Your Definition of "Bellydance"

[Kharmine]

I started a thread on this forum just on Sol Bloom to report on what he actually said about "belly dance" -- I recommend looking it up, because I've quoted directly from his 1948 autobiography, written when he was an elder statesman of the U.S. Congress at the age of 78.

Sol Bloom doesn't claim any credit for making "belly dance" a part of American slang. He simply says that when the public in 1893 heard about the Middle Eastern dancers at the World's Columbian Exposition, and found out that that what was commonly called the danse du ventre translated into 'belly dance, it "delightedly concluded that it was something salacious and immoral...I had a gold mine."

I am writing an article for The Gilded Serpent about Bloom in which I give a lot more detail.

Far from being the sleazy, quick-buck promoter he is sometimes portrayed as -- mostly by people who have not read his memoirs and know almost nothing about him -- he was an extraordinary rags-to-riches character who was an observant Orthodox Jew all his life and intelligent enough to be elected to Congress for 14 straight terms, although he never had more than a day's worth of formal education.

In "The Autobiography of Sol Bloom," he relates how much he admired the Middle Eastern performers he brought to the 1893 Exposition, and how much he appreciated what he preferred to call the danse du ventre as a "masterpiece of choreography." He lamented the later "degraded" versions that turned up in amusement parks all over that came to be called the "Hootchy-Kootchy."

This is the only time we read of "belly dance" becoming a part of America's pop culture and I think it is entirely valid.

 

[Andrea Deagon]

Kharmine, I agree about Sol Bloom -- he was an extraordinary character, and I do think he has been maligned. He is indeed always respectful in his description of the Algerians he worked with, and he provides some interesting information about the sophistication of these international performers, who could apparently move right into office work in an English-speaking environment when their engagement was a year later than they had anticipated.

But. Bloom has a tendency toward self-aggrandizement that is perfectly understandable in a great story-teller recounting the adventures of his youth. He mentions none of the other people who were instrumental in bringing the Algerians in and in designing and building the Algerian theater. He makes it sound as if it was all his doing, and it wasn't. He ignores the fact that the Cairo exhibit was the real focus of the excitement and scandal, though the Algerians drew their share of attention. And I think he gives a story-like, simplified version of the "finding out it meant 'belly dance'" scenario.

I am not saying this to malign Sol Bloom -- I have a great deal of respect for him and I appreciate his respect for the Algerians he worked with. But I think he presents a somewhat biased view of the events in his autobiography. And after all, his autobiography does not claim to be an exhaustive story of the Eastern presence in the Exhibition. It's one man's reminiscences fifty years or so later. He's not a linguist or an analytical critic of popular culure. (I am, by the way.)

Bloom never claims to have invented the term "belly dance," only to have midwifed its entry into popular culture. The odd thing is that the term remains so much of the radar until well into the 20th century. Perhaps oddly in a discussion which has sometimes been contentious, I don't think that it is a case of "either/or" with the ideas that (a) the term entered popular culture in the 1890's and (b) the term became popular after WWII. Popular culture is compex and things move in cycles. The later popularization of the term was surely made possible in part by its initial entry into popular culture 50 years earlier.

In any case, the whole matter needs more critical attention. Good on you for providing it -- I look forward to reading your article on Bloom.

 

[sedoniaraqs]

more from the big, & the notoriously bad, interrnet (& maybe a more "reliable" source????? (at least IMO!!)):
http://www.shira.net/debunking.htm

No, this is not a more reliable source. With all due respect to Shira -- she has a great site -- this is recent article presumably drawing on the same limited sources that we are debating here. I'm *not* saying the article is not good, or not correct, it just doesn't represent a new or different source than the ones already being discussed here.

As I said, just finding more and more recent authors citing the same few things doesn't represent more or better documentation.

Sedonia

 

[Kharmine]

Thanks for the kind words, A.D.

Sol Bloom's autobiography may be biased, because whose memoirs haven't been? Just writing one's memoirs might be considered an act of self-aggrandizement if the writer comes out looking better than his worst eniemies think he ought to look.

But I've read a ton of old autobiographies and there are three things I note:
1) The writers often seem to assume their audience knows more about things they refer to indirectly than the readers of a later generation do. Things like events that were once front-page news and are now forgotten. Risque jokes that no one today remembers the punch line.
2) It's hard to always know, for sure, why some things are omitted.
3) Books have always been edited by the publisher with an eye toward what would be most interesting to the intended readership. With or without the cooperation of the writer.

Some of what Bloom had to say might well have been dropped before publication for reasons of space or because he was persuaded that hardly anyone would have been interested in certain details.

With this in mind, let's remember that Bloom does mention "Archie," the "giant Kabyle" who was the guide for the Algerian Villagers to the States and became Bloom's translator, assistant and bodyguard.

Bloom doesn't give many details in total about the Midway Plaisance he ran -- a few famous names and funny stories, that's about it. (And the almost lyrical tribute to the Algerian Villagers and their danse du ventre.)

But then there's a lot he doesn't talk about throughout his book that you'd expect him to, not just the year and a half he spent producing and managing the Midway. We simply don't know why.

And there's something I found in my research that really stands out to me, a professional journalist who is used to finding obscure facts and even real dirt.

Nothing I've found outright contradicts what Bloom relates as regards his experience with the Midway. Nada.

Nothing in any published books or articles or academic papers that I could find -- and I threw as wide a net as I can. Granted Bloom was only 21 when he was manager of the Midway; you'd still think there would have been other people alive in 1948 when his book came out who could have refuted Bloom about what happened.

But unless there's an old diary somewhere that hasn't been read, an old article that didn't get much attention, someone else's memoirs that remember events differently that never got published -- I have to say that no one of Bloom's times, or after, has contradicted his account of how "belly dance" came to be a part of American slang.

As a journalist myself I expected to stumble across some interview, investigative piece, something that would have shed more light, if not a different light, on such a well-known man's experience. Nada.

Time has passed. We document almost everything today, almost obsessively. We know almost to the day when American slang in the 20th century came and went, and what took its place in turn. Whole libraries have been written, for instance, just on the American experience during World War II, in the Middle East and elsewhere, and any slang that emerged from that period has been pretty well documented.

Nothing has ever surfaced that contradicts 'belly dance" as being used before the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, or demonstrates that the term was in common use for the first time at any other later period or place.

I don't have all the answers. But that much I do know. If there is any evidence (let alone "plenty of evidence" as someone once claimed) to the contrary, it hasn't been backed up in the slightest.

 

[cathy]

Any other good sources available?

In order to satisfy my own curiosity about the origins of the term "belly dance" I am now about halfway through the Sol Bloom Autobiography.

Kharmine--one thing I noticed abot Bloom's early days in San Fransisco that I don't think you have mentioned here is the "bawdy dance hall" known as the Bella Union that he mentions having been known by the nickname "belly union." He also mentions that the girls or women who worked there were regularly hauled off by the police for indecent behavior and this only made the place more popular. I think we can be sure no Middle Eastern dance was going on there, but the fact that he already associated the word "belly" with both indecent behavior and also increased money-making opportunities interesting.

Please let us know when your article appears in Gilded Serpent.

As Andrea Deagon alluded to, I wish he had gone into more detail about the Algerian Village, how he hired them, and how they got to Chicago. And of course I also wish he had gone into more detail about the advertising methods he used.

I found out that there are Sol Bloom private papers in the NYC Public Library so if my obsession requires and time allows, I may try to check those also, though I suspect they cover more of his later political career than anything from that era. I also recently obtained Looking for Little Egypt by Donna Carlton (especially interested in the bibliography here) and also The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson for general background reading about Chicago circa 1893.

Can anyone recommend any books that might discuss the period from about 1900 to 1950 possibly including the experiences of French, English, and American soldiers in Egypt or other parts of the Middle East around WWII?

Thanks, Cathy

 

[Kharmine]

More Bloom, more sources (really long, sorry!)

...Kharmine--one thing I noticed about Bloom's early days in San Francisco that I don't think you have mentioned here is the "bawdy dance hall" known as the Bella Union that he mentions having been known by the nickname "belly union." He also mentions that the girls or women who worked there were regularly hauled off by the police for indecent behavior and this only made the place more popular. I think we can be sure no Middle Eastern dance was going on there, but the fact that he already associated the word "belly" with both indecent behavior and also increased money-making opportunities interesting...

Thank you, Cathy. You're right, I didn't mention it in my thread on Sol Bloom because my post was already pretty long (just as this one is gonna be!), and I wanted to save something for my article! I did mention it awhile back in correspondence with Donna Carlton who has a friend who is also researching the term.

I recently came across more about the Bella Union in San Francisco here: San Francisco History - The Barbary Coast, Chapter 6. The Bella Union and trying to find more on it. It seems like exactly the right place to call by a play on its name like "Belly Union" -- it was a notorious stag (catered to men only) theater that ran in one form or another until the 1909 earthquake.

It was also located in a pretty unsavory area still called "The Tenderloin" -- the cut of meat that comes from a cow's soft underbelly.

For those interested who don't have the memoirs, the reference comes from a conversation Bloom had as a much older man with an unnamed buddy from his young San Francisco days.

The buddy says something like, "Remember when the police hauled away those dancers from the 'Belly Union'? They were doing the same thing my granddaughter did for a charity fundraiser last Christmas -- the can can!"

Bloom says he did remember that raid quite clearly, so the incident must have been pretty memorable although he doesn't give a date -- maybe scandals there happened too often for him to feel he had to be specific. It would be logical to think that Bloom remembered the "Belly Union" when ideas for publicizing the Midway were being discussed.

We're still talking about an age when "leg" or "stomach" wasn't used in polite society so I doubt he thought he could get away with using "belly" anything in public print. But as he well knew, sometimes underground notoriety is the best word of mouth.

As Andrea Deagon alluded to, I wish he had gone into more detail about the Algerian Village, how he hired them, and how they got to Chicago. And of course I also wish he had gone into more detail about the advertising methods he used.

Yep, you and me both. He does talk about going to see the 1889 Paris Exposition when he was 19 and seeing the "Algerian Village" perform for the first time (he says he doubts there ever was a real village in Algeria like this show, so he wasn't dumb). He sees what sounds like "torture dancers" and people who swallow live scorpions, jugglers and danse du ventre dancers. Even at his age, he has been in theater for a long time and has already done a lot of promotion so he knew the "Algerian Village" would be a big hit in the States.

He also describes himself as being a very young-looking young man who might not have made much of an impression as a real impresario on these performers, so he makes up a story about having even more impressive connections than he really did. He did bring a lot of money with him, so it helps. He signs them up with an exclusive two-year contract to represent them in the Western Hemisphere and pays about $1,000 for the privilege.

He claims he wrote to the "Algerian Village" after he became manager of the Midway (well before the 1893 Expo opened) telling them when it could come to the States and sending them a new contract for the Expo gig, but that they misunderstood him and arrived by ship a whole year early.

As Donna says, it might not have been quite true because by the time he finally got them to the Expo, his original contract would have expired, which he doesn't mention so maybe this was just to unofficially extend a contract rather than paying for a new one.

At any rate, Bloom had to rush to New York to meet the Villagers when they disembarked and they got back to Chicago by train, with the help of Bloom's new Algerian assistant, "Archie."

There just isn't much said about what Bloom did for advertising the Midway and danse du ventre. He was not only in charge of the Midway, and its troubleshooter, but says he was also consulted often about publicity for other areas of the Exposition, which I can believe as he had been doing promotion for a long time. He mentions talking to newspaper reporters often.

He did take a bunch of the Middle Eastern dancers to the offices of the Chicago Press Club for a "preview" (it's there where he supposedly picked out the tune on a piano later called "A Street in Cairo" that became associated in popular culture with the Middle East).

He was also in a meeting of Midway concessionaires (Joe McKennon in "Pictorial History of the American Carnival mentions the exact date) when crowds were still low in the first month, and they decided to get a Chicago minister to preach against "that dance" at the Midway -- which ballooned into big interest and bigger crowds. That stunt has Sol written all over it, but it doesn't come up in his book and he seems to be pretty careful about taking any credit for "belly dance."

He also doesn't say outright he had NOTHING to do with it, and maybe he just didn't like the memory as he seems to have preferred danse du ventre and had a real respect for it and its performers. We may never know the whole truth.

I found out that there are Sol Bloom private papers in the NYC Public Library so if my obsession requires and time allows, I may try to check those also, though I suspect they cover more of his later political career than anything from that era. I also recently obtained Looking for Little Egypt by Donna Carlton (especially interested in the bibliography here) and also The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson for general background reading about Chicago circa 1893.

I've seen that,too, and I'd love for someone to do the research on that as it doesn't look like I'd get to go there any time soon. Like you, I suspect those papers focus on his later political life, but who knows? Nobody seems to have written the definitive biography about Bloom so those papers are kind of a mystery.

It sounds like you'd do a good job researching 'em, Cathy, so I hope you do have a chance!

I have Larson's book, but Donna's is much more thorough about Bloom, the Midway, and the dancers. Larson covers the overall Exposition really well, but his main interest is in how this beautiful "White City" and its lofty goals were in such sharp contrast to the evil machinations of what was one of America's first serial killers, Dr. Holmes and his house of death, also in Chicago at that time, not coincidentally.

Can anyone recommend any books that might discuss the period from about 1900 to 1950 possibly including the experiences of French, English, and American soldiers in Egypt or other parts of the Middle East around WWII?...

Unfortunately, not my field -- my writing has required focus on anywhere from the late Medieval age to about the early 1900s. I remember coming across many, many books about that American experience (and the History Channel on TV is full of shows about WWII) and many books of later American slang, including slang from World War II -- none of which mention "belly dance" except as having originated in the 1890s, at the Exposition.

But I don't have any of those books in my personal library because I tend to keep only what I really need. Which is way too many books, as it is.

One book I've got on my list of things to research is "The Orientalist" by Tom Reiss. It's the true story about a Jew who escaped the Russian Revolution, went to the Middle East and became an author and authority on Middle Eastern things, in fact converted to Islam and transformed himself into a Muslim prince -- and was a popular writer in Nazi Germany! You might want to check him out: The Orientalist - Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life. By Tom Reiss

Anyway, hope this long post didn't make too many eyes glaze over! As most people on this forum don't have access to Bloom's memoirs, and it will be a while longer before my article comes out, I figured I might as well expound some more.

Thanks for bringing up Bella Union as "Belly Union," Cathy. I should have mentioned it earlier, it just seemed like I was covering a lot of stuff already, so was hoping others would read the book (as you did, good girl!) and pick out more things for discussion on their own.

 

[Suheir]

This thread is really excellent, it's great to see original sources quoted rather than the usual spurious nonsense that's bandied about in belly dance circles!
:clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap:

 

[Aniseteph]

So we're on a "belly dance" and "danse du ventre" wordhunt then?

The BBC have a programme doing wordhunts with the Oxford English Dictionary looking for the earliest verifiable usage of words and phrases. Unfortunately belly dance is not on the most recent list... (what were they thinking?)

BTW I looked at some translations of what Flaubert got up to on his Oriental travels. :shok: :redface: :naghty:

 

[Kharmine]

One more thing about the Bella Union - "Belly Union" connection. The link I posted has its source in an old book I forgot I had until recently - Herbert Asbury's "The Barbary Coast" (1933, New York) about early San Franscisco in which he relates quite a lot about this theater.

It had some periods of respectability but mostly was the sort of place young bloods and sailors on leave headed for -- from about 1848 to 1909.

Anyway, by 1897, it was featuring "cooch" dancers, the raunchier version of danse du ventre, and one of them claimed to be (yet again) Little Egypt fresh from her gig at the 1893 World's Columbian Expostion. Have no idea who she really was.

Donna Carlton says vaudeville halls, amusement parks and carnivals o' plenty had Little Egypts and Fatimas claiming to have performed at the 1893 Exposition. I'm mentioning this only because of the date, not long after the Exposition, and the play on words with "Belly Union."

I'll have to see what other books I've forgotten in my collection...better than having too many cats, I suppose.

 

[Aisha Azar]

Flaubert

Dear Aniseteph,
Seems like he was there for the thrill of it, as were many Orientalist travelers. I think that often we put WAY too much store by what people like Flaubert said. We have to look at motivations as well as the fact that they were traveling there. It would seem he often was more interested in Nookie than in anything else, nearly as I can tell from "Flaubert in Egypt" ( Translation by Francis Steegmuller, 1972. ISBN 0-14-043582-4). Amazingly enough, he does, on occasion, seem to have a few feelings besides lust, but not often. Just enough to make me wonder half the time if he was writing in his notebooks specifically to impress his friends. (or to practice up for writing MAdam Bovary!) He was described as a "sensualist" somewhere in the introduction of "Flaubert in Egypt". I think hedonist would have been a better word for him. Often the differences between Du Camp's writing and his is like day and night, in waht they consdier to be important if du Camp's inclusions in the work are to be considered his usual fare.
Again we see me not being that impressed with one of the Bibles of modern belly dancers. I know I seem cynical, but in looking at this dance, we have to be. We have to try to understand the context within which people write what they do, and that context is not always even about the dance, but instead quite often about the reaction and sensibilities of the writers to it.
Regards,
A'isha

 

[cathy]

Another Sol Bloom bit, "Barbary Coast" and primary sources

Hi Kharmine,

I also found a passage on p. 162 telling. When Bloom was in the sheet music business in 1898 he was inspired to advertise the song "My Honolulu Queen" with a display of palm trees, coconuts, a singer in Hawaian costume (too bad no description given) and in the backdrop he blew up the sheet music. He goes on: "In place of notes there were holes in the curtain, and through each of these a dusky face protruded. The show literally stopped traffic. For two days thousands of people crowded about the window. It might have gone on for weeks if the Humane Society hadn't got after me. Somebody discovered that my 'Hawaiians' were really little colored boys and girls under the legal working age. It was very upsetting, especially to the 'Hawaiians' --they had never had such a wonderful time and been paid for making faces to boot."

To me this sounds like a man who would not hesistate to take advantage of whatever came to mind to whip up public curiosity in the name of making a buck. I fully realize that words like "dusky" and "colored" were in common use at this time but still I am struck by his cavalier attitude. I was further struck that it happened to be a Hawaiian song because Morocco often compares Hula and its name and "image problem" to that of Oriental Dance.

Also Kharmine: you probably know this already but concerning the name "Barbary Coast" --this was the Red light district of SF at that time and the name actually comes from the name of the coast of North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt) where Arab pirates attacked Mediterranean ships. The name Barbary is derived from the Berbers which itself comes from Barbarian, although the majority of the Berbers lived simple, rural lifestyles. SF of 19th century is described as The Original Sin City with opium dens, prospectors gambling with gold dust, etc. So we already have the idea of the "exotic and depraved East" already in full sway in the town in which he grew up.

My readings suggest that this name arose because the saloonkeepers, shopkeepers, dance hall and bar girls all treated the sailors on shore leave much like the Barbary pirates e.g. overcharged them, stole from them, beat them up, shangahaied them etc. As far as I can tell the term "Barbary Coast" did not come into being until the late 1860s.

Lastly, in terms of primary source materials on the 1893 Columbian Expo, I know there are at least two repositories--one at the University of Iowa Library in Iowa City and the other in (unsurprisingly) Chicago.

Cathy

 

[Kharmine]

Hi, Cathy,

Yep, our Solly was a man of his time, and often didn't hesitate to play on the attitudes of his day. He shows more progressiveness elsewhere, but really not until he's older. His music company published a lot of "coon music" that was common for the day -- "Mammy songs" and whatnot.

Wait 'til you get to his tenure as the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee and the refusal of the U. S. government to allow in a great many more Jews from Europe who were in danger of being sent to concentration camps. Other than that the majority of the American public and President Roosevelt were very opposed to it, it's hard to see why Bloom, an Orthodox Jew who was pretty socially progressive for his time, would support that stand. I can read his words, but it's still not enough.

Herbert Asbury wrote a lot of entertaining history books and "the Barbary Coast" is excellent. It's still in print. I hadn't re-read it in years until recently. Whatta place! He also wrote a terrific book on New Orleans and "Gangs of New York," the book that inspired the movie of the same name that starred Leonardo DiCaprio.

Yes, the University of Chicago now sits where the Exposition was -- they kept the old Midway strip like a park. I'd like to see if they have anything interesting. I didn't know about Iowa -- that's kinda odd but intriguing.

I'm glad you're having fun with this -- I've always found real history to be a lot more colorful than what we got in school...

 

[Kharmine]

How about this for a different definition?

I've been mulling over what to call what I'm studying, because it's not quite American Cabaret and maybe about a couple of generations removed from Egyptian-style raqs sharqi.

My teacher focuses on classic and modern Egyptian belly dance, and has won recognition and awards from the Arab-American community for her "authentic" style. She is very knowledgeable about the differences between "cabaret" and "folkloric" and demonstrates them all the time without implying either is somehow "better" than the other. She also knows a great deal about other Middle Eastern dances such as the "trance dancing" of Morocco.

Still, she's from Chicago (her teacher was Dahlena, who learned from Middle Eastern dancers such as the Gamal sisters) and has a lot of experience dancing in ethnic-flavored nightclubs we could certainly call "cabarets" and dancing to a set choreography. I'm going to have to ask her what style she dances, but I'm pretty sure she just calls it "belly dance," and then makes the necessary distinctions when she's doing a particular style.

For me, I'm thinking maybe I could call the style I'm learning American raqs sharqi. I'll have to discuss that with her... :think:

 

[cathy]

trance rituals

Hi Kharmine

I wonder whether you would mind revealing the name of your teacher.

Also, small point: according to Morocco, Guedra, Zar, and Dervish are not properly called "dances" but should be called "trance rituals."

I have seen videos both of Guedra done by the Tuareg in Morocco (filmed by Morocco in the 1970s I think it was) and also of Morocco herself performing Guedra. She may be teaching Guedra in her weeklong seminar next year.

I just finished a weekend seminar with Raqia Hassan. She pointed out a few differences between folkloric and Oriental (her chosen term!) in terms of hand positioning and other stylizations.

Cathy

 

[Kharmine]

Cathy, I don' t mind as I've mentioned my teacher before. Her name is Natasha and this is her web site: Natasha - Authentic Middle Eastern Dance

Y'know, I respect Morocco , just some dance things have passed into a kind of shorthand in the U.S. that she doesnt' agree with. Like "belly dancing," she does not like "trance dancing" as a term.

I can see where she's coming from in both cases, but several belly dance sites have been referring to "trance dancing" for years so it tends to be a sort of catchall term for the Haadra and similar practices. No disrespect is intended. It kind of reminds me of what they call "liturgical dancing" in some churches.

 

[Aisha Azar]

Natasha

Dear Cathy,
I used to take workshops from Natasha Cargill 30 years ago. She has been around a long time and I was interested to see that she still is. I remember her being a little into the "spiritual" nature" of the dance.... and doing long, grueling warm ups!! She was one of the nice people in the dance world, which at the time could be every bit as competitive as now, maybe worse. I can't say that I thought her dance was truly representative of a specific style as far as "authentic" goes, but I do remember and use some really great arm and hand stuff she taught. This is, after all, 30 years later and she probably has learned much more than she knew back than, as we all have. I actually liked her teaching way better than Dahlena's. (I also used to take workshops from Dahlena at about that same time.)
Regards,
A'isha