Tarik Sultan

.....How much are you giving in tips...tips do make me happy and right now I'm sad. VERY, VERY SAD! Please make me happy.I am not questioning your right or ability to perform; I do question the billing of the performance as belly dance.

I know what you mean. This is why I don't like to see guys immitating women....Crap, you made me do it again! Gimme them undies!
But honestly, I feel the same way when I watch some dancers. They totally miss the point about what the dance is supposed to be about and spen their whole time trying to impress the audience with tricks and gimicks.

Well, given the fact that classical RQAks was deliberately designed to display a feminine ideal, there isn't any way that your going to get the same essence from a man's performance. that doesn't mean that it's not the same dance. For example, classical ballets created in the 19th century were designed to represent a feminie ideal as well. As a matter of fact, if the choreographers didn't need the upper body strength of the male dancers to help simulate the flight of the ballarina, the role of male dancers would have dissapeared totally. The only thing they were used for practically was to lift the ballerinas.

In the 20th century, the role of male dancers got a shot in the arm. The way a ballerina and a male dancer dances is different. Men do not do point work for instance and women do not do as much of the athletic leaps and jumps that the men do. The feeling and essence of the two are different, even though they are using the same basic movement vocabulary. What they do with it and what they express through it is different, but that doesn't mean that its not the same dance. It is. Its just that one is male and one is female.

In the same way, the way a man expresses himself is going to be different from the way a woman expresses herself. For god's sake can you see me or Jim Boz trotting around the stage trying to be a della'a like Dina? I mean with a straight face? Now I know that there are guys out there who could pull it off, but I ain't one of them.

I can be very sensual when I dance and even more so when I teach a dance class, but its not the same as a woman. However, a woman taking my class can understand what I'm doing and express her own womanlyness.
I have a student named Ariel who is an incredible dancer. Much of how she expresses the music and her vocabulary she learned from me, but when she dances, she looks nothing like me. Same moves, but the spirit is so undinaibly femine you would never know that I taught her if she didn't tell you. Same dance, different aspects depending on if the dancer is male or female. Quite honestly, when I see a man dance, I want to see him express his maleness, not try to immitate a woman. You want to see what they can bring to the dance that is unique to their spirit.

Zorba

This all gets into definitions - again...

Define "Imitate a woman". You'll very quickly get into meaningless rulebooks, I'm afraid. The second half of the above quotation rings true with me, but it seems to contradict the first half. *shrug* Of course, this *does* get into my last hair splitting debate with Aisha about (my view that) I can NOT imitate a woman as I'm not one. Just like I can NOT imitate a Tarik, because I'm not one. I can only imitate myself (Aisha and I have agreed to almost but not quite agree on this, let's NOT re-open this debate for EVERYONE'S sanity!!).

The most important thing for ANY performer to do is to BE HER/HIMSELF and dance as same. All else is secondary. In other words - be REAL. The "problem" with a large majority of male dancers that I've seen (IMHO ) is that they're so busy trying to prove that they're "male" that they lose track of the fact that they're Belly Dancers (Tarik NOT with standing, of course.)! It just makes me wanna scream sometimes. Something like "Get OVER it already, yea you're a male, so what, who cares? Show me your GRACE, BEAUTY, and EMOTION. That's what this is all about."

Aziz was the perfect example of this - no goofball male tricks, just utter beauty. He didn't let his gender get in the way and the viewer/audience quickly FORGOT (Or at least I do when I see old videos of his) what gender he was in the enjoyment of his performance. As it should be.

As for males not being able to Belly Dance because of their gender - that makes about as much sense as males not being able to WALK because of their gender. Yea, a male walk generally but not always has a different quality than a female walk, but its still a walk. Shanazel and I will have to agree to disagree here - it doesn't pass the duck test.

Or so it seems to me at 5 AM when I can't sleep and really should be in bed!

__________________
-Zorba
"The Veiled Male"
http://www.doubleveil.net
"There is nothing sadder than a veil, that is for sale."

Tarik Sultan

To immitate a woman, means to act, dress, walk and use mannerisms that would cause the casual observer to think that a man was in fact a female and not a man. You often use the phrase that a male dancer should llok like a belly dancer, exactly what does that mean? I understand that what youare against are what you perceive to be the hipocracy and unfairness of rigid gender roles. I can understand where you are coming from and on certain points I may even agree, however, if you apply this to men, you have to apply the same rule to women as well.

The belly dancer image was created to display a concept of a certain feminine ideal. It is still very much about presenting a feminine ideal. Why is it that that you're not equally turned off by this construct? If we should disregard imposed gender roles, then you should also encourage female dancers not to wear lipstick and makeup. They should wear crew cuts and forget about all that cleavage and slits and wear shirts and slacks.

When you do Greek dance, you wear the gender correct costume. You don't wear a head scarf and apron like the women do. The fez, fustanilla, and vest are the clothes for men as dictated by the gender specific role for men in that culture. If we follow your logic, why be limited to this role. If you have no problem wearing makeup and long earings in Oriental dance, why not do the same in Greek dance?

Okay, so why doesn't the same apply to women. Couldn't you say that all that make up and chifon, not to mention paded bras an example of women trying too hard to prove they're "female"?

Like I've said before, Raks Sharki was designed to reflect a cultural ideal of femininity and glamore. However, no one ever thought in terms of designing the dance to reflect an ideal of masqulinity. Like it or not, all cultures have gender roles. In our civilization, there are gender roles as to how a man presents himself as versus a woman. Male Ballet Dancers don't wear tutus and point shoes. Male flamenco dancers don't wear long gowns with ruffled trains and male Hula dancers don't wear mumus. So why should male middle eastern dancers wear articles of dress and accessories that are traditionally and culturally worn by females?

Personally I love the fact that we are different. I don't want to see women who look just like the guy sitting next to me on the bus. I love the things that make her look like a woman as defined by our culture. I love her womanliness, curves etc, I love it and I love to see her express it through the dance. I just don't think that we should take that to mean that women are inferiour to us in spirit and intellect, or lack the freedome to determine their own destinies just because they have less upper body strength and flesh between their legs than I do.

By the same token, when I go out with my mother, I don't want people thinking I'm her daughter. I don't want to wear colorfull eyeshadow, or lipstick and loud rouge or jewlery that was designed for women because these things do not enhance my masculine beauty. Further more, these things do not match the image of masculinity in our culture and to wearing them sends certain messages. I am aware of the fact that at different times and cultures, men did wear these things, but that's not this time or this place. I love the way I look and I think I am beautiful and I love being a man and dont feel that I need makeup, (except to hide bad shaving scars) lipstick to be attractive. To be vulgar for a second, I don't want to look like a chich with a d%$k.:eek: .....No offence to any chicks with d&%ks out there:o

I don't feel comfortable with this concept and I don't think its fair. Women don't strive for their audiences to forget that they are women, why should I want my audience to forget that I'm a man. Do I have to be a unick in order to be a true artist? This just seems like one should be appoligetic for being a man and strive to hide it or in some way compensate for it. A good female dancers doesn't hide behind her feminity, she strives to intergrate everything, her appearance, expression and personality as well as her talent, I strive to do the same. As for stupid male tricks, i don't know what those are. You would have to tell me or show me. I can only say that because this is a female dominated activity, and because most men coming into it have no role models and because people do make assumptions about a guys sexuality when they do something that is a female dominated activity, they worry about the misperception and want to compensate for it. All male dancers have to deal with this, no matter what form of dance they do, except maybe hip-hop.

There is nothing wrong with the culturally defined gender images that we have. The problem is when we try to subordinate one sex to another or deny one sex the basic rights, privaledges and dignity we all deserve as human beings. I agree with a lot of your points of view, but on this one I'm afraid that I will have to agree to disagree with you, no matter how much I admire and appreciate you.

Zorba

Uh...

Tarik - I think you need to re-interpret what I was saying - OBVIOUSLY I put my foot in my mouth and didn't communicate well enough!

For instance: "Stupid Male Tricks" - I'm not saying YOU do them, I'm saying a lot of (other) male dancers do. Not you, hopefully not me, not DaVid, and not Aziz.

I've always found that you and I either agree 100% or agree 99.5% on just about everything about this dance. I don't think that's changed...

Sometimes I get so *frustrated* with the limitations of the written word on message boards!

It is, and always has been my position that Belly Dance is neither "Masculine" nor "Feminine", just "Human", BUT that
it (currently) resides in a "Feminine" context. A subtle, but important difference and is my interpretation of what you've been saying as well... (?)

__________________
-Zorba
"The Veiled Male"
http://www.doubleveil.net
"There is nothing sadder than a veil, that is for sale."

Zorba

Great....

I just typed a long, HOPEFULLY better thought out reply, and lost the whole thing.

Sigh!

The super short executive summary:

My oft repeated "thing" that the only differences between males and females THAT MATTER are biological. The rest is made up, and therefore is, in the ultimate analysis, artificial (Hi Aisha! ) . A bit still in my clipboard that references your (Tarik's) previous post:

Cleavage is biology. Slits are man made. Since I don't have cleavage, I don't worry about it! Slits on the other hand may (or may not) bear some thought!

Trying to reconstruct:

I have no problems with telling women to forget the makeup and lipstick, and wear crewcuts and pants. Indeed - THEY ALREADY DO! Which is fine - all these things are neither "Masculine" nor "Feminine", they're just THINGS. But Goddess help a man who wants to "go the other way" and have some beauty in his life for himself.

When I wear makeup and tons of glittering jewelry - I'm expressing my "Masculinity". I say it often, and I say it loudly, but I don't think I've said it here yet or recently:

I'm neither attempting to look like a woman, nor to be one, as I am not; yet at the same time I reserve the (Goddess given) RIGHT to define my OWN version of "Masculinity", not someone's preconceived version.

I seek the long forgotten ideal of "masculine" beauty - a concept long forgotten in the world. We have to go back several centuries, darned near half a millineum, to even find the very end of the concept.

This beauty is what draws me to this dance, I want to look and feel beautiful as this dance is beautiful.

Tarik - I apologize if I rubbed you the wrong way. Discussions like this are best done in person where we can make eye contact, wave our arms around, demonstrate a few moves, swirl some veils, and in general coummnicate both faster and better than we can here.

But...

Since this is what we have, let's take it slow and discuss one aspect at a time so we don't have a communications breakdown (read: I don't put my foot in my mouth trying to explain myself!).

__________________
-Zorba
"The Veiled Male"
http://www.doubleveil.net
"There is nothing sadder than a veil, that is for sale."

sedoniaraqs

Zorba, I am curious about your views -- when you say that the differences that matter between males and females that are biological and the rest is just made up.

As a biologist (albeit not in the area of human biology), I am curious to know what aspects of us (people) are non-biological. Be careful if you say environmental influences, because remember that humans create and modify their environments much more than other organisms do. It becomes very difficult to disentangle nature from nurture.

Sedonia

Zorba

Yes it is!

Its always hard to generalize - and I've haven't been very good at it lately, which is why I like face to face conversations best...

Ok, women have a different body structure from men. We all know this. That's biology. Then there's the "Brain wiring" thing. Better people than I argue endlessly about that. I feel that it is at least partly biology as well. But I could be wrong.

My point I've been trying to make is the artificiality of cultural norms - at least in the ultimate sense. It would seem that most people equate beauty with so called "Femininity". I disagree. Beauty is a human birthright - for BOTH (all?) genders.

What I wear, what you wear, what virtually everone wears is dictated, to greater or lesser extent, by man made cultural rules.

What we choose as activities in our spare time, or our professions, our interests, are also dictated by man made cultural rules.

Women have made great strides in recent decades towards rewriting or throwing out these rules. Men have done essentially NOTHING.

Hogwash sez I. Throw out as much as you possibly can, I want no boundaries around what I'm expected to do, or act like, or wear, or look like. If I'm not hurting anyone else, leave me the **** alone has always been my mantra.

Does this answer your question, or have I gotten off on a tangent (again!)?

__________________
-Zorba
"The Veiled Male"
http://www.doubleveil.net
"There is nothing sadder than a veil, that is for sale."

Zorba

Yet another clarification...

People are free to make whatever assumptions they like about my sexuality. I don't worry about possible misperceptions (if any) - and trying to compensate for it is one of my arguments - we shouldn't. "All male dancers have to deal with this..." - only if they choose to, only if they choose to...

I think what I was trying to say is that we should strive to be Belly Dancers who just happen to be male, NOT as males who just happen to be Belly Dancers...

Ok, so I'm weird!

__________________
-Zorba
"The Veiled Male"
http://www.doubleveil.net
"There is nothing sadder than a veil, that is for sale."

Tarik Sultan

Just for the record, I know your not talking about me Zorba, but I do find some of your staements confusing, so I do neede clarification....Now I'll go back and actually read your replies:o

Tarik Sultan

You need to move to New York because this is definatly not the case here. Men wear lots of color, even pink, which was unheard of when I was a kid. They braid their hair, wear earrings, they do they get maicures and pedicures and even get their eyebrows done, (I think the eyebrows are over kill 'cause they usually end up looking like scared cats), and these are the thuged out kids. Guys in New York have always been all about looking pretty.

Oh back to topic...urhhmm, yes Amir is a good dancer, whatever you'd call his style.