Moon

Just a question: When I look at my own country, I can already sometimes see some cultural differences depending on where in the country someone grew up, or even huge differences between different families from the same region. And my country is small! Egypt is so much bigger, I can't imagine there are no regional differences in the way someone dances. I was wondering, do these differences get smaller when dancers who grew up in different regions start dancing profesionally? I know it is all Egyptian style, because all different regions are still Egyptian, but can you still see it when a professional Egyptian bellydancer grew up in a certain region or does the way she dances depend more on her personality?

Aisha Azar

Dear Moon,
I do not think that the Egyptian dancers dance all alike at all, but they have beneath every other aspect of the dance, a cultural spirit that is present. I think that regional differences might be one reason that they do not all look alike. I think the dancer as a person, regional influences and life experiences all contribute to how they dance, just like anywhere else. Region alone is not the biggest influence, from my own knowledge, but then I am not an expert in why an Alexandrian is perhaps more conservative than a Cairene, either.
I think they learn a lot from professional dancing in the cities and they also are influenced by the belly dance greats, just as we are.
Regards,
A'isha

Tarik Sultan

Dear Gypsy: With all due respect one can not always rely on these sources for accurate information. Be carefull with them because they are often riddled with inaccurate information. It depends on who the author is, where and how they came by their information and whether or not they have an agenda. I know what I do from my teacher, Morocco, who has been traveling to Egypt twice a year since 1964, but even then, I didn't automatically believe everything she told me. It took years of interacting with people from the culture, as well as visiting Egypt itself many times and doing hours of research in the Lincoln Center Dance research Library here in New York to find out she WAS telling the truth.

As for written material, the overwhelming majority of the books out there about the history of the dance are...well...crap! None of them ever look at the real culture and history of the Egyptian people and the role dance plays in the society. The logic usually runs something like "Its the oldest dance in the world, here's a statue from India 2000 yrs old, her costume looks just like our costumes today. Here's a statue from Greece, look she has a veil, just like we use today". in my hours of research I came across tons of magazines that were filled with both historical and cultural inaccuracies, including many of the current online magazines. As far as scholarly sources, the best book out there now is A trade like any other by Karen VanNieskirk, (I probably misspelled her name...I probably misspelled misspelled). She spent years living with and observing the dancers on Mohamed Ali Street and interviewing a large crosssection of the Egyptian population and Islamic scholars about their opinions on dance.

A'isha and I have both been around in the dance scene long enough to tell you that its only recently that the overall quality of articles in magazines has been improving and even now, you will still find people writing things based on speculation as if it were fact. Now we do have other dancers and scholars who are traveling to places to do real research and present them in accademic circles, but this is very recent.

Aisha Azar

Dear Tarik,
... I think Gypsy was being facetious. Kharmine automatically negates anything that I say or write, and then uses written sources much of the time, to try to back up her theory that I am full of it. (This despite the fact that she claims to not read my posts!) Gypsy was responding to that and basically saying, tongue in cheek, that the written word is often, as you so aptly expressed it, riddled with inaccurate information" .
Regards,
A'isha