Brea

I was just reading this and wondered what everyone thought; I wonder about Zorba's opinion in particular.

Masculine Belly Dance

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Ariella

This thing has been kicking around the interwebs for ages. It makes some valid points, but I have issues with a couple of parts. Namely:

"Hands are generally straight, in a fist, or in a half fist"
Can you imagine someone belly dancing with their hands forming fists? Or hands stiff-straight? This is belly dance, not the military.

"Where women do soft motions, men can do sharp ones."
This strikes me as a really silly generalization. So I can do undulations, but not locks? Male dancers can do locks, but not undulations? How is a guy supposed to dance to a taksim without soft motion? How is a female to dance to a drum solo doing only soft motion?

"he lets them know he will not be challenged, perhaps with a slow fierce gaze over the crowd"
Last I checked, belly dance wasn't about being dominant over the audience. I'm all for gazing into the audience, but not in this context. The look a belly dancer gives his/her audience should be different from the look a wrestler gives his opponent moments before the match starts

Does anyone know who the author "stephan" is?

Moon

Aaaagh! That awful article found us again!

My "favorite" quote: Don't look weak, don't look vulnerable, don't drop your guard.

So if we, as female bellydancers, want to dance really well, we have to look weak and vulnerable. Excuse me, mister?


Even my bf who doesn't know much about bellydance immediately noticed there will not be much bellydance left if someone dances like this.

Aisha Azar

Dear Gang,
To steal an old Valley Girl phrase, "Gag me with a spoon". But the truth is that I have actually seen male dancers who seem to have taken those very words to heart and display exactly those qualities in an attempt to "masculinize" the dance. It's VERY ugly.
Stefan should be shot with a huge hunter gun and then made to watch videos of men dancing like that until he is completely recovered from his injury and his warped notions about the dance.
And if I could think of a worse punishment, I would recommend it.
Regards,
A'isha

Brea

Haha A'isha!

I agree with pretty much everything said so far. Do we know this Stefan? He says that this is how men should bellydance because he's seen them do it before; I hope this doesn't start running rampant.

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Aisha Azar

Dear Brea,
I have no idea who he is, but I hate him anyway. It must be the narrow mindedness that sets in with age....
Regards,
A'isha

Aziyade

I think this was part of a series of articles relating to bellydance in the SCA. I think Asim would know best. Please correct me if I'm wrong, Asim -- if you're here.

The subject of men dancing in the SCA has always been a little different than men dancing straight up modern belly dance. There is a desire to try and recreate the dance as it might have been done in the Middle ages -- WITHOUT dancing like a Kochek. There have been some "interesting" interpretations.

BUT -- keep in mind that this article is from 1995 and is essentially "ancient" by our standards. It's possible Stefan has learned quite a bit in the past 13 years and might be surprised to see this still floating around. He also seems to have used primarily ONE source -- the Turkish dancer -- thus illustrating very nicely the need to confirm and verify one's sources.

Aisha Azar

Dear Aziyade,
How would one go about verifying what kind of dance was done in the Middle East during any time period prior to film? Especially belly dance, which was not even around then. The importance of verification sometimes means there is none. What source did he use?
A'isha

Brea

Yes, I rather cast a hairy eyeball on SCA-related activities, especially with bellydance, which seems to crop up everywhere in that world. I have to go with A'isha on this.

You're right, though, it is ancient by our standards...and yet I found it, several times, on several different websites (sometimes side by side with Zorba's stuff). One would think we know enough about this now that the site owners would have taken it down.

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Aziyade

Brea, some of their research is really really well done, and others is nonexistent. The big event where you can learn the best FROM the best is Pennsic, in the summer. There's been some remarkable work done on Central Asian and Persian dance -- and some of the people who teach it at Pennsic at also regular attendees at the Central Asian Dance Camp in (now) Washington DC.

Unfortunately there are a lot of people who just decide a choli and big skirt is "period" for whatever culture they're pretending to represent, and teach/perform a variation of ATS as "period" bellydance. I actually don't mind that quite as much as some people, since I'm more into the "Creative" part of the SCA and think if you can wear tennis shoes and sew your garments on a regular sewing machine, you ought to be able to take other liberties as well. The SCA orgs around here are more Renn Faire anyway, so the whole "historicity" issue isn't REALLY focused on.

BUT -- I can't find this guy in the Domesday book, so I'm not sure if he even IS or WAS an SCA participant. Either way, I still say -- he should have consulted more than one source. But in 95, the Web wasn't even really there yet, and the information about male dancing may have been more difficult to obtain. FWIW -- I saw a lady teaching bellydance at a sci-fi convention once, and she told the one guy in the class some VERY bizarre things about keeping his entire body stiff. I think this must have been a myth circulating for a LONG time, or they're getting it confused with another form of dance, maybe?