I thought this festival was a bd festival...

Sophia Maria

New member


I thought the Mediterranean Delight Festival was a belly dance festival? Don't get me wrong, she's extremely talented and acrobatic...but what is going on here? Has anyone seen this style of dance before?
 

Dunyah

New member
Nope, haven't seen that, but I don't go to strip clubs. That was awful. I don't know anything about that festival, but it did say International Belly Dance Festival in the opening credits. This has nothing to do with belly dancing.
 

Jane

New member
 

Shanazel

Moderator
Did she leave out a single cliche of erotic gymnastics from splits to shimmies in every position? I didn't watch long enough to be sure. :rolleyes:

Belly dance NOT.
 

Sophia Maria

New member
Did she leave out a single cliche of erotic gymnastics from splits to shimmies in every position? I didn't watch long enough to be sure. :rolleyes:

Belly dance NOT.

I know!

And Jane, that was exactly my feeling. I've watched many excellent bd performances from Mediterranean Delight, and then I saw this...:shok:
 

Duvet

Member
Did she leave out a single cliche of erotic gymnastics from splits to shimmies in every position? I didn't watch long enough to be sure. :rolleyes:

Belly dance NOT.

Awww, you missed a doodi Shanzel. She stood on her head and shimmied with her legs apart!:shok:

I wonder what the audience and other participants felt about it. Lots of strength and balance, but no interpretation of the music. A circus act and not much of a dance. That could have been her intent - she teaches bellyoga (combo of bellydance, yoga & tantra) - so I guess that puts the positions in context. Maybe she was just advertising her class.

Definately not bellydancing. But I'd love to be able to shimmy in all those positions. Just don't think I'd choose to display it in that manner. :)
 

Aniseteph

New member
LOL, what Jane said.

Awww, you missed a doodi Shanzel. She stood on her head and shimmied with her legs apart!:shok:

I thought you might be joking... but no. :shok:

I'm sure I've seen this clip before. All those tremors and back arching look like strychnine poisoning to me.
 

Greek Bonfire

Well-known member
Nope, haven't seen that, but I don't go to strip clubs. That was awful. I don't know anything about that festival, but it did say International Belly Dance Festival in the opening credits. This has nothing to do with belly dancing.

Another reason why we are CONSTANTLY fighting the misunderstanding of bellydance. Sometimes I think all the misunderstanding STARTS in the Mediterranean, then travels west!
 

walladah

New member
Fotia, you have a point here!

Sometimes, orientalism is so internalised that people in the mediterranean despise what they learn from their grandmothers and think that what is on youtube and what is popular in the western countries, is the good/fashionable/preferable thing.

Moreover, there are also other elements, like commercialisation and TV shows which just are so into this "i sell female bodies just moving around in an arousing way" so they hire this type of dancers, they focus cameras on this type of dancers, they ask the "audience" in live TV shows to dance that way, etc.

So, i also agree that Mediterranean does not cherish their culture as they should.

i live with this particularly with the local versions of oriental dancer in greece. No-one studies them, no-one tries to save info concerning the local forms, moves, styles, people are educated by vulgar-moving dancers in the TV or in fashionable clubs where the more vulgar you move, the better, etc.

This attitude exists also in bellydance: bellydance teachers are not working on the greek version, but they prefer the egyptian, tribal fusion, turkish, anything that is commercial-famous and popular. Sometimes, when they try to dance greek tsifteteli (that is how we call it), they just replicate everything from what they know from egyptian or turkish style and this is even worse than promoting only egyptian dance (which i adore anyway).

I wonder what would happen if a famous dancer from the west came to Greece to do this ethnographic research and returned to NY or to any other western metropolis teaching "genuine greek style". Then it would become fashionable not to misunderstand the dance....

I remember Morocco, which i was lucky to meet in Athens 6 years ago, when i asked her about mantilatos dance and whether it is better to dance it the way tribal fusion dancers dance it [not to blame them! they pick up the music and they dance to it as their inner feeling says] or the traditional way we dance the dance in my homeland, Thrace. Morocco was straightforward: you dance the traditional way you have learned in your community. Which meant that i got the encouragement i needed to work on traditional clothing, head-decoration, jewellery, styling, customs and social uses of dance, etc.

Since then, i think, Fotia, that my eyes became more and more apt to discern the "misunderstandings". But, i cannot blame the dancer in the video [who is so trained that in case she wanted to work on bellydance, i suppose she could be very good] once i see that most dancers just go with the stream... i have watched terrible "fusion" dances, where girls were dressed like low-class burlesque clothes trying to reproduce the worst versions of "cabaret amusement", terrible "egyptian" dancers where dancers were dancing as "if they were selling something" [Morocco's comment again!] and terrible "turkish" style dancers, with low-quality-tourist-version costumes trying to replicate the harem-slave-ready-to-please-the-master.

So, at least i think that her technical ability is good, which at least shows some ability at all, than just watch "i wanted to be a burlesque dancer, i never took the right training for this, but at the end, bellydance gives me this chance without breaking down my middle class status".
 

Darshiva

Moderator
When she turned her crotch towards me (the audience) and started shimmying, I shut it off. She's seriously not my type! :p
 

Farasha Hanem

New member
Not only was this performance hideous, I hated her choice of music. At one point, the singer sounded like she was having an orgasm! >:/ BLECK!!!!!
 

Duvet

Member
Not only was this performance hideous, I hated her choice of music. At one point, the singer sounded like she was having an orgasm! >:/ BLECK!!!!!

I think that was the point of using that music.

I wonder how she was billed, and whether the organisers knew what she was going to do?
 

Greek Bonfire

Well-known member
Where I live, the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern men have a lower opinion of women who bellydance than the western men native to my country. But it's a stigma that we fight with people from all walks of life. I spend a lot of time defending the dance and then something like this comes along and it just blows what I say right out of the water.

<Sigh> :(
 

mahsati_janan

New member
I asked about this video a while back in the youtube comments and was told that it was part of the fusion competition for this festival. While it isn't my cup of tea, it was apparently labeled as fusion rather than oriental dance at the event itself.
 

Shanazel

Moderator
Hootchie kootch belly dance fusion, re-enforcing every misconception ever held about belly dance. Great idea.
 

Sophia Maria

New member
I asked about this video a while back in the youtube comments and was told that it was part of the fusion competition for this festival. While it isn't my cup of tea, it was apparently labeled as fusion rather than oriental dance at the event itself.

Fusion?!! One can't just label anything as fusion and get away with it!
 

Dunyah

New member
Labeling it "fusion" is a total cop-out, inaccurate and an insult to true fusion artists. That was a disgusting performance that had nothing to do with art or dance, really.
 
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