History of Belly Dance

[Reen.Blom]

My dad has an Iraqi friend who said that about me dancing. Just goes to show our different cultural backgrounds and the different contexts we see dancing in.



i dont understand your statement...what is sad and what is shameful

so it was said she should only be dancing for her husband, why is this type of modesty shameful...

Charity,

I do not find it shameful to dance for own husband. But when I hear statements of this sort, I get really sad, because it implies that belly dance is not a dignified dance, fit for everyone to watch. It implies that belly dance is immodest, overly-provocative and even indecent. I do not believe that such statement does honour to the dance, as it should not be equalled with say strip dancing.

Is belly dance immodest? Would it degrade a woman to perform in public?

I see nothing wrong with individuals choosing to only perform for their husbands or close family.

But to imply that it should NOT be does otherwise and not ever in public? This IS degrading. The ppl I heard that statement from, have an image of bellydance as "men-only" entertainment something indecent that a respectable women would never do. So what does that statement make us all on the forum that choose to dance outside ones bedroom? "Immodest"... I assume...

 

[Aniseteph]

As penance for having diverted the thread earlier (think it was this one, diffficult to tell, I do it so much :redface I have found some info on presentation of "belly dance" at early World's Fairs.

Displaying the Orient mostly starting on page 24.

OK the use of the term belly dance is the author's, but lots of references (including contemporary ones) to follow up if that is your thing. I'm not sure he's right about the props though: swords and mirrors are "authentic" cos they were seen in Paris in 1889, but others seen in 1900 (glasses, narghile, candelabra, and that oh-so-elegant one, the chair ) are down to the influence of the Parisian dance scene? Hmmmmm.....

 

[Kharmine]

Wow, that's seriously interesting, A!

I think it's amusing the people who put on these events thought they were giving people an authentic look at the Muslim world, given that so many of the people imported to look authentic were actually Jewish!

And even Sol Bloom, who had never been outside the U.S. and had only a day of public school education, didn't believe the "Algerian Village" at the Paris Exposition was anything like the real thing because it was so theatrical, so I wonder just how "educational" this really was.

 

[Aisha Azar]

History

As penance for having diverted the thread earlier (think it was this one, diffficult to tell, I do it so much :redface I have found some info on presentation of "belly dance" at early World's Fairs.

Displaying the Orient mostly starting on page 24.

OK the use of the term belly dance is the author's, but lots of references (including contemporary ones) to follow up if that is your thing. I'm not sure he's right about the props though: swords and mirrors are "authentic" cos they were seen in Paris in 1889, but others seen in 1900 (glasses, narghile, candelabra, and that oh-so-elegant one, the chair ) are down to the influence of the Parisian dance scene? Hmmmmm.....

Dear Aniseteph,
Very interesting indeed, considering that they actually mention how bogus anthropology was and several other very nice references to the effects of enthnocentricity on the entertainments presented and the attitudes that were perpetuated. (I see this same attitude perpetuated today when people try to make up a history for the dance, or try to say that this or that off-shoot is "belly dance". It's Manifest Destiny on a smaller scale, but with the same result... to wipe out the cultural connection, and therefore destroy something of cultural meaning to another group of people.) The thing that most dancers will automatically leave out when looking at this info is that there was not a belly dancer among any of those photos or the info. They were all Ghawazi or other folkloric dancers, even those posed photos where they pretended that the dancers were using some ridiculous prop or other for the sake of creating interest. Of course, dancers are still doing the same thing now, only at their own discretion and not because the owner of the club or exposition makes them.
Thanks for sharing this . It was really fun and shows just how much things have not changed!!
Regards,
A'isha

 

[Reen.Blom]

I was just thinking now.... It is really difficult reading the books and documents from the last century to decide what is genuine and what was theatrical.... Learning more about history and culture, one begins to identify those influences, like in this example 'the influences of Paris dance scene- strange props and stuff' but dont you think that those influences though we discard them as 'unauthentic' played a very important role in the forming of the dance as we know it now?

I asume that it is the same as with a langugage, there are purists who would like to see a language untouched by external influences, and there are those who embrace the colourful mixture...

I think moderation is good in both, but also both these attitudes should be present to balance each other...

 

[Reen.Blom]

Oh by the way, here is a link to more old books on middle east... I am quite curious to read them just to see the image of Egypt ppl had in those days....

Travelers in the Middle East Archive (TIMEA) Home

 

[Aisha Azar]

Hisdtory

I was just thinking now.... It is really difficult reading the books and documents from the last century to decide what is genuine and what was theatrical.... Learning more about history and culture, one begins to identify those influences, like in this example 'the influences of Paris dance scene- strange props and stuff' but dont you think that those influences though we discard them as 'unauthentic' played a very important role in the forming of the dance as we know it now?

I asume that it is the same as with a langugage, there are purists who would like to see a language untouched by external influences, and there are those who embrace the colourful mixture...

I think moderation is good in both, but also both these attitudes should be present to balance each other...

Dear Reen,
From my point of view, it would depend on a lot of different factors, one of them being what the dancers thought of themselves, and what they were told to do for notariaty, ( how in heck is that word spelled???), how much it changed the purpose and nature of the original dance, etc. How much of the original essence of the dance was left? How did the dancers feel about it? Nothing is cut and dried when it comes to history. There is a fabulous book about how to look at history that could apply here. It's called "After the fact: the art of historical detection", by J. W. Davidson and M. H. Lytle, published in 2000 by McGraw Hill, ISBN 0-07-229426-4. This book is REALLY valuable in showing us the tricks that have been used for ever to make us think of events, people, things, in certain ways. One of my favorite statements in the book is, "History is not 'what happened in the past'; rather it is the act of selecting, analyzing and writing about the past." Spin Doctors have been around since the beginning of recorded history!! Some of the subjects covered in this book are:
* The problem of selecting evidence.
*Perspectives of evidence in social history ( of which belly dance is a part).
*Strategies of documentary analysis
* Truth and photographic evidence
* Mass media and female images in the 1950s

Regards,
A'isha

 

[Kharmine]

When I was doing research on the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition I came across several articles of the time that contrasted the dancers from the Middle East to the so-called "Persian Theater" dancers.

It was interesting that several people noted that the authentic Middle Eastern dancers were "wild" and sensual, but the Frenchwomen pretending to be Persian were the ones considered downright morally degenerate because they were so blatantly out only for male attention. The French term "danse du ventre" was commonly applied to the Middle Eastern dancers, but not as regards the fake Persian girls.

At least some people were intelligent enough to make the distinction between folk dance and early hoochie coochie.

 

[Mike McClure]

I'm new but I'm going to just jump in. If you are looking for academic history of belly dancing I found two sources: a 1995 dissertation, Lori Salem "The Most Indecent Thing Imaginable" Sexuality, Race And The Image Of Arabs In American Entertainment, that traces Egyptian dancing on the American stage back to 1849; and Zeynep Celik and Leila Kinney "Ethnography and Exhibitionism at the Exposition Universelles" Assemblage, #13 (December 1990), pp.35-59. There is also some new information on Little Egypt that I summarized in my last post.
Mike

 

[Tarik Sultan]

I'm new but I'm going to just jump in. If you are looking for academic history of belly dancing I found two sources: a 1995 dissertation, Lori Salem "The Most Indecent Thing Imaginable" Sexuality, Race And The Image Of Arabs In American Entertainment, that traces Egyptian dancing on the American stage back to 1849; and Zeynep Celik and Leila Kinney "Ethnography and Exhibitionism at the Exposition Universelles" Assemblage, #13 (December 1990), pp.35-59. There is also some new information on Little Egypt that I summarized in my last post.
Mike

Looks interesting. I'll take a look into it in the morning. My computer's acting up and it won't acces the page with the info on it.