Do Burlesque and belly dance mix?

[Caroline_afifi]

I do think that it CAN be empowering.

Before I went on a burly workshop, I had become too ashamed of my body to get changed in communal changing rooms and to take my son swimming. The way that the burlesque workshop helped me be more confident is difficult to describe: Yes, bluntly, it is taking your clothes off and there doesn't seem to be much empowering about that.

But for me, and a few other women on the workshop, it was about being able to take your clothes off in front of WOMEN and not feel intimidated, not men.

Ali x

Ok, it was a tool of empowerment in a personal development type way, but as an artform in general explain it to me?

Women have been removing their clothes for a very long time now. The Western world is surrounded by nudity everywhere we go. So what is new or different about Burlesque? what does it offer as an artform?

 

[AliX]

To be sure, it's not all about empowerment

Burlesque, historically, was used to poke fun or satirize the issues of the day. However, most modern burlesque acts are not satirical. The acts that I've seen range from the bawdy vaudevillian type of entertainment, through to exquisite ballet-inspired fan dancing.

The nudity need only be as far as the performer wants to go - Dita Von Teese, for example, often puts ON an item of clothing as she disrobes. For men watching it will probably be about the (partial) nudity. For the women watching (and the female audience for burlesque in the UK is larger than the male audience, proportionally speaking) it's more about the costumes, the choreography of the routine, the humour, the skill involved in execution...the overall entertainment value, really.

I have a friend who ends up as a Dalek at the end of one routine!

What does it offer, as an artform? I'm not sure whether all art has to have a valid 'reason for being' kind of thing. Is the creation process, the performance, the viewing and enjoyment processes of art enough in itself?

Ali x

 

[Kharis]

The nudity need only be as far as the performer wants to go - Dita Von Teese, for example, often puts ON an item of clothing as she disrobes. For men watching it will probably be about the (partial) nudity. For the women watching (and the female audience for burlesque in the UK is larger than the male audience, proportionally speaking) it's more about the costumes, the choreography of the routine, the humour, the skill involved in execution...the overall entertainment value, really.

Ali x

Most women want to feel that they are attractive - for themselves as much as for men. Some are naturally confident, some are not. But we all hold that common ground. The very fact that so many women are taking Burlesque classes speaks volumes. They do so because it makes them feel attractive, empowered, sexy and good about themselves. They are doing it for them.

I think that in a society that holds a beauty ethic most of us cannot aspire to, we women are left to find ways to make our own personal mark within ourselves for feeling empowered and attractive and special.

 

[Caroline_afifi]

Ok, so given that it is a popular pursuit, how does it relate to ME dance?

What is the relation?

 

[AliX]

Caroline - the only links that I can think of, in a historical dance capacity, would be a) Little Egypt Please forgive me - I'm new to this forum and to belly dancing I don't have much in the way of resources to draw upon.

b) I also have no desire to be disrespectful - but isn't the Dance of the Seven Veils a disrobing dance? So a link there? Burly dancers taking their slant on the Dance of the Seven Veils?

I'd happily watch a belly dancer at a Burlesque night.

Other than that, I could envisage a burlesque stripper (so many have dance backgrounds) incorporating bellydance moves.....but culturally, all I can think of is Little Egypt and the Dance of the Seven Veils.

If this performer (bringing it back to the thread topic originally LOL!) does both bellydancing and burlesque, quite separately. As long as she didn't perform burlesque when booked to do bellydancing, it ought not be a problem?

Ali x

 

[Caroline_afifi]

[

QUOTE=AliX;141552]Caroline - the only links that I can think of, in a historical dance capacity, would be a) Little Egypt Please forgive me - I'm new to this forum and to belly dancing I don't have much in the way of resources to draw upon.

Hi Ali and welcome

b) I also have no desire to be disrespectful - but isn't the Dance of the Seven Veils a disrobing dance? So a link there? Burly dancers taking their slant on the Dance of the Seven Veils?

The dance of the seven veils is a Western invention based on Middle Eastern fantasy.

I'd happily watch a belly dancer at a Burlesque night.

I would happily watch both, but the problem is the constant confusion caused by this. I have no issue with Burlesque and see it as having a similar funtion in society as the Egyptian nightclubs. The problem is the constant association with ME dance and Stripping, Burlesque adds to this scenario and has become part of the problem and not the solution.

Other than that, I could envisage a burlesque stripper (so many have dance backgrounds) incorporating bellydance moves.....but culturally, all I can think of is Little Egypt and the Dance of the Seven Veils.

Yes, many Western arts took from the ME in the early part of the last century. I featured this in theatre piece I wrote more than 10 years ago outlining how much the West drew on Eastern themes and developed them. The problem is, people now think they come from the East. It was only Eastern in terms of the imagined.

If this performer (bringing it back to the thread topic originally LOL!) does both bellydancing and burlesque, quite separately. As long as she didn't perform burlesque when booked to do bellydancing, it ought not be a problem?

Ali x

[/QUOTE]

The problem is only connected to the constant confusion experienced by many people. People constantly complain about being viewed as pieces of meat but we need to loook at how we can address that and what it is we do that exacerbates this situation.

 

[lizaj]

Ah the discussions on Little Egypt!
But that's to do with how dance developed in the USA.
The development of performance raqs Sharki in Egypt has no connection with Western Burlesque which actually predates Chicago so I'm told,

 

[lizaj]

I very much appreciate this idea of empowerment. Belly dance made me feel better about myself as a middle aged and un-fashionably shaped woman. I felt I was achieving and I could when performing actually approximate something like glamour.
However I do wonder if we can take this "feeling like a woman again" too far in performance and in so doing embarass and discomfort our audience. As a performer you're an entertainer.
Now if you want to explore/express your angst, image as a woman etc and you do that in private so be it...all power to you but if you platform yourself to an audience expecting to be entertained..mmmmmm
Sometomes we go to theatre to be shocked, to be thoughtful but most haflas,performance platforms are for our friends,family, work colleagues and they do not want to be covering their eyes.

 

[Amanda (was Aziyade)]

If this performer (bringing it back to the thread topic originally LOL!) does both bellydancing and burlesque, quite separately. As long as she didn't perform burlesque when booked to do bellydancing, it ought not be a problem?

Hiya Ali!

The performer herself may know the difference. The performer may be very well-educated on the nature and history of both belly dance and burly.

The audience will not.


It's a simple and sad-but-true fact. Most Americans already think bellydance is sleazy or it's used for "turning on" men. They think the fantasies Caroline mentioned are real. They think the Orientalist paintings were painted from life, and that the Turkish harems consisted of naked women lounging around a huge pool waiting for sex or to be fed grapes or whatever.


If your website or promotional material shows pictures of you doing burly and belly dancing, do you REALLY think that people are going to realize "Oh there's a big difference between these two dances, and she's a master of both of them" ? No, they're going to see belly dance as just another form of "stripping" -- and as empowering as that may be, it has no more to do with belly dancing than it has to do with tap dance, or learning Irish folk dances.


ALSO -- Burly, as you mentioned, is about making a statement, politically or socially. Belly dance is not about making statements or telling stories. It's about the dancer interpreting the music physically. That's it. It's a hard concept for people in the West to really "get" because it's not actually part of our dance tradition. We dance TO music, not inside of it. I was a ballet dancer for years and I never realized this until I started doing Egyptian dance. Ballet is NOT the visual representation of the music.

Ranya Renee is a member here, so I'm going to use her as an example. Look up her videos on Youtube. Pick one, and watch it with the sound off. You can SEE the music through her movement. You don't need to hear it -- you can see where the accents are, when the violin is playing and when it switches to accordion. You can even see the "mood" of the music in the emotional response her physical movement elicits. Western dance isn't about that, so it's unusual for us at first to think of dance in this fashion.

 

[Kharis]

Sometomes we go to theatre to be shocked, to be thoughtful but most haflas,performance platforms are for our friends,family, work colleagues and they do not want to be covering their eyes.

Judging from some of the increasingly skimpy BD costumes currently on offer, it's gonna have the same effect if it carries on or gets any worse. So Burlesque could well become indivisible from bellydance... at least in the costuming department. The old school costumes may have had splits in the skirts, but you rarely saw a leg lifted so high it flashed the crotch area.

Surely if bellydance is to be viewed as a respected art form and it's dancers not just 'pieces of meat', then such costumes need to be attacked in the same way and perhaps discarded as appropriate garments in which to portray the dance? Is it beneficial to the dance to have skirts split to the crotch, bare of belly, breasts and arms? Or should costuming for ME dance be more circumspect and show less of exposed flesh? Where do we draw the line, and realise that in fact, bellydance is very capable of reducing itself to the lowest common denominator all on it's own. I recently watched some footage of a well known Egyptian dancer, in skimpy lycra and if that woman flashed her gusset once, she flashed it a dozen times! In one piece she lifted her skirt and revealed her lycra shorts complete with camel hoof...lovely!!. What message does that convey? What other dance form includes that in the repertoire.... Burlesque perhaps? There are lots of dance forms that flash body parts... ballet included. But as has been pointed out, it's all about context and intention and perceptions.

I'm not a huge fan of Burlesque... it's not my personal choice of dance to perform. I find it amusing, and if well done, entertaining. I think all dance should be just that...entertaining. If it wasn't ultimately that... we would all perform it in private and not in public. And if that's the case, then Burlesque does have that in common with Bellydance.... a form of entertainment ( and gusset flashing.)

 

[Caroline_afifi]

There are so many dancers which share similarities in costume and movement... Brazillian, Poynesian, Latin American styles, Indian bla bla..

But what makes them unique and different?? culture.

They would all be well p****d if everyone lumped them all together in the same spicy exotic stew.

We seem to be good at not recognising individual cultures in the West, comparing them to our own and then throwing our flag over it and owning it.

It suits us to be able to do what we want, call everything what we want and then put people down for protesting.

I would enjoy a good Burlesque theatre show,and I can liken some aspects to what I watch in Egyptian clubs, but no way can I see them as the same or belonging together.

 

[Tracey]

only mine

Hi All

I one wish there was spell check here .....
Second with words I dont have problems with
I often go in fact every month to a tremendous Burlesque night which I love love love , in different aspects than my first love Egyptian Dance.
Why ..... not sure I love dressing up always have and did vintage for many of my formative years, I love the real real good acts as with Egyptian Dance, I endure the less polished less inventive . I cringe as last month when bless an ame took to the stage doing "bellydance seven veils etc etc"


no no no no no .........

the real question for myself is ,if I hadn't found my dance all those years ago would it be an issue ....answer I doubt it .
Should I leap on the stage as Egyptian Dance police woman ?
no .. why any women performer who commits in the way more Burlesque than Oriental dancers on a amateur stance commends my respect.

In the scene of Burlesque the discipline demands more in both rehearsal and costume and presentation than I see in many (not all) dance events here ,
I include myself in that last statement, improvisation is our saviour in moments ....

Respect Tracey

 

[lizaj]

I agree, Kharis that tasteful costuming is preferable especially if we want to portray that belly dance is something other than a pr*ck tease.
Of course some belly dancers are "teasers" in the lands of origin and the GP can be forgiven for not seeing what we see. We can play our part by looking classy and not sleazy.I don't think blurring the boundaries by teaching burley in belly dance classes is going to help one little bit.
Burlesque is itself in the same place. However little she wears to me Goddess Dita always looks good. Gypsy Rose made an art of teasing. To be a good Burlesqe performer you will need to learn how to do it properly, practise nd give thought to routines and look good.
Throwing off your clothes in front of an unprepared audience( as I recently saw on DVD) may be what you want to do as some sort of empowerment, it isn't nercessarily hat your audience wants to see. Go to a burley show and I'm not going to be phased by ladies being ultra-cheeky and taking off their clothes. (Neither will I if they keep 'em on) but at a belly dance show...er......

 

[Bellydance Oz]

I'm comfortable with a 'guest appearance' of a burlesque dance in a bellydance show - it... could provide an opportunity to (once again!) educate audiences about both bellydance AND burlesque being quite unlike stripping!

Adiemus, why do you say burlesque is unlike stripping?

I've seen several burlesque shows and I have no problem with women who enjoy performing that style - but it's undeniably stripping. All the shows I've seen have, at some point, involved the performer wearing nothing but a couple of pasties and a tiny triangle (how do they keep that on, by the way??).

I agree it's not like modern stripping - which is basically, get your kit off in the first minute then writhe around suggestively - but it's definitely the same as the strip-tease of twenty or thirty years ago.

That's the problem, really. If burlesque makes women feel empowered, that's great - and I'd quite like to give it a try myself! But I'm very conscious that it IS overtly sexual. Its whole purpose is to tease the men who are watching, saying "you can look but don't touch". And I'm also conscious that many in the belly dance community are anxious to emphasise that belly dance has nothing to do with that.

 

[Kharis]

Adiemus, why do you say burlesque is unlike stripping?

I've seen several burlesque shows and I have no problem with women who enjoy performing that style - but it's undeniably stripping. All the shows I've seen have, at some point, involved the performer wearing nothing but a couple of pasties and a tiny triangle (how do they keep that on, by the way??).

I agree it's not like modern stripping - which is basically, get your kit off in the first minute then writhe around suggestively - but it's definitely the same as the strip-tease of twenty or thirty years ago.

That's the problem, really. If burlesque makes women feel empowered, that's great - and I'd quite like to give it a try myself! But I'm very conscious that it IS overtly sexual. Its whole purpose is to tease the men who are watching, saying "you can look but don't touch". And I'm also conscious that many in the belly dance community are anxious to emphasise that belly dance has nothing to do with that.

Bellydance can be overtly sexual... it depends how it's done and who's doing it. And then we have the Dance of the 7 Veils, that delightfully teasing depiction of God Knows What.

 

[adiemus]

Adiemus, why do you say burlesque is unlike stripping?

I've seen several burlesque shows and I have no problem with women who enjoy performing that style - but it's undeniably stripping. All the shows I've seen have, at some point, involved the performer wearing nothing but a couple of pasties and a tiny triangle (how do they keep that on, by the way??).

I agree it's not like modern stripping - which is basically, get your kit off in the first minute then writhe around suggestively - but it's definitely the same as the strip-tease of twenty or thirty years ago.

Stripping today is completely about getting clothes off asap as you say. And that's where Burlesque differs because it's not always about removing clothing (although that's often a part of it) - here's a definition from Merriam Webster

Etymology: comic, droll, from French, Italian, 'burla' - joke
- a literary or dramatic work that seeks to ridicule by means of exaggeration or comic imitation
- mockery usually by caricature
- theatrical entertainment of a broadly humorous often earthy character, consisting of short turns, comic skits, and sometimes strip tease

This is the Encyclopedia Brittanica link

Burlesque can also be about comedy, parody, with that suggestive and earthy nature where rude jokes are fine!

To keep the pasties on, they use doublesided tape btw! But I do NOT know how they manage to swing the tassles in two directions. Mine I'm sure would only point to the floor in despair!

 

[adiemus]

I meant to say too, that a lot of belly dance undoubtedly has the 'look but don't touch' feel about it in the West. especially with a bedlah or tight-fitting dress!

 

[Kharis]

I meant to say too, that a lot of belly dance undoubtedly has the 'look but don't touch' feel about it in the West. especially with a bedlah or tight-fitting dress!

And what is 'Look but don't touch' but tease...

 

[adiemus]

hmmm. Let me think about this. Yes, in the main they are basically the same. Which is why the 'is the bra the problem' thread is so interesting.

But as I think about ballet, or even modern lyrical, which is incredibly 'do not touch' - and the costuming leaves very little to the imagination - I don't put ballet or modern dance into the 'tease' category.

(this is just one example, and pretty modest at that!)http://ux1.eiu.edu/~jkmcfarland/picts/moderndance.jpg

Is it something about the intention? Ballet/modern dance intends to show the body so the movements are visible and clothing isn't restrictive, so it's not really a 'tease'

...and in bellydance, many of the movements need clothing that allows them to be visible too - belly pops don't show so well in a Khaleeghi thobe. BUT this doesn't mean the dancer HAS to wear bra and belt or even skin-tight dress, that's a choice IMHO. So part of this 'tease' imagery is dancers wearing costuming that shows so much - but it's not essential to the dance itself to do so.

And hopefully, apart from unwrapping a veil, there is no undressing in bellydance - please!

 

[Kharis]

hmmm. Let me think about this. Yes, in the main they are basically the same. Which is why the 'is the bra the problem' thread is so interesting.

But as I think about ballet, or even modern lyrical, which is incredibly 'do not touch' - and the costuming leaves very little to the imagination - I don't put ballet or modern dance into the 'tease' category.!

Ballet doesn't lift up garments, or discard garments in a teasing way. It shows the legs and body right from the start in a way that reveals the body parts that are doing the work nothing more.