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No
portion of this article may be reprinted without permission. Contact
Kajira for inquiries. This article is awaiting publication in
Zaghareet!
Magazine.
When
is a Bellydance style not Middle Eastern?
When it’s American!
The following article expresses the author’s opinion about
the dance form known as American Tribal Style (ATS) Bellydance.
This is the form from the West Coast of the United States whose
basic premise is synchronized group improvisation. This is not about
the choreographed forms also sometimes called “Tribal”
or about actual Tribal dances by indigenous people of any country.
I feel it is important to get the definition of the form out of
the way before beginning any sort of dialogue.
American Tribal Style Bellydance isn’t exactly Middle Eastern
and has never pretended to be. Some say that since it’s not
Middle Eastern, perhaps it isn’t bellydance at all. Even though
ATS Bellydance has been around for about 20 years in its present
form, it still is considered a bastard stepchild.
America has seen its share of earlier Middle Eastern fusion bellydance
forms. These earlier fusions were no more representative of an actual
Middle Eastern dance than ATS is. The history of bellydance in the
U.S. tells us the earlier dancers here learned from everyone they
could, whether they be Arabs, Egyptians, Armenians or, most commonly
in the beginning in America, Turks. These early American dance pioneers
then pieced together what they learned from all their sources with
what went over best for the nightclubs that were their primary venues
at the time.
Even
the musicians, who were most often Middle Eastern themselves (so
should have “known better,” one might think) played music
from various MidEastern countries all in one set. I think the reason
they did this was not out of ignorance but out of what the audience
wanted. It made a good show for Americans and everyone got paid
at the end of the night.
Things were - and are - different here than there. For example,
it was common to enter to an Egyptian beledi or maksoum rhythm,
then do veil work (also not Middle Eastern in origin) to a bolero
or rhumba, segway into a short fast section of even time signature
and then slow it back down for a sensuous floorwork section, usually
done to a slow Arabic-style chiftetelli (not to be confused with
the fast Turkish style tsiftetelli!). This would be followed by
a drum solo and the finale would often be a Turkish karsilama. Talk
about a 30-minute tour of the countries surrounding the Mediterranean!
No wonder the early American dancers and audiences didn’t know
any better. But from this wonderful, innocent beginning came what
is now called Classical American Bellydance, or American Cabaret
Style.
One
of the by-products of this form that has spread to some Middle Eastern
countries (yes, the sharing and fusing travels both ways) is elaborate
veil work, which was born here in the U.S.. Some dancers in Turkey
and Lebanon will dance to an entire song using a veil like we can
do here. One could argue that even the traditional modern Egyptian
raks al sharki entrance, done with a veil, wasn’t even present
in earlier Egyptian solo dances, but was added after American dancers
created veilwork as a high art.
Another import from the West into the East is costuming. The now-traditional
bra-and-belt set popular with Middle Eastern dancers in all countries
is, in fact, not Middle Eastern at all. After Ballet Russe had fun
with Eastern-influenced ballet costumes, and Mata Hari had won the
hearts of many in Europe, Hollywood stepped in. The film makers
hired famous Egyptian dancers such as Samia and Nadia Gamal and
took them out of their assuit folkloric dresses and put them into
the Western idea of exciting and titillating costuming - that showed
some flesh. Eager to seem progressive and adopt all things Western,
the American bra-and-belt set made its way into “traditional”
Middle Eastern dance.
Back to America: After a decade or so of performing the fusion that
would become known as Classical American Style Bellydance, people
began learning more about actual Middle Eastern dances and noticed
that they were different in the various countries, not mixed up
like in the U.S.. More and more Americans went “over there”
to study and research. Soon we had developed our own “purists”
- folks dedicated to preserving the form as it is done in the country
of origin. This could be important work to many people, even though
by the time the dance preservationists got to the dances, they of
course had been changed with every generation through time. This
happened at ever increasing speed with continuing contact with the
Western world. Even so, our preservationists are preserving a recent
moment in time in dance, and that could be important to future generations.
Perhaps born of these scholarly and well-intentioned beginnings,
some people who have dedicated themselves to preserving that moment
in time in a dance form of their choosing, whether it be Egyptian
dance or another form, seem to feel that theirs is the only form
of dance that has a right to exist. I think they’d like to
think theirs is the only “authentic” form.
One of the most commonly dismissed forms, as we have seen, is American
Tribal Style (ATS) Bellydance. As carefully titled as it is constructed,
this form may be threatening to some because of its popularity and
its unapologetic nature. How could we just “make it up?”,
they must wonder. In order to continue my work of bridging gaps
in the dance community that transcend stylistic preferences and
get down to celebrating one another’s strengths, I’ll
tell you.
We “make it up” out of actual Middle Eastern dance movements.
Not from a particular country, though Egyptian folkloric and Turkish
moves seem to lend themselves to adaptation most readily. We also
can borrow from India, Persia, Central Asia, Spain and anywhere
along the Romany Trail, much like all bellydance styles can. One
clue as to why we adhere to our eclectic approach is in the origins
of our style, whose roots are in the Jamila Salimpour belly dance
format. You may be aware that Jamila pioneered some of the first
strong group fusion forms that combined many styles of Middle Eastern
Dance into one show - to amaze and entertain American audiences.
In this respect, today’s American Tribal Style is no different.
I feel that even though it is not a representation of any particular
Middle Eastern dance, it is a representation of one possible fun
and entertaining result of fusing MidEastern forms. It is not the
first nor the last to do so. It has as much right to be here as
any other carefully constructed fusion form from jazz to American
Cabaret Style. It may not be Middle Eastern, but it certainly is
Bellydance!
Which brings even more ideas to mind. As controversial as this may
seem at first, I feel strongly that most Bellydance is no longer
Middle Eastern dance. After all, it’s done more in every other
country in the world now than in the countries of the Middle East!
I’d be willing to wager there are many, many, many more people
bellydancing outside the MidEast than in it! I’d even go so
far as to say I think it’s been this way for years. I feel
it’s important to recognize that not all forms of “belly
dance” can be called “Middle Eastern” anymore.
After all, every single country in the world is teeming with bellydancers,
thank goodness! For if it weren’t so, the art form would have
disappeared long ago due to religious fundamentalism especially
in Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Egypt, where the study and performance
of dance and music has been either discouraged or outright banned.
In closing, I feel we should all celebrate our differences and our
commonalities. We are all related throughout the entire world if
we dance any form of Bellydance, whether it be Middle Eastern or
not. We are keeping the form alive in some manner outside its countries
of origin, and that in itself should be applauded. This dance form
persists because of its all-inclusive nature. In my opinion, it
belongs to no one and to no place. We who dance it are merely keepers
of an ancient flame that ties us all together in the freedom to
celebrate the melding of body, mind and spirit that keeps Bellydance
so alive and vibrant, and so threatening to those in the countries
that have banned it.
After
all, it makes perfect sense that the world’s oldest documented
dance form began before there was an area known as the Middle East.
It’s befitting it should continue far into the future, past
the artificial borders and boundaries we’ve created, and into
a future where we are no longer separated by where we live, but
to when we are all simply citizens of the planet Earth.
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