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Andrea Deagon · 04-12-2008, 03:54 PM

Having said all of that, I wish people would just stop with the dancing priestesses. It burns me not as a belly dancer but as a student of ancient religions. There's no such thing as a "temple priestess" -- there were priestesss to specific deities who had ties of varying sorts to specific temples to those deities.

One example: ancient Egypt. There's evidence for elite women serving as (part time) dancers to some gods (only a few, but hundreds of musicians attested), but no indication of what sorts of dance. But since the temple rituals were very specific ("choreographed"?) and solemn, it doesn't look as if an inately improvisational, joyful dance would be appropriate.

Where you have dance illustrated on sacred occasions, it looks acrobatic, and a Middle Kingdom papyrus that has to do with hiring dancers for the festivals at a temple (Ilahun) indicates that foreign dancers were hired from outside the temple, and there's other evidence of "working-class" dancers being hired for temple gigs. So what they did was anyone's guess, there's no solid evidence. But even if they were belly-dancing their little hearts out, it's not accurately described as dancing by "sacred temple priestesses" or whatever.

"Sacred temple priestess" is a feeling that some dancers get when they prepare for or conceptualize their dance, or even dance it. Which is fine, because I'm not trying to stand in the path of belly dance morphing into whatever it wants in the West, that's not going to change the Eastern phenomenon. But it's the violence done to the past that bothers me.

As I put it in the article I mentioned in the last post, "The past, whose inhabitants are no longer around to trouble us, is still available for colonization."

Of course, unlike you studio owners and performers out there, I am on hiatus from dancing and teaching, so I don't (any longer) have to explain patiently and with a smile on my face to reporters and the GP what the story really is.

04-12-2008, 03:54 PM	#7 (permalink)
Andrea Deagon Member Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Wilmington, NC Posts: 123	And I'm not done yet ... Having said all of that, I wish people would just stop with the dancing priestesses. It burns me not as a belly dancer but as a student of ancient religions. There's no such thing as a "temple priestess" -- there were priestesss to specific deities who had ties of varying sorts to specific temples to those deities. One example: ancient Egypt. There's evidence for elite women serving as (part time) dancers to some gods (only a few, but hundreds of musicians attested), but no indication of what sorts of dance. But since the temple rituals were very specific ("choreographed"?) and solemn, it doesn't look as if an inately improvisational, joyful dance would be appropriate. Where you have dance illustrated on sacred occasions, it looks acrobatic, and a Middle Kingdom papyrus that has to do with hiring dancers for the festivals at a temple (Ilahun) indicates that foreign dancers were hired from outside the temple, and there's other evidence of "working-class" dancers being hired for temple gigs. So what they did was anyone's guess, there's no solid evidence. But even if they were belly-dancing their little hearts out, it's not accurately described as dancing by "sacred temple priestesses" or whatever. "Sacred temple priestess" is a feeling that some dancers get when they prepare for or conceptualize their dance, or even dance it. Which is fine, because I'm not trying to stand in the path of belly dance morphing into whatever it wants in the West, that's not going to change the Eastern phenomenon. But it's the violence done to the past that bothers me. As I put it in the article I mentioned in the last post, "The past, whose inhabitants are no longer around to trouble us, is still available for colonization." Of course, unlike you studio owners and performers out there, I am on hiatus from dancing and teaching, so I don't (any longer) have to explain patiently and with a smile on my face to reporters and the GP what the story really is. __________________ "I am not contradictory, I am dispersed." (Roland Barthes)