Suheir

Yeah! This is my authentic olde Egyptian mop, carved from an ancient date palm which grew on the banks of the Nile and has been handed down from mother to daughter <hastily rips off Walmart sticker>

TribalDancer

I'm not meaning to sound disrespectful, so please bear with me...

By this logic, if Fifi eats a hotdog on stage, suddenly hotdogs are Egyptian? If she wears outfits made from American flags, it's Egyptian?

And before you tell me I am getting bogged down in the individual moves or elements, the original QUESTION was about specific individual elements. I don't care how you Egyptian-ize certain elements--they don't become Egyptian.

I get that you are taking context somewhat into account, but the idea that just because an Egyptian does it or uses it, it suddenly becomes Egyptian makes no sense to me... I think that all dancers take inspiration from other places--even us nutty Westerners--and I think what we see as Egyptian now is a collection of these influences. Is it possible to weed out which are "authentic" to Egypt from "way back when"? Unfortunately we don't have the historical evidence to do so. But today when dancers start doing something new, why can't we aknowledge it as something from an outside source which they fused into their dance, whether seamlessly or not?

sedoniaraqs

A'isha I totally get your point about movement not being all there is to dance.

But the fact still remains that as non-native dancers we have to make decisions about which movements we use and how we put them together and with what music we use them, and I think this was the question being asked by the original poster -- how do we make these decisions about what movements to use?

Randa's butt hopping move or Mona's little "jump around in a square" would be alot harder for me to incorporate into an Egyptian style dance than her big hip circles or figure 8's or shimmies, etc.

Sedonia

Aisha Azar

Dear Sharon,
The hotdog and the flag may not be Egyptian, but the manner in which it is used will very definitely have an Egyptian element, because the people who are using those props ARE Egyptian. There is a huge difference between traditional and authentic. It may not be traditional for Fifi Abdou to eat a hotdog on stage, but it would be an authentic eating of a hotdog by an Egyptian if she did it!!

Dear Sedonia,
I am sure that you know that not all Egyptians use the same movement vocabulary. Dancers all have their won vocabularies and you did not see Suheir Zaki or Fifi do Mouna's or Randa's moves either. I think a lot of that is what works with who we are as people, as much as anything else.
Regards to you both,
A'isha

gypsy8522

I personally don't see the correlation between hotdogs, the American flag and an intangible cultural heritage that represents the life and expressions of a particular people or region. All humans share the same body structures, so it's logical that there will be body movements that we all have in common. However, each culture has its own nuances and meanings for the same body language.

Most Egyptians nowadays, even in the most low class neighbourhoods, wear jeans. I wear jeans almost everyday, does this make me less of an Egyptian or an arab? And what about the actresses from the hollywood movies that wore harem pants, did the arabian garments make them any less western???? Anyway, I don't see how food or a flag could be compared to a dance that should be based on emotions and cultural expression.

I'd also like to point out that if a famous Egyptian dancer decides to use an outside move, isis wings and whatever else she decides to "fuse" into her routine, it doesn't represent all of the Egyptian dancers, the 70 million Egyptians who could care less if Randa used the leg kick or not, or the dance as a whole. It is a personal choice, an "extra" that she needs to apply to her dancing in order to stand out in the crowd.

Tarik Sultan

Its a fine line no doubt. I don't think anyone is suggesting that such things are "real Egyptian", rather that it would be an Egyptian in the sense that the performance is Egyptian because the person doing it is Egyptian. It would totally be their unique schtik, but not be an authentic reflection of Egyptian dance persay and more importantly NOT NECCESSARILY something that should be immitated.

Tarik Sultan

I think the point she's trying to make is exactly what you state to the end of this post. just because someone decideds to do something in their routine doesn't mean that it is a reflection of the actual culture.

As for the point you make about the nuances that the movements are expressed with, that is true. This is why one person can do a movement and look American and another can do the exact same movement and look Egyptian.

Raks Sharki differes from Baladi in that it has incorporated dramatic elements and ideas from western dances, however, the way it is presented and executed makes it 100% Egyptian. They may have borrowed certain aspects from Ballroom like covering space, but the way they do it, the way they relate to the audience, the expression of emotion, sense of humor and character is not Western at all, but a total expression of the Egyptian character.

This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. Yes, they wear jeans, but the way they wear it and accessorize it is totally different than the way most American girls do. An Egyptian girl will wear the jeans under a mini skirt with a long sleve top and a colorful hegab. The mini skirt, jeans and top are all American or European made, but the way they were combined is a totally Egyptian fashion sense and is therefore 100% a modern Egyptian outfit, rather than a traditional or folkloric outfit.

Exactly. Quite often we over here fail to realize that someone does something to stand out and even though they are Egyptian, doesn't mean that it is a staple of authentic Egyptian dance. I saw Asmahan jump out of a giant gift box complete with a bow being backed up by dancing clowns. Its was just something she did for a dramatic entrance, her creative choice, not something that is "Egyptian". However, it didn't hurt her performance because she knew how to intergrate these elements so that they added to the performance, rather than becoming the main focus of the dance.

Tarik Sultan

Oh yeah, well MY mop was carved by the light of a full moon by a Nubian virgin while making authentic baladi bread on a feluca on the Nile while singing ancient Nubian folk songs while acconpanying herself on the frame drum and clapping rythmically.....

Aniseteph

Mops were originally brought into Egypt by German travellers in the 12th century so cannot be said to be authentically Egyptian. OK I completely made that up.

I like what A'isha said about over-intellectualising though. I think it's some sort of collective insecurity, like when you are learning a language and you get completely hung up about inadvertently saying something laughable or socially embarrassing, in case your non-native speaker teacher taught you something wrong. So you end up analyzing little bits of info into the ground and looking for rules to follow where maybe there aren't any or the rules are different in different regions, and you end up never really speaking the language at all. Perhaps there is a point where it's better to accept you might say silly/embarrassing things but just dive in and start talking. So you talk with a funny accent and you may never talk like a native speaker? maybe it doesn't matter as long as people understand and you aren't pretending to be anything you are not.

(I bet coins on the mop are a total anachronism...)

TribalDancer

Yes, Tarik, thank you fro clarifying.

I understand there is nuance to the individual movements, but I think the op (Aziyade?) was saying that it must be hard for dancers who are trying to study and perform Egyptian dance to figure out what is truly an element of Egyptian dance, historically speaking, and which are fused movements that are just being done by an Egyptian/in an Egyptian style.