Aisha Azar
New member
Danse etc.
Dear Andrea,
Dear Andrea,
A'isha, I agree 100%. Maybe a more specific word than "revision" would be "recension" meaning a whole new version of something -- though you probably don't like the word version, but "whole new" is the central idea and the shared movement base and cultural filter are pretty important! I don't mean to detract at all from the original art raqs sharqi became.
A'isha writes-
While I do agree technically that it is a "version" of pelvic movement based dances that have come out of the Middle East and North Africa. I do not like to put it that way for one reason. People who do not have a really good education in this dance form, then assume that dances that may have preceded Raqs Sharghi and Oriental Tanzi are just like them, and that there is such thing as "ancient belly dance" and it looked just like what we see today. I think if we are going to clearly define the dance for the public, different terminology might be part of the key to that. I like the idea of referring to the older dances as Pelvis and Hip based dances and leaving "belly" out of the mix, but only because of the need to clarify for our students and audiences.
I also agree that movement base and cultural filter are not only important, but the cultural attribute is the very heart of the dance!! However, the other influences, especially in the case of Raqs Sharghi, were a very far step from the dances that came before it, and it became something new and different. I am in no way denigrating their importance!
On the other hand, I also don't think that the dance was static before the 20th century, then suddenly it changed. I think it was and is always in flux, and that the movement base and cultural filters fluctuate gradually over time as well.
A'isha writes- I agree. Nothing stands still.
So I see raqs sharqi as a new offshoot of something that has been around *in many forms* for a long time. It may be the *most* deviant from the center stream of the tradition (or not), but I think that the seeds of it are there in the base phenomenon all along, and that across time other forms of the dance have developed from the same tradition. For example: the theatrical dances of the companies of Turkish cengis facilitated by the urban, economic, and cultural aspects of the Ottoman empire, and also, I think, danse du ventre in the late 19th-early 20th centuries, which was (I think) a phenomenon with specific attributes and not "just" tradition.
A'isha writes_ I agree with the above also, but I still think that when we discuss the dance with our students and the general public, we need to clarify our meanings much more than when we are talking to seasoned dancers, which is why I use the wording that I do. The development of Raqs sharghi and Oriental tanzi are so variant from other forms in even posture and presentation that this evolution in the dance actually transformed hip and pelvis based dance forms into something else. the posture, the attitude, etc, all were something very new and very different.
I wish I could prove ( in the academic sense) that the dance underwent this transformation by linking it to the sociological/psychological changes that took place due to the Industrial (read that as service in Egypt) Revolution coming to North Africa. It is as plain as the nose on a good Middle Eastern face, but nonetheless, I do not find any writings on it. I discovered the link through sitting around reading too many textbooks!!
Regards,
A'isha
Now if only I could prove it ...
Joy in dance,
Andrea
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