I spend far too much time lurking on Bhuz. This is mostly because I have always loved costumiery and atypical/ahistorical clothing (see my doctoral thesis subject!). Thus  I really (REALLY) enjoy wandering about the costuming pages, seeing what the wonderful ladies are working on, getting inspired for costumes I’ll probably never make, and just gleeing over pretty shinies.

But one thing I’ve noticed –and find upsetting—is that there’s a lot of crankiness towards tribal fusion dancers (and, occasionally, ATS/ITS women). Now, I’m sure if I were visiting a board dominated by tribal dancers of all stripes, there would be annoyance expressed towards more traditional bellydance styles. But what I find worrisome is the antagonistic divide that I see developing (has developed?) between Egyptian bellydance and tribal fusion bellydance—and that TF is often said not to be bellydance.

What, then, is bellydance?

I don’t have an answer for that yet. But I think it’s an important question to ask. What I find alarming in these discussion on TF, however, is what I’m going to dub “stylistic blinders”. Note above that I mentioned Egyptian BD and TFBD specifically. ATS/ITS is usually given a “pass” as still be part of bellydance, though “very different from tradition” (aside, the one beledi workshop I took made me think that ATS/ITS is simply structuring movements and adopting the attitude already in beledi—not directly, but it had the same “feel”). Meanwhile, the anti-fusion discussions tend to come from a strictly Egyptian BD outlook. But what about Lebanese and Turkish?

Lebanese and Turkish style BD are the ancestors of American Cabaret—which some people classify as “Vintage Orientale”, for some reason. As if calling a bellydance style “American” makes it dirty or inauthentic. On the other hand, to me “Vintage Orientale” sounds old-fashioned and has that potentially-hazardous term “oriental” in it. AmCab itself was the foundation of Bal-Anat, the grandmother troupe of ATS/ITS. Tribal Fusion, by using movements from ATS/ITS while breaking its codification, returns to the soloist and group traditions of Bal-Anat and AmCab. While Modern Egyptian BD has drawn influences from non-Arabic dance forms such as ballet (for arms) and jazz (for steps, leaps, and other stylizations), Tribal Fusion has replaced these with flamenco (for arms) and hip-hop (for steps, leaps, and other stylizations). Tribal Fusion is the natural grandchild of AmCab via the ATS/ITS tradition.

The second argument I hear often against Tribal Fusion is that “Arabs don’t like it”. I prefer to hear this as “people from the Lands of Dance don’t like it”, simply because who is Arabic is quite a difficult question. Turkish people, for example, are usually not classified as Arabic—but Turkey is certainly one of the Lands of Dance! The Lands of Dance are usually considered to be (first) Egypt, then Turkey, followed by many other regions around the Mediterranean and Northern Africa. But anyone who denies that bellydance is now global would be a bit of an idiot, and many countries outside of the Lands of Dance have long traditions of bellydance. Thus we have AmCab and tribal from the USA; thus Russian bellydancers have their own distinctiveness.

Mind you, I firmly believe that fusion dancers should be grounded in a more “classical” form of BD, be it Egyptian, Turkish, Lebanese, or AmCab, and should also occasionally take workshops in more folkloric styles. Such is simply part of being an educated dancer.

But no one style is better, regardless of origin or history. Bellydancers pride themselves on being welcoming to women of all sizes. We shouldn’t draw divisions amongst ourselves based on differences, be it size or style. Why can’t we all just get along?

Now, mind you, these are all just my basic observations, and I hope that I’ll get comments. Regardless, I’m already brainstorming on the Issue of Authenticity.

But for now, that’s the lysse-bird out.

Tags: academic,bellydance
Categories: Arts
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