Aisha Azar

Dear Nicknack and Bonnie
You keep referring to what Shakira is doing as "Belly Dance Moves". What is it tht makes them belly dance moves exclusively, in your view? Why are they not jazz moves or Samba or Rhumba moves, or hula moves? As far as movement goes, they could be any of the above. Why do you insist that they are belly dance moves? Is it because this is the kind of dance tht you are studying? Much of what she does seems to be equally Latin or American jazz in movement. She is not belly dancing. Just because she is half Lebanese does not mean she is belly dancing. I wish Suha Azar, who is Lebanese, was here to address this. She is using movement which is seen in many, many different dance froms. Movement does not make the dance.
Re the rope dance. So, if you put on a bedlah, do a few undulations and locks and pops, then you must be
bellydancing??? To me it looked more like a series of movements that were meant to be a cover for a thinly disguised auto-bondage moment. The essence and feeling of what was going on there had not one thing to do with belly dance.
We seriously NEED to get past this idea that the dance is movement alone and whatever else is going on is immaterial. Movement is ONE element of the whole package, not the dance in its entirety.
Regards,
A'isha

nicknack

Because as far as I know she's never had any dance training apart from bellydance and Argentinian tango, that and the fact that she considers them bellydance moves (look at the Live and off the Record documentary).

It's all relative you've just got to look at the frame of reference

(and that rope is way too thick to have any bondage conotations (now if was a chain I'd immediatly hit subtext land, but the rope harks back to an old photo shoot to promo Fool), who says that you can't dance with a rope, we can dance with veils and snakes and it's not like those 2 things don't have any subtext either, can't we come up with a new prop without everyone jumping over it, especially if it's to the Sahara remix intro, on the last tour she did the same song with a shemedan....can't we just be different for a change....)

__________________
Cause I'm not here to let you down. But the costume makes the clown.

Suheir

I couldn't agree more! I was at the British Museum in London today and I couldn't resist noting down this quote from one of the displays on Ancient Greek musical instruments: "Instrumental music, dance and poetry were all part of Greek Mousike and cannot be separated as they are today".

Aisha Azar

Dear Nicknack,

A'isha writes-Bondage has nothing to do with the size of the object used to bind.... As for it being used as a prop for dancing, I guess you can use anything you want...just don't try to pass it off as "belly dance". Those who dance Shamadan and other dances know that THEY are not doing belly dance either, if they know what they are doing, but instead a prop dance Beledi in nature.

Regards,
A'isha

Recnadocir

You took the bait! Glad I haven't forgotten how to push your buttons, A'isha Azar! Hee hee hee!

nicknack

So basically we've hit another language barrier, can we call it middle eastern influenced dancing seeing as the songs I mentioned contained middle eastern instrumentation (the Sahara mix and Ojos Asi)?

On a different note what do we call it when my Turkish friends and I do hip drops, and shimmies to "Smack My Bitch Up" in a club?

__________________
Cause I'm not here to let you down. But the costume makes the clown.

Aisha Azar

Dear Nicknack,
Having attended many, many parties and been to many, many clubs where there is a professional belly dancer performing in between music sets, I would say that MOST people of Middle Eastern descent do a decent Shaabi, but they are no more trained to be belly dancers than the average American is trained to be. In Arabic that street dancing is called Shaabi, which is different from belly dance. I don't know the name in Turkish. I don't think there is a language barrier here at all, since we are both pretty clear on what the other person is saying. Again, just becasue a musical instrument is used, does not mean something Middle Eastern. For example, Norwegian Wood is an old Beatles song and one of the the first western songs to use Sitar. There was no hint of Hindi essence in the music. Why is this so very hard to understand??? Spirit and essence are necessary for a thing to be what it is. Any physical manifestation MUST be accompanied by the right other ingredients for it to be belly dance. You seem too intelligent to me to miss that...???
Regards,
A'isha







Dear Rica,
I can see you now with your pouty Valley Girl face, at the Galeria, looking for new lipstick that totally matches your thong and Aerosoles AND your Nina purse. UOHH My GAwd, you can be just WWWAAAYYYY HAWT.......
Love to you and send photos!!
A'isha

nicknack

But don't you think she was trying to put part of her Lebanese spirit into those songs like Ojos Asi(a party spirit)? She wrote the music, the lyrics, produced them, came up with the concepts for the artwork and videos, and our backgrounds and culture influence our art, the dance that her Grandmother taught her was that womans way of trying to pass on that culture, is it so hard to believe that that dance would seep into her physical performance. I know that there are other elements that make the dance, but what she's doing isn't what we do on stage, she's entertaining with music and lyrics that she wrote that mean a lot to her and she's dancing to that because she enjoys it not because she wants to put on a dance show, she took classes because she wanted to learn more. I'm not saying that all the dance she does on stage is bellydance just that it's part of a greater whole.....I guess you can call it fusion, and it's great that she's reconciled many influences in one show (while some of us are still confused having roots everywhere and nowhere at the same time (the problem with having a nomadic family and 5 languages......))

And if I make no sense it's because I'm on a major caffeine high with study exhaustion at the same time

__________________
Cause I'm not here to let you down. But the costume makes the clown.

Aisha Azar

Dear Nicknack,
Having spent a LOT of time with Arab women and some time with Latin ones, I would say she seems far more Latin than Arab though these two cultures do share some things. What you say below makes sense as fusion, but what I would hope that you understand is that fusion is NOT belly dance, movement is NOT belly dance. It takes all parts of the whole to make the dance what it is. This does not mean that there is no cultural influence in what Shakira does, and I do have respect for her as an artist. It only means that she is not a belly dancer. You are correct. She is an entertainer, but that is not as specific as saying she is a belly dancer. I am one of those people who moved around all my life and who had no "roots" to speak of, of my very own until I was 26 years old. I literally went to 13 schools before I graduated from high school. Perhaps for that reason, when I see roots, I appreciate them with all my might and want people to understand the difference between what is the reality of those roots and what is not connected to them except in the very most tenuous of ways. It all is not belly dance and iit's time we started looking at the depth of the dance rather than at what is superficilly easiest to call "belly dance".
Here's hoping for a speedy recovery and good grades due to the study! I know the feeling.
Regards,
A'isha

Dear Suheir,
Thank you for the beautiful and meaningful quote, and thank you for understanding what it is I am saying about the dance. Sometimes this gets really frustrating and discouraging for me, because to me it is so clear and so obvious that belly dance has its own soul and essence that makes it different from any other thing, anywhere. I can not see how people don't recognize that. The dance deserves at least a minimum of recognition as its own art form, connected to its own roots, music, cultures, and will never get it as long as anything that comes along is mislabeled as "belly dance".
Regards,
A'isha
Regards,
A'isha

nicknack

Belly dance as part of fusion is exactly what I meant, it's her showing another part of who she is, but it's the part that people mainly pick up on, probably because many of us are so used to Latin music, and culture. I'm so used to my Hispanic side that I can speak Spanglish without noticing (usually after being plugged into La Ley on the bus).....this is why I'm considered strange, even by my friend who dresses up as a Viking on weekends (not for any real historical purpose, mainly for the ale and large joints of meat).

__________________
Cause I'm not here to let you down. But the costume makes the clown.