Exotic Fusion(stripping and belly dance)

bdfusion

New member
So the thing is, I'm a stripper.
However, I belly dance also(the genuine kind, not what some people might think of as "stripper belly dancing). I'm still somewhat of a upper level novice, but I'm planning on really focusing on it and practicing more.
I really want to combine belly dance with exotic dance for my job.
I love both. Most people of course, view strippers as promiscuous and too dumb to do anything else (think of the way that some people view belly dancing as "not proper":rolleyes:). I know that it's an extreme comparison, and belly dance is nothing like stripping (so don't be offended by thinking that's my point). I'm just saying that, although it is risque, I actually view my job as art. Besides the initial intent of it being erotic, I try to express something more to my audience as well. And I am not a prostitute, I don't have relationships with my customers. I take my job seriously.
I love belly dance, I think it's sensual and sexy, but yet it's classy and elegant, in a way that has been lost in most mainstream "erotic" dancing. So I wanted to fuse it into my own dancing for the club.
I have no intentions of advertising it as if its pure "belly dancing" if I fuse it into exotic dance. I would only give credit for it inspiring my dance style, and I wouldn't even do that if you all prefer I don't. I would make sure to inform anyone who I discuss belly dance in relation to my job with knows that all belly dance is not anymore sexual then ballet, and that its only the other dance styles I mixed in that are.
I have the greatest respect for all of you, which is why I'm bringing it up. I value the community's opinions, and will definitely take them into consideration. So please, tell me your opinion and tell me what kind of guidelines you'd like me to follow (as far as promoting belly dance and what parts to include goes). And please, let's try to keep this mostly about your thoughts on the considered fusion, not my job choice or morals. As much as possible at least.
 

Mosaic

Super Moderator
Personally I would keep both styles completely separate. Sure I see BD movements appearing in MTV singers videos, and they tend to spic them up a bit, but they don't say they are from BD. But I am sure bellydancers would recognise the steps/movements just as salsa etc dancers would recognise steps/movements from their dance style.

Erotic dance is its own style and another entertainment art form and has possibly been influenced from many different styles over the years, but is not advertised as influenced by ..., don't fuse them. If you do take some movements from BD and spice them up, don't say they are BD inspired. I know in the States dancers have worked very hard to remove the 'labels' from BD & try to keep BD pure and respected. Seeing you love BD just keep them separate.

Thank you for your honesty.
~Mosaic
 

Shanazel

Moderator
I love belly dance, I think it's sensual and sexy, but yet it's classy and elegant, in a way that has been lost in most mainstream "erotic" dancing. So I wanted to fuse it into my own dancing for the club.

Please don't. The public confuses the two too much already and you'd just be adding fuel to the fire. You can explain the classiness of fusing belly dance and stripping until you are blue in the face and 99.3% of the public is still going to see your performance as plain old stripping.

I have nothing in the world against burlesque (I like it) but we already have enough trouble with people equating stripping and belly dance. A couple of months ago I was banned from teaching a very popular belly dance workshop in the school district because a parent equated it with exotic (read erotic) dance and the school district was too sooky la-la to back me up or even let me demonstrate the class to the school board.

Stripping is exotic dance; belly dance is not. Stripping is adult fare; belly dance is family friendly. Strippers take their clothes off; belly dancers keep theirs on. Stripping appeals to prurient interest; belly dance is far less concerned with (ahem) getting a rise out of the audience. Fusion brings belly dance's rep down, not stripping's rep up. Sad, perhaps, but true. I like to see them kept completely separate.
 

Starmouth

New member
I really would rather you didn't! I suppose I would have less of a problem with your using a few belly dancing moves in your routines, as long as it wasn't advertised as belly dance, or anything containing the phrase belly dance. Hip circles, omis and the like are often used in other dance styles anyway so I don't think anyone would automatically equate them with belly dance on sight.

Like others have said, belly dance has already had its reputation damaged by the belly dancer = stripper belief. I have no problems with stripping, and agree that it can be an art form, but I would rather the two things were not combined. Sometimes it can be hard enough to get the general public to realise belly dance is a legitimate dance and not just a bit of glittery wiggling and jiggling.

Belly dancers don't want to be seen as strippers. Just as I imagine strippers don't want to be seen as prostitutes!
 

Amanda (was Aziyade)

Well-known member
Please don't play into the harem myth for your club sets by wearing a bellydance costume, dancing to Middle Eastern music, or relying on anything (or any schtick) that alludes to the Middle East.

First of all, none of the movements of belly dance are "owned" by the cultures of the Middle East, and a great percentage of our movement vocabulary seems to now be shared by contemporary club dancing and other dance forms. Second of all, you're not "fusing" anything really, so don't think of it as fusion. Exotic dancers have for a LONG while shared a movement vocabulary with Polynesian and Middle Eastern dance, and they've played into that until the schtick has been done to death.

What do you like about belly dance? The musical interpretation? The more internal feeling of how the movements are generated? Just incorporate that technique into your own dance. You don't have to acknowledge or "give credit" to belly dance for your inspiration -- THAT would be what would equate the two forms in the public's eye. (Well that and dressing like a belly dancer.)

I have a lifetime of ballet experience that definitely gets incorporated into my belly dancing, but I don't have to acknowledge that when I perform. I simply draw out what I like most from the ballet technique and training and use that when I perform. Same applies to any dance. My personal spiritual and religious faith has a great impact on my dancing as well, but since the two are only connected in MY MIND and my heart, I don't need to acknowledge that connection to the public.

Keep the two dance forms totally separate in your own mind, and in the public's mind too, PLEASE. Like Shan, I've lost teaching gigs because in some person's mind, belly dance was something that was done in the bedroom, not the schools or the boardroom. Avoid the Shakira, I Dream of Jeannie, and harem girl fantasy in costuming, presentation, and staging please please please.

Try something NEW -- instead of thinking of the same old dried out, age-old fusing of belly dance and burly (or whichever type of dance you specialize in) think of taking your OWN dancing to a higher level by incorporating the good technique and the musical connection from belly dance, but go a different direction with it. Draw your inspiration from performances like those at the Theatrical Bellydance Conference, or An Evening of Experimental Middle Eastern Dance, but make it yours and make a new and different kind of art in the process, not some 1930s idea rehashed yet again.
 

bdfusion

New member
Personally I would keep both styles completely separate. Sure I see BD movements appearing in MTV singers videos, and they tend to spic them up a bit, but they don't say they are from BD. But I am sure bellydancers would recognise the steps/movements just as salsa etc dancers would recognise steps/movements from their dance style.

Yes, the style of dance used by a lot of girls in the hip hop industry (dance hall) definitely has ties to belly dance. I think there were influences in both directions, considering, the modern type of Cabaret emerged about the same time or soon after dance hall got really popular.
But neither dance claims each other as a source. However, a belly dancer could pull off dance hall within minutes of learning it, although it would be a more contained and poised version.
 
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bdfusion

New member
Please don't. The public confuses the two too much already and you'd just be adding fuel to the fire. You can explain the classiness of fusing belly dance and stripping until you are blue in the face and 99.3% of the public is still going to see your performance as plain old stripping.

I have nothing in the world against burlesque (I like it) but we already have enough trouble with people equating stripping and belly dance. A couple of months ago I was banned from teaching a very popular belly dance workshop in the school district because a parent equated it with exotic (read erotic) dance and the school district was too sooky la-la to back me up or even let me demonstrate the class to the school board.

Fusion brings belly dance's rep down, not stripping's rep up. Sad, perhaps, but true. I like to see them kept completely separate.

I didn't mean to say i was trying to bring stripping's rep up. What I was saying was that I just like it, and when I dance it's me. If that makes any sense. And I was saying I wasn't going to trash it, as in making it "jiggly and wiggly" so to speak.
The school thing is just a display of how two-faced the American public school system is. When I was in high school, which was only a few years ago, a group of girls would dance around in tiny skirts in front of the whole school, flashing everyone with what was only an excuse for shorts that ended up riding up their rear ends by halfway through the routine anyways.
So anyways, about belly dance in a strip club environment, I really think it would be a similar situation to stripper "costumes" say like, dressing like a nurse (I wouldn't do this probably, but you know). So just because your doing nurse cosplay doesn't mean that next time they go to the doctor and see one, they'll think it makes sense to request a striptease.
And unlike nurses being classic erotic cosplay, it's not like thousands of strippers are going to be running around advertising stripper modified "belly dancing." Just myself.
 

Yame

New member
I'm sorry, but I'm having a REALLY hard time taking this thread seriously. Whenever someone signs up for this forum and the first thing they do is post a thread that is controversial, I can't help but smell a troll.

But okay, let me give you the benefit of the doubt.

First of all, I'd like to know about your experience with belly dance. How long have you been belly dancing? How proficient are you? What style do you do? What do you like about belly dance? What are your goals in belly dance?

As for the stripping part, I could honestly care less about how you dance as a stripper. I don't care if you pole dance, I don't care if you do ballet moves, I don't care if you Irish step dance, I don't care if you do moves inspired by belly dance. You can do whatever you want according to what you think will satisfy your audience.

With that said, I am sure your customers could care less about your "influences." Do strip clubs even announce their acts, anyway? Last I checked, the girls just come out, do their thing, and leave. Maybe their stage names are announced. But it's irrelevant what kind of training they have just like their favorite color and dish are irrelevant. I don't think anybody is going to a strip club to get to know you, and they certainly aren't watching you expecting any sort of high Art.

What I'm trying to get at is that there's no reason to want to "credit" belly dance, and it seems like you'd have to really go out of your way to be able to do that in that kind of environment, so why are you considering doing that?
 

Amanda (was Aziyade)

Well-known member
And unlike nurses being classic erotic cosplay, it's not like thousands of strippers are going to be running around advertising stripper modified "belly dancing." Just myself.

I'm curious and want to clarify -- you do realize that the stripper doing bellydance thing is quite common, don't you? Many of us have students in our classes who are also strippers or pole dancers (I'll admit I''m not exactly sure what kind of dancing they do. In my town, it seems to be a lot of topless pole dancing, and the actual "stripping" part of it is minimized.)

And the reverse -- belly dancer doing stripping -- is also pretty common. Striptease is a popular workshop topic, and companies like World Dance New York are producing instructional dvds on the art, alongside their bellydance dvds.

There are many quasi-famous belly dancers who also explore striptease and burlesque. Some of them blend the two, but most don't. They have different stage names for each art form, and don't USUALLY teach both at the same workshop or perform both in shows. Most keep the two art forms pretty distinct and separate.
 

Aniseteph

New member
So anyways, about belly dance in a strip club environment, I really think it would be a similar situation to stripper "costumes"...

And I really don't. Most people :)rolleyes:) can tell sexy nurse or raunchy fireman dress up from the real thing and don't get them mixed up too much because it really doesn't pay to make strippy comments at your doctor. You just look stupid, or get thrown out.

With belly dance lots of people don't know/care that cosplay dress up bellydancer is not real bellydancer. The cosplay/stripper version in performance impacts on real professional belly dancers in a way that those others just don't.

By all means dress up as Jeannie the Genie or Princess Jasmine, but don't call it belly dance.
 

bdfusion

New member
I'm sorry, but I'm having a REALLY hard time taking this thread seriously. Whenever someone signs up for this forum and the first thing they do is post a thread that is controversial, I can't help but smell a troll.

But okay, let me give you the benefit of the doubt.

First of all, I'd like to know about your experience with belly dance. How long have you been belly dancing? How proficient are you? What style do you do? What do you like about belly dance? What are your goals in belly dance?

As for the stripping part, I could honestly care less about how you dance as a stripper. I don't care if you pole dance, I don't care if you do ballet moves, I don't care if you Irish step dance, I don't care if you do moves inspired by belly dance. You can do whatever you want according to what you think will satisfy your audience.

With that said, I am sure your customers could care less about your "influences." Do strip clubs even announce their acts, anyway? Last I checked, the girls just come out, do their thing, and leave. Maybe their stage names are announced. But it's irrelevant what kind of training they have just like their favorite color and dish are irrelevant. I don't think anybody is going to a strip club to get to know you, and they certainly aren't watching you expecting any sort of high Art.

What I'm trying to get at is that there's no reason to want to "credit" belly dance, and it seems like you'd have to really go out of your way to be able to do that in that kind of environment, so why are you considering doing that?

Well some people probably make a new account to talk about something really controversial...
It depends on the club, some clubs you go out one at a time, and you can bring your own music to preform to.
And getting on stage is only part of it, most of the time you'll be off stage (getting lap dance customers). A lot of it is previous to offering a dance is socializing, you become friends with people who come in and do have conversations. While I'm not expecting it to come up immediately, I do expect somebody to say something eventually (I wasn't talking about running around telling everyone I'm a "belly dancer", just if it comes up) .
I'm sure that what you've heard doesn't correspond, but most guys who come to clubs aren't shallow lechers. I've met more respectable and at least average men than I have overly perverted ones. Most of them are just there to enjoy watching women dance. And while yes, if a girl is a particularly bad dancer, they don't really mind as long as she manages to appeal sexually to them. However, if you put a lot into dance (I practice dance 4-5 hours a day when I'm off work, and I do 1 1/2 of yoga in the morning) people DO notice, and if you put your emotions into it people notice that too. People have mentioned that I'm the best dancer at my club, and a couple people have mentioned belly dance, to which I just said I liked and it inspired my style, but what I did was club dancing, not belly dance.
Actually it just made me wonder if that was the answer I should have gave, because obviously I have a hard time being accepted in the belly dance community, even without blatantly including it in my job. I've heard some teachers won't even let strippers into their classes (I've never had the teacher problem, but I read an article on a belly dance website about it).
Most have fears that they'll turn belly dancing into something slutty and tacky. Keep in mind the difference between adding belly dance to stripping, and adding stripping to belly dance. If I were actually to become a straight up belly dancer who preforms in troupes and such, I wouldn't be strutting around and pulling stripper moves.
As for belly dance experience, I practiced for 1-2 hours a day for a couple years in high school. I sort of quit to devote some time to learning to pole dance well, but I've been wanting to start practicing again. I've tried several styles. I know that's a caution flag there, because people with style complexes are known for not being very professional. But I've spent about an equal amount of time practicing cabaret and tribal fusion. I used DVDs in high school (serpentine, some Sadie dvds, and a few others). If I take it up again I'll probably try to find a good class somewhere.
 

gisela

Super Moderator
a couple people have mentioned belly dance, to which I just said I liked and it inspired my style, but what I did was club dancing, not belly dance.

I think that is a great answer and one you could continue to use even if the bellydance influence increases. Because it won't be bellydancing as long as it is stripping or lap dancing.

I am also sceptical to how bellydance looks on a not fully dressed body. Usually we do moves that need a layer of fabric or a leg covering skirt to look good.
Of course I don't know how you are dressed when dancing or how you plan to dress if doing bellydancing.
 
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bdfusion

New member
I think that is a great answer and one you could continue to use even if the bellydance influence increases. Because it won't be bellydancing as long as it is stripping or lap dancing.

I am also sceptical to how bellydance looks on a not fully dresses body. Usually we do moves that needs a layer of fabric or a leg covering skirt to look good.
Of course I don't know how you are dressed when dancing or how you plan to dress if doing bellydancing.

That was my plan for it if it increases. I just wanted to run it by some belly dancers because I was just wondering what you would think.
Even though I haven't been dancing much lately, I still like to watch dancers and I come on here a lot to read stuff.
And yes I know what you mean. I work at a topless bar, and I have a costume I wear (not belly dancing, a stripper costume) that has beads on the shorts much like a belly dance costume does. I usually wear that if I'm in more of a belly dance mood (sometimes I do still practice some moves I learned in high school). And I was actually thinking of taking up the dressing issue myself. I might take sewing classes and make my own costumes, something similar to a belly dance costume, but modify it to suit stripping. Not talking belly dancer with belt, bra, and missing skirt deal, but I was going to try to come up with something more original.
But yah, they don't look horrible with other types of clothes, but there are clothes that compliment it. That's something I'd have to think about.
 

mahsati_janan

New member
My request would be for you not to mention belly dance in conjunction with stripping. It is an extremely common problem for belly dancers to be mistaken for strippers or treated badly when they realize we aren't going to strip for them. There is absolutely nothing wrong with stripping, but it is a completely separate dance form in its place in society than belly dance. I have had exotic dancers, strippers, and pole dancers in my classes and it isn't a problem. Most understand the precarious nature of belly dance's reputation in the US.

I see that you are not currently taking classes in belly dance. This would be the first and most important step to learning more about belly dance and to being accepted by the belly dance community. People dancing multiple styles and fusions are not a problem. People dancing who don't know the styles or what they are fusing can be.

Styles to look into: Egyptian (classical and modern), Turkish, Lebanese, American Orientale/Classic, ATS/ITS, Tribal Fusion, and then the folk styles like Ghawazee, Khaleegy, Saiidi, etc. It will really help you with your dance journey to have a teacher who can help you with these things and who can advise you on your fusion. Good luck!
 

MissVega

New member
However, a belly dancer could pull off dance hall within minutes of learning it, although it would be a more contained and poised version.

Not to go off on a tangent or thread hijack, but what dancehall have you been watching? I teach Caribbean fusion, which is caribbean music and movement fused with belly dance movement and while not all do, the majority of belly dancers typically have difficulty with dancehall posture and movement. I have not once yet seen a belly dancer instantly get any raw dancehall movement within minutes, or even hours.
Similarly I've seen it go the other way, where dancers with a background in dancehall have difficulty with belly dance. While the core movement is very similar there are lots of subtleties that make a big difference.


The dancehall that you see now in the hip hop industry typically has a strong hip hop influence and looks quite different from the dancehall that you see at passa passa or sumfest in JA.
 
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Pleasant dancer

New member
I really want to combine belly dance with exotic dance for my job.
I love both.
If you love belly dancing, please, please don't. They do not go together. It will cause more harm than good and to be blunt I cannot consider this "art" just because you feel it is. It's a desire on your part that is unnecessary to bring into reality.

I have the greatest respect for all of you, which is why I'm bringing it up. I value the community's opinions, and will definitely take them into consideration. So please, tell me your opinion and tell me what kind of guidelines you'd like me to follow

There are no guidelines to follow except don't do it

And please, let's try to keep this mostly about your thoughts on the considered fusion, not my job choice or morals. As much as possible at least.

I've found folk on this board to be broad minded, intelligent and non-judgmental. But we do get a bit bothered when someone comes up with this sort of idea. If you don't believe me just check out previous threads about belly dancing and stripping.

This is only what I would tell you if you were a student of mine (and I have had an exotic dance student in my class) and you asked my opinion. I think I can also tell you what the other students in my class would say, and it wouldn't be positive.
 

teela

New member
A long time ago, I took a class with an exotic dancer who was also taking belly dancing. She made sure not to combine the two into fusion and if she performed belly dance, she made sure that it did not have any stripper type moves. I believe she did perform her belly dance at the club she worked at but she made sure she did it with the proper attire, proper music and made sure it was done with respect. I think when you start combining the stripping/exotic moves with the belly dance you are showing a certain disrespect for middle eastern dance. My advice is to concentrate on the bellydance seperately from the stripping and develop two distinct styles.
 

Greek Bonfire

Well-known member
All of the above. But if you have to do both, please keep it separate. Also, use different names for each so that people don't think of you as that bellydance who strips and vice versa.
 

Pirika Repun

New member
I didn't go to this event, but the dancer in this video danced with topless at the show (not in video). You can see what she is wearing bottom, and imagine take off her top. I totally disagree what she said about this art form, and I think she misunderstood like many people in general (even in dance community) about this art form. Sensual and sexual are totally different thing, and feeling is different as well.

I like fusion, and I have nothing against exotic dance, BUT if you really care about this art form and respect the culture, please do not mix up these two. Thank you.

 
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