Who knows what the different types of belly dance are?

[Cassidhe]

Wow - TribalDancer, thanks for sharing all of that information with us. Don't worry about how long it was - I read it all and was fascinated.

maria harlequin - I love the vintage Jamila footage, especially the part where they're being taught the Turkish drop and Aida Al Adawi's solo at the end. I too wish I could see more Bal Anat footage from that time - I'm really intrigued by belly dance at that time in the US for some reason.

I don't really want to get into whether or not ATS is belly dance or not, because honestly I haven't completely decided for myself what I think since I am still rather new to all of this. However, it seems that much of this debate arises because ATS (and tribal) has evolved too far away in many peoples' opinion from what is considered "true" belly dance. So, I'm probably not going to articulate this well, but whenever I read these debates on this forum (as a long time lurker) it always brings to mind various comparisons, and of course, many people have already made some excellent ones.

The first one it brings to mind is language. I'll use English as an example. English spoken way back in say, 1400, would most certainly be unrecognizable to me if I time-traveled back to that year. Yet, it is still considered English. Just like British English, American English, Australian English, etc. are all spoken differently, and at times may have totally different words for the same thing, and at times we may not even understand each other even thought we are technically speaking the same language. And of course occasionally English borrows words from other languages and uses them as its own. And all of it falls under English (although I do realize that a language may diverge into two at some point), even though within it there are other headings such as "Old English," "Middle English," etc. It is a continually evolving language - an example would be how "old" words are removed and new words are added to English dictionaries. When it stops evolving it will be a dead language. That is one thing I remember from a linguistics class I took - living languages evolve, and I imagine it is very similar with dance. While it is being danced as part of our modern culture it will continue to change and that doesn't necessarily mean it is not belly dance (or that it is). That all said, I also think it is important to document how it (language, dance, etc.) was even as we go about changing it.

My second comparison has to do with rock 'n roll music - but after how much I just wrote, I think I'll leave that one for another time.

TribalBellieNE - I don't think you're a "knowledgeless hippy." I have noticed that people get very heated over the "great belly dance debate" but everyone is entitled to an opinion.

 

[maria_harlequin]

The first one it brings to mind is language. I'll use English as an example. English spoken way back in say, 1400, would most certainly be unrecognizable to me if I time-traveled back to that year. Yet, it is still considered English. Just like British English, American English, Australian English, etc. are all spoken differently, and at times may have totally different words for the same thing, and at times we may not even understand each other even thought we are technically speaking the same language. And of course occasionally English borrows words from other languages and uses them as its own. And all of it falls under English (although I do realize that a language may diverge into two at some point), even though within it there are other headings such as "Old English," "Middle English," etc. It is a continually evolving language - an example would be how "old" words are removed and new words are added to English dictionaries. When it stops evolving it will be a dead language. That is one thing I remember from a linguistics class I took - living languages evolve, and I imagine it is very similar with dance. While it is being danced as part of our modern culture it will continue to change and that doesn't necessarily mean it is not belly dance (or that it is). That all said, I also think it is important to document how it (language, dance, etc.) was even as we go about changing it.

I totally agree with you. Even though it has evolved, it's still English. Belly dance has evolved throughout the years too and it is still belly dance...which is what I meant by if you look at the dancers in Egypt during the Golden era compared to the dancers now. But evolving belly dance doesn't mean the evolution involves doing hip drops to Pentaphobe while swinging fire poi. The cultural context still has to be there.

Here's an example:

Evolution from this:



To this or this:





But not this. I'm not saying it's not a legitimate art form and I LOVE fusion but I do not consider it a part of belly dance evolution or belly dance:

 

[TribalDancer]

What an interesting choice for your "not bellydance" example. Can you elaborate on why a little more? Is it the music? If she danced to something else, would you feel differently?

 

[Sita]

What an interesting choice for your "not bellydance" example. Can you elaborate on why a little more? Is it the music? If she danced to something else, would you feel differently?

hhmmm.. I did find that Gothic bellydance dvd odd in that it featured quite a few dancers I have always considered more 'cabaret'(for lack of a different word) like Blanca. Although, in saying that, I do not like her focus on narrative/storytelling in her dance generally and find that aspect troubling and not a feature of the artform that is bellydance.
As for that particular video - I wouldn't know what to call it; at times the still shapes and lines she made with her body reminded me of something from Riverdance. So I'm not sure bellydance or Tribal or any label other than 'interpretive dance', 'general fusion', or 'theatrical' really fit for me.
However that's my opinion, anyone feel free to disagree.

I am interested in your own thoughts on that performance TribalDancer as I wondered when I watched the dvd how it would appear from a Tribal perspective... or maybe this is the start of triberat as a dance style j/k

Also I wondered are Tribal fusion dancers who have no ATS/ITS background very different and noticeable from those that do?
Sita

 

[Aniseteph]

I totally agree with you. Even though it has evolved, it's still English. Belly dance has evolved throughout the years too and it is still belly dance...which is what I meant by if you look at the dancers in Egypt during the Golden era compared to the dancers now. But evolving belly dance doesn't mean the evolution involves doing hip drops to Pentaphobe while swinging fire poi. The cultural context still has to be there.

Hmmm.... does that make hip drops to Pentaphobe while swinging fire poi the equivalent of those random Engrish slogans on T-shirts - the words might be English, the effect to another Japanese student might be super cool, but it's really not English.

 

[maria_harlequin]

What an interesting choice for your "not bellydance" example. Can you elaborate on why a little more? Is it the music? If she danced to something else, would you feel differently?

The music is definitely a big part. While I love Corvus Corax and have performed fusion pieces to it, using western Medieval-inspired music instead of Middle Eastern music doesn't make it belly dance for me. Next would be the overall essence and feeling of the performance - the emotions she is portraying is not something you associate with belly dance. It's powerful and warrior-like, which I'm sure is what she's going for and it goes with the music. Also, a lot of her movements are modern dance and jazz based. The body isolations, hip drops, and shimmies are there but that doesn't make it belly dance either - the very same movements can be seen in dances worldwide including Congolese, Afro-Carribean, Hula...

 

[maria_harlequin]

Hmmm.... does that make hip drops to Pentaphobe while swinging fire poi the equivalent of those random Engrish slogans on T-shirts - the words might be English, the effect to another Japanese student might be super cool, but it's really not English.

I think it's a good comparison...

 

[lizaj]

I too love the music Corvus Corax and to dance to but I would say Blanca has gone a a step beyond belly dance and call it fusion. I like the music/performance/costume very much and don't see the example is devalued one iota by not being called belly dance. There may be belly dance moves there but you'll see those moves in other dances so because an isolated hip drop is incorporated we don't necessarily have a belly dance. Why is it so wrong to use the label fusion? I think we should claim fusion as a positive label. Clever and well danced fusion is just as entertaining.

 

[Sita]

I too love the music Corvus Corax and to dance to but I would say Blanca has gone a a step beyond belly dance and call it fusion. I like the music/performance/costume very much and don't see the example is devalued one iota by not being called belly dance. There may be belly dance moves there but you'll see those moves in other dances so because an isolated hip drop is incorporated we don't necessarily have a belly dance. Why is it so wrong to use the label fusion? I think we should claim fusion as a positive label. Clever and well danced fusion is just as entertaining.

I agree there is a real talent in being able to fuse two or more art forms and create something new - whether it be dance, music etc. I also think that fusion is as old as time - throughout the world there are various example of cultures meeting and fusing certain elements. So I don't see it as an act of 'evolution'(as I see often claimed) but one of 'creation'.

sita

 

[maria_harlequin]

I too love the music Corvus Corax and to dance to but I would say Blanca has gone a a step beyond belly dance and call it fusion. I like the music/performance/costume very much and don't see the example is devalued one iota by not being called belly dance. There may be belly dance moves there but you'll see those moves in other dances so because an isolated hip drop is incorporated we don't necessarily have a belly dance. Why is it so wrong to use the label fusion? I think we should claim fusion as a positive label. Clever and well danced fusion is just as entertaining.

Exactly...a lot of fusionists seem to think that their dance loses its value and merit even to a point where it becomes an insult when someone thinks that the current dance form they are pursuing shouldn't be labeled as "belly dance". I think it's incredibly silly.

 

[Amanda (was Aziyade)]

From what I understand from Jamila, back in the 50's, 60's, and 70's, the music for bellydance was largely 4/4. Musicians in the first clubs and restaurants here in the West were playing 4/4 for the large part, and the movies and soundtrack music was largely 4/4 ( not all, but primarily).

I totally respect (and love) Jamila as a recognized authority on Bay Area dance during the 50s. She ran a nightclub and rubbed shoulders with other dancers in the area every night.

That said, what happened in the Bay Area doesn't always describe what was going on in the rest of the country.

American bellydance music was primarily influenced by Turkish and Lebanese musicians, not Egyptian ones (apart from some notable exceptions, like Jodette, who was using Egyptian folk music in her classes and on her instructional album, and I'm sure Morocco was probably using more North African music than Turkish, but maybe she'll weigh in on this thread herself.)

If you look at the albums (LPs) released by popular nightclub musicians, you'll see the problem with Jamila's 4/4 theory. You'll hear 6/4 debkes, Persian-Turkish 6/8s, Algerian 6/8s, a LOT of 12s -- (it threw me to hear some Turkish bellydance music at first because I couldn't figure out the repeating 12) Greek 9s and 12s, Turkish and Egyptian folk 2/4s, and of course the 9/8 "karsilama."

New York musicians played different music than Michigan musicians who played different music from California musicians, although you certainly did have a lot of crossover. Everybody and their brother-in-law recorded Ya Mustafa and Ay Ya Zein, which are easy to play, easy to jam to, and yes largely a 4-beat rhythm, which is easy for both dancers and musicians to improv to, no matter what their cultural background.

The elaborate orchestrations we understand to be typical bellydance music today was not the primary music of that time.

Shareen el Safy suggests that this kind of music only became popular in the 80s, when more Egyptians came to the US. If you watch Egyptian movies, the sweeping orchestral arrangements were in use back in the black and white era. But even that is considered "old school" by Egyptians now.

There wasn't as much elaborate instrumentation to have to coincide movement with, so the movement itself was simpler.

I'm not sure that I would agree that the movement was simpler. Watch Mona Said break out an accordion balady dance if you want to see simple movement. But there was less, -- can I say "subtext" (?) in the more folk music. That music is less complex internally. It's meant for playing and dancing to, not contemplation. You don't go through the whole gamut of emotions when you dance to "Ay Ya Zein" -- at least not like when you dance to Tahtil Shibbak." Ya know?

The vocabulary which Jamila worked with and codified was learned from movies and from dancers of other ethnicities who came through the clubs she worked at (and owned) during this time.

I think Jamila's style, and what she described in the Danse Orientale manual, is very much what I would call the "social dance" style. It's much closer to the social/folk dancing you'll see at a real wedding or party. Like, the "Basic Egyptian" with the hip pivot is EXACTLY what I saw the Lebanese college students doing at the international fests. The style is certainly not like modern or classical Egyptian performance Raqs Sharqi at all, but I do think it's still a very valid (and fun) style to do.

Coming from "over there", we still see the marks of a simpler range of movement than what we understand of bellydance today. None of this layer this on top of this on top of this, now chasse to the edge of the stage and... This type of multi-layering really took off in the 80's through today, particularly with the influence of Suhaila, but I digress a little...

I agree that Suhaila is heavily responsible for the uber-technical layering look, and all that Jazz contraction/release stuff. Of course, this IS NOT what I understand belly dance to be, and it's one of the main issues I have with Suhaila's format, because my primary interest has been Egyptian style a la Mona Said and Sohair Zaki.

But I don't want to confuse "simplicity" with "lack of technical acrobatics." Mona and even Dina are SUPER simple. I don't think you can find a more simple dance than Egyptian balady. It's basically a few shapes and if there's a layer at all, it's the layered shimmy. But the depth of emotion that can be displayed through such deceptively simple movements is HUGE. I honestly don't think a thousand layers can compare to that. BUT that's a very personal opinion, and I know not everyone shares it.

I've seen Orit's "Nebtidi" and Suhaila's "Nebtidi" to very similar arrangements of that same song. Orit's intepretation makes me cry at the beauty of power of that music, and how she picks out just that one little thing, that one little element of the music to illustrate, that maybe I might have disregarded otherwise, and watching her dance is practically like being brought to the brink of orgasm (Not to be crude.) Suhaila's interpretation is very technically brilliant, with loads of layers and a different part of the body moving to every little thing happening in the music ... but it leaves me cold. I can appreciate it academically, because I know how challenging that choreography is, but emotionally -- TO ME -- it's totally flat because it's trying to say everything at once.

I think this is the problem I have with a lot of American dancers, who are caught up in "layer frenzy." :/

Again, just a personal opinion, and I study with Suhaila long-distance, so it's not like I don't respect the technique.

Aziza once said "What we choose to acknowledge in the music and what we choose to disregard says a lot about us as dancers and as people." I meditate on that statement when I find a new piece of music I want to dance to.

(I deleted the other stuff I wrote originally because it didn't matter.)

 

[TribalDancer]

I always love your posts Aziyade!

I didn't mean to imply that Jamila represented all of American bellydance during those eras, but instead drawing the correlation that people don't argue that what she was doing, and those she was emulating, was bellydance (however Americanized), and it was from those roots that ATS sprung.

Thanks for your insights, as always!

 

[Sita]

I always love your posts Aziyade!

I didn't mean to imply that Jamila represented all of American bellydance during those eras, but instead drawing the correlation that people don't argue that what she was doing, and those she was emulating, was bellydance (however Americanized), and it was from those roots that ATS sprung.

Thanks for your insights, as always!

On this topic - I've always wondered how the ATS aesthetic evolved and what inspired it? did Jamila's work set the ball rolling in terms of looking for another aesthetic different from the 'cabaret' look as well?

Sita

 

[TribalDancer]

Divergence cabaret/tribal: intentional?

On this topic - I've always wondered how the ATS aesthetic evolved and what inspired it? did Jamila's work set the ball rolling in terms of looking for another aesthetic different from the 'cabaret' look as well?

Sita

Not intentionally, as it is told. The dancers were the same dancers who performed in the nightclubs at night, using the same technique and stylings, just in different costuming at a very different venue.

For instance, the live music at the faire was very drum heavy--it had to be in order to be heard unamplified. So it was much like what we recognize as "tribal" music today--drum and mizmar heavy, with not many "lighter" instruments. The musicians at the faire then were less skilled--some were simply pick up musicians who had not really trained in the instruments. The nightclub musicians apparently came one weekend at the beginning and wouldn't go back because not only was it dusty and hot, but their instruments were drowned out by the drums and they were not allowed to use any amplification. So Jamila was forced to catch as catch can with musicians, handing instruments off to faire vendors who were willing to give it a go. The music was necessarily very simple and repetitive, as they were mostly untrained, no rehearsal, and differed from one week to the next.

Comparatively, in the nightclubs at night the dancers had different musicians with the use of different instruments. And of course the two venues couldn't be more different: sunny weekend days on a dusty wooden stage dancing for mostly American audiences with mixed adults and children, a theatrical/character-driven focus, two or three half hour shows a day; versus a smoky nightclub in the evening, adults only, with dinner and drinks and a large Middle Eastern population. As you might imagine, this would inform the way the dancers would regularly dance in each venue. And if some dancers began to favor the ren faire life, and others were more drawn to the nightclub, and their dancing and costuming was informed by the music and venue, you can begin to see where the paths diverged right there, can't you?

So from what I understand, it was less a conscious choice and more a natural progression based on two different venues, audiences, and musical styles; but both from the same root style and instructor.

 

[Corylus]

I agree that Suhaila is heavily responsible for the uber-technical layering look, and all that Jazz contraction/release stuff. Of course, this IS NOT what I understand belly dance to be, and it's one of the main issues I have with Suhaila's format, because my primary interest has been Egyptian style a la Mona Said and Sohair Zaki.

But I don't want to confuse "simplicity" with "lack of technical acrobatics." Mona and even Dina are SUPER simple. I don't think you can find a more simple dance than Egyptian balady. It's basically a few shapes and if there's a layer at all, it's the layered shimmy. But the depth of emotion that can be displayed through such deceptively simple movements is HUGE. I honestly don't think a thousand layers can compare to that. BUT that's a very personal opinion, and I know not everyone shares it.

I share this opinion.

After watching a few videos of Dina I was amazed by her simplicity but, in my opinion, this didn't make her any less interesting or exciting. To me she is more enjoyable than watching a dancer who use lots of technical layering but conveys little feeling. I would much prefer an emotional heart wrenching dance involving a few moves to a soul-less dance involving lots of different moves.

 

[lizaj]

Belly dance has evolved from many folk and country dances originating in the Middle East.

Majority of US dancers are learning American Tribal or Fusion.

And other part of the world, dancers learn Turkish, Egyptian or Oriental.
__________________
Amanda

http://www.dancerz.com/amanda

Your post is most confusing to those trying the learn about this dance. The situation is far less simplistic. For example many non-Americans learn ATS and fusion. Can you point to statistics that show that tribal and fusion is now the most prevelant style in the US and not various styles of orientale.

 

[Daimona]

Majority of US dancers are learning American Tribal or Fusion.
And other part of the world, dancers learn Turkish, Egyptian or Oriental.

I would love to see some statistics or references on this too..
And how do you define Turkish, Egyptian and Oriental?

 

[BellyDanceCity]

Styles....

Check this link....

Good Luck!

 

[Mosaic]

Check this link....

Good Luck!

Your link doesn't have anything to do with the topic so has been removed. Please stay on topic, we are interested to know what members think, not just see links posted that add nothing to the topic.
~Mosaic

 

[alairauston]

These are the different type of belly dance.
Beladi is Egyptian for country or folk dance
Saidi hails from the folk traditions of Upper Egypt.
Ghawazee has cropped up from Egyptian Gypsy dances.
Karsilama is a Turkish dance, which is also popular in Greece.


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