You can look them up on YouTube instead. Just do a search for “America’s Got Talent” and ”Mayyas”, it should be the first result.Its a link to facebook...
Very interesting. EXTREEEEEEEEMLY tight choreo - very impressive. They all looked alike!
I watched the first clip all the way through and picked at a few more but I got too angry and bored to watch the rest. Here are my ranting thoughts--and if you thought these dancers were the bee's knees, you'll probably be happier if you skip the rest of this post:
1. Do the Mayyas ever do any actual belly dancing or just lots of these Bollywood arm tableaus with a little Shakira sprinkled in?
3. How many times is this troupe going to do this show? They've already been on "Arabs Got Talent" (which they won in 2019*) and "Britain's Got Talent" (as Champions). Is Simon Cowell getting a kickback from them?
4. And how much is he paying the other judges to "Ooh!” and "Aah!" over a very small set of skills that, while certainly took a lot of practice to do well, wears thin pretty quickly. How many times can you go, "Oh, look, it's an eye!" with gleeful surprise? "I've never seen anything like this...except for every other performance of yours where you did this!"
6. Remember when the dance community was bemoaning Sadie and Kaya on AGT? "Non-native audiences are never going to learn to appreciate Tarab and the nuanced artistry of real raqs sharqi if all they ever see is the dialed-up-to-11, Charo 'cuchi-cuchi-cuchi' style!"
But, hey, I fell down this rabbit hole today https://escholarship.org/uc/item/40w3m8tx and I think what Maha Afra Haddad is describing as
"Chmalieh" on page 31 is what the National Arab-American Museum teaches as their dabka version, so that's something...
Its not a personal slight anytime someone brings up appropriation, and for all i know, they did not want it to be associated with belly dance, but due to the manipulations of the media it could literally be the medias fault. Also its far, not middle or near, sadly those two vastly different cultures have been lumped together since colonialization. Also, I'm not aiming this at you rather at the labelling of the media.Goodness, I had no idea a simple video would lead to such a vehement flapdoodle. I posted the video here not because I believe it represents belly dance, but because the sub-forum is for Dances from or inspired by the Near or Middle East.
Mayya appears to be composed of Arab women with a theatrical background who formed a troupe to pursue creative eclectic dance rather than any form of traditional Middle Eastern dance. The identical costumes, wigs, and face-obscuring veils were likely meant to add to the uniformity of the presentation rather than to indulge in orientalist stereotypes.
Kids emulating or being inspired by things they see is not the problem, they're innocent and don't know the adult world (thank heavens). Adults, however, should know better and when you know better, you do better. Again none of this is aimed at you as a person, its at the very adult people who would be labelling this to what it is.For heaven's sake, we stood in line and made up what we called peacock dances to entertain ourselves when I was in grade school in south Texas, never having heard of Bali or Thailand. If a bunch of eight year old girls could come up with the concept, one would suspect other folks have as well.
Goodness, I had no idea a simple video would lead to such a vehement flapdoodle. I posted the video here not because I believe it represents belly dance, but because the sub-forum is for Dances from or inspired by the Near or Middle East.
Mayya appears to be composed of Arab women with a theatrical background who formed a troupe to pursue creative eclectic dance rather than any form of traditional Middle Eastern dance. The identical costumes, wigs, and face-obscuring veils were likely meant to add to the uniformity of the presentation rather than to indulge in orientalist stereotypes. Accusing Mayya of cultural appropriation is likewise unfair. For heaven's sake, we stood in line and made up what we called peacock dances to entertain ourselves when I was in grade school in south Texas, never having heard of Bali or Thailand. If a bunch of eight year old girls could come up with the concept, one would suspect other folks have as well.
Re: labeling each influence: some people delight in picking apart eclectic dances for what might have been borrowed or flat out stolen from more established dance disciplines. That's fine, but dance is not a box of cereal that requires a list of ingredients on the side. Sometimes it's nice to just enjoy a performance without dissecting it into little pieces and criticizing the dancer for having the nerve to break the rules and combine music heard as a child with the beauty of a gesture made in a contra dance and a ballerina's arabesque. As long as s/he isn't trying to pass off the results as authentic tsiftitelli or fancy shawl dance, do the ingredients really matter?