cathy

My first mention of dance to this woman I used the words "raks sharki" which I assumed she would understand because she speaks Arabic.

SHE was the one who then used "belly dance" and SHE was the one who applied it without differentiation to BOTH professional (i.e. Dina) and social/street dancing (average Arabic men, women, and children in a coffeehouse in Cairo). And SHE was the one who said she learned "belly dance" from her grandmother. Clearly not meaning professional dance. I think it was pretty clear to her that I knew the difference.

Maybe she was conflating the two because she thought I couldn't understand the difference (though I deliberately used "raks sharki" to show that I knew the Arabic terms), and yes, possibly she exaggerated on the fly about her grandmother.

But I think it's more likely that she thinks of the professional version of the dance as just that--the professional version or style of the same dance that she knows, and the average public including her grandmother do in a casual manner for fun.

I for one am going to stop obsessing about sharki vs. beledi/shaabi, and terminology.

Cathy

Aisha Azar

Dear Cathy,
As student, you have that luxury. As a teacher I do not. I need to be able to clarify the differences in both movement and more important, feeling, meaning and purpose for my students and for my audiences. Teaching is one reason why I have researched the meaning within the meaning within the meaning. This is why I am one of the few people who have stated that Arabs DO use the term. Morocco disagrees with me and told me that her Arab friends did not use it and in fact made fun of it.
I do believe that you are correct when you stated above that maybe she was conflating the two because she might have thought you would not understand the differences. Arabic language is more complex than just the words. It also has deeper meaning that is sometimes hard to translate from Arabic to English, just as it is difficult for us sometimes to explain the real meaning of words in context to people outside of our culture. But then, what would I know? I have only been hanging out with Arabs on a regular basis for about 30 years....
Regards,
A'isha

Kharis

This illustrates too clearly the element of western dance snobbery that insists the dance is only respectable when given a Raqs Sharqi type handle. Like we have more understanding of it - like we are insulting the dance, and insulting the culture from whence it came should we dare to attach the word 'belly'. I've yet to hear any middle eastern person gasp in horror at the term, bellydance. If it doesn't bother them, why should it bother us?

The problem arises not so much from what the dance is called but by how is performed and presented. Whether we like it or not, the term bellydance is ingrained too deeply into all cultures familiar with it and to try and change it now would be impossible. All it does is make it look as though we are trying to instill respectability by name when what it really needs is respectability by deed and action. There's a danger of being seen as being ashamed of the term....like trying to pretend it's some dark and dirty relative to be shut away like the Monster of Glamis. For me, personally, calling it Raqs Sharqi or Danse Orientale just smacks of being a tad pretentious. And I know I'm gonna get flamed for that remark but that's just my opinion!

"And what do you do for a living?"
"Oh, I'm a performer of Raqs Sharqi"
"What's that?"
"Oriental Dance."
"What style is that?"
"Egyptian Cabaret mostly."
'Which is....?"
"Ummm....bellydance?"
"Why didn't you just say that in the first place?"

All we can hope for is that there will remain dancers out there who respect the dance and present it as a bone fide dance art form, under the bellydance handle, so that people will at least realise that there are facets of it that remain true.

Aisha Azar

Believe it or not, you won't get flamed from me. I have consistently stated that belly dance is nothing more than the nonliteral translation for the words Raqs Sharghi and Oreintal Tanzi. Every Arab I have ever met refers to the dance as "Belly dance" in English, not "Dance of the East". I feel that the classroom and the stage are excellent places to inform those who really care about the Arabic and Turkish terminology, and that belly dance is a very good term for the dance in English, because that is the term that people know and associate with the dances called Sharghi and Oriental Tanzi in countries of origin. For me it has nothing to do with snobbery, and everything to do with speaking in a language that is understood by the listener. I do not find the Arabic and Turkish snobbish, but I do feel that most westerner do not speak those languages and we have no right to expect them to readily understand them.

Kharis

And that's the crunch...to many westerners do obsess about this dance. One of the worst obsessions is the nonsense talked about accreditation. I recall a thread on Bhuz and someone came on and said that she would never take tuition from a teacher who had not spent 7 years perfecting her art in a variety of workshops and who had a physiology and anatomy diploma under her belt. What tosh. These same people are the ones who nearly break their necks clamouring to get to a Fifi Abdou workshop.... yeah, good old self taught Fifi who probably doesn't even have insurance never mind an A & P diploma!!

And what would Dina and Fifi and Lucy etc think of an accredited qualification in this dance? Sweet Bugger All is what! They probably think we're mad. Like Fifi said, she has a degree from the University of Life. It's done her good in the dance for all these years and makes a total mockery of the all bleat and blather about what is politically correct in Raqs Starchy and Dhaanse Orienthaaaal.

masrawy

I wonder if the people here are familiar with this term, I would think the belly dance word is driven form that term some how.
raqs sharki vs. beledi/shaabi, well it's the deference between people who speak colloquial Arabic vs classical Arabic also what you ware in your dance galbia or badlh.
as for raqs shaabi it's more understood to be folclor kind of a dance it could be many thing. for example Freida Fahmi and here group did raqs shaabe. no one would call it raqs sharki but some of here solo is definitely raqs balady she never ware badlh. Regards~Mahmoud

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Andrea Deagon

Since I'm coming to this late, I'll return to the original question -- what might be damaging to the future of Middle Eastern dance. And by "Middle Eastern Dance" I am understanding "belly dance," and belly dance I take more inclusively than some to mean both raqs sharqi and the dances that have developed from and around it in the West. Having defined my terms (sort of) --

I have been in this for a long time -- about 34 years at last count. What I miss from my early days, and what I see creeping in that was not there when I began, is dancers who are very well trained -- yet utterly bland. They have learned the "correct" way to do things, and that is just how they do it. In the earlier discussion about teaching "stylizations," what I found puzzling was the idea that the dance exists in some pristing form that stylizations can be removed from. Every Egyptian (and for that matter Turkish) dancer of any quality that I have seen, had absolutely her own way of doing things. These ways arose from the excellences and sometimes the flaws of thier individual bodies, which were formed within their cultures and individual lives. Technical similarities? Yes. One right way, one classic form? Never.

Isn't it a factor of Western arrogance about this dance to think that we can somehow distill the "correct" way to do this dance and teach the Platonic "form" of the dance, as if we had somehow figured out how to hone down one right way from the many individual modes of dance?

Even more than fusion or "poppers and lockers,' I find it troubling that there are so many well-trained dancers who have not had to go the last distance on their own. They can be trained into being excellent dancers, without having to figure out the last bit, the place where their own soul takes over, all by themselves. I've seen more accomplished dancers in the past 5 years or so than ever before, but I see very few who interest me.

I remember learning the dance of the cygnets from Swan Lake in ballet class many, many years ago and how hard I worked to get the exact same height of extensions, turn of head, and so on, as everyone else, and not only everyone else, but every ballet dancer ever. Spare us from that please!!!

I would rather see a soulful, messy, dancer bubbling with life and mastery than a pretty, perfect ballet -belly girl any day. And this is not saying "I'd rather see a happy hobbyist than a soul-less professional," though I feel that too. This is saying, I want to see professional quality (or semi-professional) dancers who have found their movement through the lives lived in their bodies and have taken it to the very top, in the individual form their bodies and life experiences shaped for them, rather than gaining their expertise from a learning process that mimics all the flaws of the Western systems of dance.

I've sat through a number of show lately where I've thought as each dancer performed, "She's quite good, well-trained" and couldn't remember a one of them or any move anyone had done by the end of the night. And I didn't cry once. That is what I don't want our art (or our form of entertainment) to sink to.

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"I am not contradictory, I am dispersed." (Roland Barthes)

Zorba

You're looking for dancers with soul - those who put their all out there on stage. Which is, of course, the very hardest thing of all to learn.

I'm still working on it - probably will be until I draw my last breath. But I understand...

As for crying - I've only done it once. One of my dance sisters did some kind of floorwork routine involving a veil which was so beautiful, that I did indeed cry. I'd like to see more performances like that.

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

adiemus

I had a wonderful experience over the weekend - and some may laugh at this, but it's my first experience watching a LIVE professional dancer, so excuse me! I saw Amera (from Sydney) dance to Enta Omri - and it was wonderful to see her face light up and to know she was feeling the music through her being. I don't cry easily, and I can't comment on whether her performance was The Best or even Her Best - but I felt something, and that has to be what keeps dance alive.
Perhaps instead of the greatest threat to bellydance, we could think of what keeps the hope of wonderful dance alive?

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jenc

Well one thing that doesn't help is teaching entirely through choreography, particularly if it is the teacher's own. If progression through the classes then depends on how well you dance your teacher's interpretation. If you never see anyone else dance with passion............
In one way I am lucky that I got out of that............. but then I no longer have a teacher ................ but then again I never had one who wold look at me and think about how I dance!!!!!!!!