by Melody Gabrielle
What is bellydance? Where does it come from? What are its origins? These are the questions that every bellydancer and bellydance enthusiast thinks they know the answer to. There are many thoughts and opinions running around the bellydance world masquerading as facts. In actuality the answers to these questions are not so simple or concrete. They are very complex and quite 'mushy.' Contrary to traditional bellydance websites and articles, I do not claim to know the answers to these questions. I do have my own opinions which I will endeavor to present as such; however, most of what I will do in the following presentation on bellydance is pose new questions.
What is Bellydance?
The difficulty in this question lies in the assumption that there is some sort of authoritative definition of this dance. Words themselves are fluid and definitions become set by scholarly authorities and supposedly reflect the popular and scholarly usages of the words. Our primary education teaches us to rely on the authority of the dictionary to determine the meaning of words. Sometime in college, we are usually informed that it is no longer appropriate to cite dictionaries as authoritative sources in our writings. Why is this? Could it be that we have, at least temporarily, joined the ranks of scholars who do not rely on dictionary definitions but in turn form and write definitions? I think this is the reason.
So what does this teach us about the authority of definitions? It teaches us that regardless of the label "authoritative," definitions are still fluid, like words, to the authorities. This of course raises another interesting question. When it comes to bellydance who are the authorities?
There are a couple possible answers to this question. One is that scholars, i.e. college professors and researchers, are the authorities. They are of course the people who write definitions. The problem I see in this answer is that scholars can really only be called authoritative on subjects that they know well, and scholars with any knowledge of bellydance are few and far between. Scholarship in dance is even under-developed. So if we are looking to scholars right now to answer our questions for us, we are basically barking up the wrong tree. Another answer to this question is that bellydancers are the authorities. Of course the problem here is that bellydancers are not necessarily trained in the skills that enable them to think and write critically about a topic. There is also not a good system of peer-review in the belly dance community. Peer review is designed to be a check on personal bias and bad logic. Scholarship is certainly not perfect in this respect but at least they have a system.
So who makes the better authority, the scholar or the bellydancer? Dare I suggest a third option, a scholarly bellydancer. There are some bellydancers, Morrocco and Artemis for example, who are bellydancers who have investigated bellydance using a scholarly methodology. In my opinion we should invest bellydance authority in these writers, and writers like them who walk in both worlds. Just as a side note, we should not accept their claims blindly. Simply because they are authorities does not make them immune to mistake. Rather we should follow in their example of questioning and researching critically and those of us with the skills or education should act as a peer review.
So what does this all mean? The authoritative opinion on belly dance can not be seen by abbreviations like Ph.D. tacked on the ends of names. For the most part the authorities on bellydance have to be searched out by actually assessing the research of the writers themselves. Yes this makes things difficult, but its good for us. We probably rely too much on abbreviations at the end of people's names anyway and we would all do good to think critically more often.
So to get back to the original question, 'what is bellydance?' or 'what is the definition of belly dance?' I would like to submit my opinion that belly dance, as it is used colloquially, is a false category. By false category I mean that it describes a group of things that are not inherently linked and are not adequately summarized under the term belly dance.
The dictionary defines belly dance as an Oriental solo dance, performed by a woman with midriff exposed, emphasizing movements of the pelvis and abdominal muscles. There are some problems with this definition in terms of encompassing what we call bellydance under this category. To begin with the definition says it is Oriental. Perhaps what we call bellydance began as a dance in the Orient, but certainly now it has moved beyond the scope of a geographically bound dance. Dancers in America, Europe, and elsewhere have inherited this dance, and it has evolved into distinct variations within these cultures. Dancers in America often look to Oriental dancers of the past and present in attempts to maintain a connection with the "source" of the this dance; however, to say the dance is Oriental is to make some claim to its cultural authenticity which frankly American belly dancers can not do without dramatically changing the vocabulary of movement, props, and musical choices in American bellydance. We need to face it. Bellydance is not just Oriental anymore. I am not trying to excuse the dancer who does not have any cultural or historical knowledge of this dance. These are essentials to an accomplished dancer. It is also essential to anyone trying to dance for a Middle Eastern audience. It is equally essential for a bellydancer to realize that dances change and evolve and American style bellydance is an evolution from the original Oriental form. If one does not understand this then the American dancer has no justification for why we do things so differently in American, and/or it mis-represents the cultures of the Middle East. To return to the definition, it is also expressly stated that bellydance is a solo dance. This also does not encompass all of what we call bellydance. Again the dance was traditionally a solo dance, but it has been adapted to group setting now in both the United States and the Middle East. Additionally, American bellydancers tend include several middle eastern folk dances in their understanding of bellydance. Folk dances are almost never solo. The definition also says that the dance is performed by a woman. What about the male bellydancers either in a folk setting or on stage? Midriff exposed? Clearly the writers are unaware that it is illegal for dancers in Egyptian to show their midriff, and again this does not include the folk element, where women are covered, which American bellydancers usually still classify as bellydance.
So after we remove the problematic element of the definition what do we have left? A dance emphasizing movements of the pelvis and the abdominal muscles. This statement appears to be correct but entirely too broad and general. It no longer distinguished bellydance from hip hop, Polynesian, or East African dance. So how do we fix this problem? I don't have an answer to that question because I am not going to suggest a definition of bellydance that covers all that has been or could be called bellydance. Since I have suggested that there actually is no inherent connection between the things we call bellydance, I suggest we break the category down into more useful terms. I propose that we employ the term bellydance, without reference to culture, as a technique which emphasizes hip or torso movement in isolation or contrary to the movement of other body parts. This definition was actually used by scholar Curt Sachs, and others in the early 20th century to characterize a variety of ethnic dances from various cultures. This will of course allow Polynesian dance and East African dance and others to be incorporated under the term bellydance and will finally give some sort of authoritative credence to why so many bellydancers inherently feel there is a connection between Polynesian and other dances. Secondly I suggest that under this term bellydance, which notes a technique, we employ subcategories of bellydances. These bellydances would denote regional, ethnic, or other variations. Thus we would be talking about Oriental bellydance (or alternatively Turkish bellydance, Egyptian bellydance, Folkloric bellydance etc.) Polynesian bellydance, Americanized Oriental bellydance, American Tribal bellydance, Tribal Fusion belly dance, etc. I hold this opinion because I think this categorical change will give voice to the fact that bellydance is a technique, whether in performance arts or ethnic dance, and it will also force dancers to know and note what ethnographic and geographic variations they are performing.
What about other terms for Bellydance?
I have explained quite a bit about bellydance and about what the word itself means and what I feel is wrong with our current definitions. I am aware that many dancers perceiving these problems and other problems reject the usage of this word entirely. Dancers who reject the term entirely often cite the belief that the terms was coined by Sol Bloom at the Worlds Fair. The purpose of this terminology was to sensationalize the perceived sexuality of the ethnic dances performed at the fair. Many dancers feel that this is an insult to the cultures from which this dance comes and has given bellydance a reputation akin to the striptease which we have not overcome even in the present. These concerns are completely valid; however, the history of the term bellydance is more complex than this story relates. Belly dance is also a translation of the French term danse du ventre (see 'bellydance' entry www.etymonline.com, which incidently claims earlier orgins for the term than the 1893 worlds fair.) As far as I know, this French term does not have a sorted history attached to it. It is intended as a technical term to denote that many dances emphasize the middle. In this sense the term in approaching my suggested definition. In my opinion bellydance with this sort of definition is completely justified. Still dancers may prefer not to use the terms to overcome the stereotype. I support them entirely in their endeavors; however, I feel bellydance will always have trouble being associated with vulgarly sexual dances due to many of our cultural ideologies. To over come this we have to change our culture not the name of our dance.
If a dancer is going to substitute a term for bellydance it will most likely be Middle Eastern dance. There are problems with this term too. First of all most of what we call bellydance is one family of dances from the Middle East. There are countless dance forms from the Middle East that bellydancers often do not study. Debke dances are an example. One of the reasons bellydancers do not traditionally study debke dances is that they do not utilize the above mentioned technique of hip-torso isolation. In other words it just does not seem to be organically linked within the dance steps. That is because it isn't link via steps. It is linked via the culture.
This brings me to my next point which is that the dances we call bellydance, even in ethnic terms, are not all found in the Middle East. Bellydance, as it stands today, is an amalgamation of dances from the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia and Greece. Another issue with the term Middle East is that it suggests cultural authenticity which, as mentioned above, we can not really claim for bellydance. It also suggests ethnic dances and as I mentioned before bellydance is not really an ethnic dance or solely and ethnic dance. Bellydance is based on moves from ethnic dances in all the above mentioned regions, but it has been a performing art since at least the 1940s and perhaps earlier. By this I mean it was performed by professionals for the purposes of entertainment not performed by communities for various socio-functional purposes.
As I said the dance is based on ethnic forms but the switch to performing art causes a great deal of change and innovation to be brought to any dance. In this sense middle eastern dance has undergone a transformation just as the dances of Western Europe transformed into ballet. Many dancers tend to refer to all the dances of that region as bellydance whether it is ethnic or performing art because of the technical similarity between them. This creates confusion. Under my definition both could be called bellydance but they would be distinguished from on another by the secondary ethnic/geographical classifications of bellydances. So in essence we would employ terms like Egyptian Nightclub bellydance vs. Egyptian Folkloric bellydance.
Another problem with Middle Eastern dance is that is assumes that dances of a geographic region are similar. There is a lot of cultural variations within the Middle East (even restricting the discussion to the actual Middle East and not the above mentioned areas) and dancing for an Arab is very different from dancing for an Persian. First of all their ethnic dances are very different and their contributions to bellydance have been very different. In the West we incorporate moves from both cultures into bellydance, but in the Middle East, under their equivalent term for bellydance, dances from Persia are not considered to be bellydance. Again my definition can help clear up this confusion denoting the difference between Arab bellydances, Persian bellydances (although it is questionable if Persian dance by itself could be called bellydance), and Americanized bellydance which blends these two and much more.
Another common term which is a sense has already been discussed is Oriental dance. In addition to the previously mentioned problems with Oriental, Oriental simply mean East. That is a bit confusing since in the West the East also means China and India, perhaps even more so than it means the Middle East. Plus there are general problems with denoting that a dance is East. East from where? from Europe? from America? Do we really want to perpetuate our egotistic tendency to see ourselves as the center of everything?
Sadly the typical Egyptian term for bellydance is Raqs Sharqi. Ironically it is Arabic for Oriental dance. Dancers sometimes feel they are escaping cultural bias by using an Arabic term. Ironically the terms appears to be as much an acquiescence to biased Western ideology as the cultural itself is defining its own cultural tradition as being East of the West. The term may also reflect that the evolution of the dance from ethnic to performance was a reaction to the West and even specifically to entertain colonials in the the Middle East. So we can not avoid cultural bias by using this term either even though most people will not perceive the bias.
Considering all of these factors, I advocate the re-valorization of the term bellydance as employed by Curt Sach's and others. Therefore the best term for "our dance" I believe should be bellydance(s). Further geographic and style indications (Arabic bellydances, Turkish bellydances, North African bellydances, American Cabaret bellydance, American Tribal bellydance, Tribal Fusion bellydance, etc.) should also be employed. Since many bellydancers, especially in America, study multiple forms of bellydance it may be appropriate to refer to what we do as simply bellydance, especially in a generalized context.
For more on bellydance check out Melody's Blog