Which style has the snakiest arm movements

[Kashmir]

On the second one the first or the second comment is about the kalbelia dance as a part of belly dance history.

Not every thing you see or hear on YouTube is fact. Kalbelia dance is Indian - there is no reputable researcher who says belly dance comes from India. It is a dance of the Middle East and North Africa.

Further - look at the dance styles - look at their essence, their purpose, their movement vocabulary. The only connection is they are non-Western and use bits other than legs.

Tribal borrows from every where. But if they want to keep their belly dance label they have a base of Middle Eastern & North African dance. Doesn't mean they cannot use elements form other cultures - the whole point is it is fantasy dance. In fact the earliest modern link between belly dancing and snakes comes from an incident with Bal Anat where Jamila had to take care of a snake while one of the circus performers went off somewhere and she decided to include it in their act.

 

[Kashmir]

The similarities I see is more with saidi and ghawazee. I've been watching those a lot lately.

Must be very different sa`iidi & ghawazee than what I learnt - from Egyptians who had observed the dance first hand - or from the film taken by Aisha Ali and Morocco of the Banat Maazin (who are ghawazee) in the 1970s.

 

[Aniseteph]

I HEAR similarities between the reed instrument in those clips and the mizmar, but then that's what you get when you blow on reeds in any culture -a buzzy racket that can be an acquired taste. I don't think it necessarily makes for any kind of meaningful link.

 

[chirel]

Not every thing you see or hear on YouTube is fact. Kalbelia dance is Indian - there is no reputable researcher who says belly dance comes from India. It is a dance of the Middle East and North Africa.

Yes, of course I know that youtube is not The place for information. That is why I asked about this here.

There is something I don't quite understand yet, and again it has nothing to do with snake arms, but since the conversation keeps going on here (I just finished reading the pagan bellydance thread - so haven't had time to post to it yet) I'll ask it here. I read somewhere about the connection of gypsy dances and belly dance. I don't remember where or what. But if such a connection exists, then there is a link between belly dance and India. Even if a weak and old one. Was it on this forum? (I have trouble with the search function - no matter what I search for I get a random list of threads that may or may not have a connection to what I was looking for. Usually I end up reading some of them regardless of the subject. Mostly I don't get what I want. This is why I'm not trying to search myself...)

And just so people know more about how my mind works. I tend to look for connections and similarities and I recognize the fact that I'm good at finding them. Even to the point where I've made them up. It is a kind of game to me, and I don't take the results seriously. But I do ask a lot of 'what if' questions. (Heck, I'm a scifi/fantasy -writer. That's what we do. )

But I'll try to find a better thread for my questions, since they still don't involve snaky arms.

 

[Jane]

I read somewhere about the connection of gypsy dances and belly dance. I don't remember where or what. But if such a connection exists, then there is a link between belly dance and India. Even if a weak and old one. Was it on this forum? (I have trouble with the search function - no matter what I search for I get a random list of threads that may or may not have a connection to what I was looking for. Usually I end up reading some of them regardless of the subject. Mostly I don't get what I want. This is why I'm not trying to search myself...)

We had a discussion about it here:

http://bellydanceforums.net/dance-styles/15057-gypsy-dance.html

The answer ended up being almost no connection. The Ghawazee are thought to be Sinti, and there are a few influences from Roma in Turkish dance. We came to the conclusion that most groups of traveling Rom/Dom/Sinti ect. people who came in migratory waves from India adopted the local dances in the areas where they were living, but with some of their own stylization added in. How much of their original style survived hundreds of years, is still open to research and debate.

 

[Nedeia]

Ok, what a huge can of worms

I am writing from my mobile , so please bear with my spelling. I am not quoting, just trying to answer ti as many Of you as I can.

Firstly, I am not teaching BD, I am a beginner whO actually discovered that I can dance a couple of months ago, with the first lessons of BD. I had no idea what was in there, I had barely seen some dances here and there, and I had no interest in BD until that first lesson.

I believe that dancing was in the beginning a ritual, I have always admired the dancing that is linked to the spiritual ways, so maybe this is why I tend to see this way the BD or tribal styles. It is not about the hard evidence, it is about what I feel that they express. It makes me love the dance even more, as I do not see it as a simple form of movement, a way of expressing, a way of making money Or how the society depicts it. For me, it has also a spiritual meaning.

I see dancing as being more than expressing yourself. It is linked to the culture in which it was born, it has a history that we might not be able to fully comprehend, but that does not mean we should not try to see what is it that it awakes in us. It's like reading a book. I can picture the main character as a tall blonde man with blue eyes and a scar on the left cheek, someone else might not see the scar. It is not mentioned in the book, but the hero is a soldier. Could I feel romantic and imagine a scar? After all, it is a strong probability, he is a warrior. It makes me picture the warrior better, it does not make him good or bad, true or false. The same here, with what this dance transmits to me. It is not about the written history, it is about the beauty of what it expresses. I see two aspects that are both dear to me, not linked to the person of the dancers, linked to the movements, cOstumes, attitude. Like a metaphor.

Of course, I am not going ahead and tell all my friend about my theory, trying to convert them, no, nor would I dare totry to convince a middle eastern woman that the dance specific to her country is this and that. That would be patronizing to say the least. But, as an almost Eastern w

 

[Jane]

I HEAR similarities between the reed instrument in those clips and the mizmar, but then that's what you get when you blow on reeds in any culture -a buzzy racket that can be an acquired taste. I don't think it necessarily makes for any kind of meaningful link.

I'm beginning to think I'm the only person who loves mizmars. I also love pipe organs, hurdy-gurdies, and bag pipes

 

[chirel]

Thanks Jane for the link. I'll check that one next. And I kind of feel like Nedeia. Creating my own stories around things does not make it difficult to know the thruth from the fiction. It just adds something to life and I usually keep my ideas to myself. (Unless I write fiction about them...)

Hmm. A question about snaky arms...
In tribal fusion it seem many dancers don't have soft curvy arm positions but angled and still somehow soft. And despite the angles it still looks really snaky when they switch from one position to the next. Does anyone know where they got the idea for these angles and why they incorporated these arms into TF (in such amount).

 

[khanjar]

I was of the impression Egyptian belly dance ascribed to the Irish school of dancing that is they never really learned what to do with the arms, so for the purposes of Egyptian belly dance arms are for framing and little else. ( which is good for me, because I cannot yet split mind and multitask, but maybe that is because am male )

Snake arms although they do look good when lower body movement compliments, I always thought to be more tribal fusion as opposed to the original, as if what was being portrayed was an impression of something which may have existed or not, basically fantasy movement, and why not, for one cannot always be stuck in the past, we have to evolve.

 

[Kashmir]

I was of the impression Egyptian belly dance ascribed to the Irish school of dancing that is they never really learned what to do with the arms, so for the purposes of Egyptian belly dance arms are for framing and little else.

Actually keeping your arms minimal and looking natural is really hard. On several occasions I have heard Egyptian teachers telling students to keep their arms still as moving arms distract from the hips - which is what you want the viewer to look at.

Somewhere along the line I have picked up the habit of dropping my arms slowly from above my head as I do a hip shimmy - and it is very, very hard not to but rather decide where the arms will be and hold them for the duration of the shimmy.

 

[Janene Aliza]

Power to me is a Middle Eastern woman who feels so compelled to dance that she risks her place in society, her relationship with her family, and her life to be a professional belly dancer.

:clap: