Goddess" by Wendy Griffin.

Jamilia herself acknowledges that although her troupe's Renaissance Pleasure Faire performances were perceived as "authentic" they were "half real and half hokum"

Given the persistance of this Archetype, I would guess that acknowledging the need for the myth then explaining that myths are stories to help us get through life and not history might be a better way to debunk the belief that the myths are history.

This is a bit of a ramble, but I am starting to think we are stuck with these myths because of the strong unconcious element.

Marya