Tarik Sultan
New member
Shanazel here, from her secret bunker far beneath the Rocky Mountains, dressed in all sorts of fireproof clothes.
I do think men can dance as well as women. I love all of you guys, love to watch your video clips, will attend any performance you do within two hundred miles of my front door, and will enthusiastically tuck dollar bills in your bedlah if that will make you happy.
.....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.
The best way I can think of to explain my point of view is this: once I saw an actress named Connie Stevens perform "If I Were a Rich Man" from Fiddler on the Roof, in full Tevye gear and full Tevye dancing style. She did a creditable rendition, but while I enjoyed her performance, she lacked the essence and physical presence to make me believe she was a Russian Jew in the full flourish of manhood.
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.
When I watch a man belly dance, I sense a similar lack of essence and physical presence that makes a dance belly dance. That does not mean it is not equally appealing or interesting or that the dancer is less skilled, but it looks different from belly dance, it feels different from belly dance, it is different from belly dance.
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.