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RaqSpora: The continual re-mixing of Raqs Sharqi

Woodrow Jarvis Hill

NOTE: This is a edited version of an 2-part article for Root Magazine &

Pity the poor raqs sharqi, the dance so shunned even the name is not her own. Foall the calls of "I wanna see you belly dance", a name even elements in the native culturehave picked up, the reality is that it's known far better in the native lands as "raqssharqi", "Dance of the East."

Which leads to the obvious question: Which East? Plenty of people have ideas.

But few have proof that's tied to the fabled origins of the form.

And which origin would you like with your coffee? Ancient Temple Priestesses, toosoon cut down, only their "belly dance" surviving? Perhaps the theory about "Biblical"raqs sharqi, Salome the tantalizing and forbidden evidence? Or the Romany bringing itout of the land of Egypt, like so many shimmying Moses? No...the one where it was"always part of the culture", passed on by Harem women? Or some intriguing mlangethereof?

Dancers have heard and seen them all, repeated and revamped a thousand times,over coffee while sewing up costumes, resting between sets at some intense weekend

dance seminar, walking each other to cars after another exhausting dance class. Andlike a cultural virus -- or a meme -- the ideas of forbidden origins pass into theMainstream, stuck between bits of wispy writings about colorful costumes and swayinghips and dances named after exposed body parts, not places where real people live.

And real people don't just live in the lands this dance comes from, they dance. Inthe Middle East, on up into Turkey and Iraq, we have the social, popular form of thisdance, not to be confused with simple, or inelegant. Just because it's looked down uponto dance for money, does not mean that many, many folks in the region don't dance forpleasure. They are on the far end, the opposing ends, from so-called "Islamic terrorism"all too full of joy of life and family, the core of an Islamic life both modest and open. Not

too far, at all, from Western life.

The contrast between their lives, even the wealthy ones, and the "rock star"-like lifof the huge dance stars that perform raqs sharqi on stage can be amazing. Raqasas1 likFifi Abdo of Egypt and Amani of Lebanon walk a tightrope between Islamic ideas ofdecent and indecent. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell might see these talented andsmart artists/businesswomen much as the Islamic Fundamentalists see them, today, aspurveyors of sinful acts. So-called religious entities such as the Muslim Brotherhoodshut down much of dance in Egypt, big and small, leading to the top dancers hiring the

1 Arabic for dancers.

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top bodyguards to protect themselves, a minority terrorized by another minority.

For that, plus many other reasons, Egypt, oftentimes seen as the Mother of moderraqs sharqi, issues forth fewer and fewer children. She's come to start adopting foreignraqasas as her own, with mixed results and reactions. Many, like the dancer namedMorocco, learned and live here in America, going there for further study. Others staythere for years, earning a living as a dancer, doing the dance they love in the region thatloves, and hates, it best.

Both native and foreign dancers are drawn to those forms, the chance to dance inLebanese, Egyptian, Turkish style. Each style with subtle yet real differences, eachreflecting the uniqueness of each dancer, even as she expresses the same joy that thesocial dancers bring to the floor. It may not be all of one piece, but it springs from thesame set of positive emotions, and stands in stark contrast to how many Westerners seethe people of the Middle East.

Indeed, for some dancers "over here" in the West, though, the native raqs sharqiwas only the beginning of a dream. From the 60's on, as Arabic nightclubs popularizedthemselves in the US, women begin discovering raqs sharqi -- the "belly dance" -- in the

oddest of places, becoming the progenitors of the "gone native" foreign dancers of today.They'd catch a glimpse in an Arabic nightclub in the North Beach area, perhaps in NYC.Or on TV, with the opening scenes of the Robert Urich show Vega$, or in the slowlyincreasing number of articles on the form in WOMEN'S DAY or REDBOOK. You mightpick up Serena Wilson's Belly Dance book, or Ozel's "How to be a Sultan to yourHusband".

Best of all, the occasionally seedy aspect of the dance was overshadowed, in the70's, by the fusion of raqs sharqi with the Women's Liberation movement. Now, aswomen saw it as a dance they owned, and the menfolk saw fit not to argue, it could be"legitimized". After all, how could it be bad if Betty down the street was taking it?

Thus the 70's saw the explosion of "belly dance" books, records, clubs and studiosno one got rich, but a lot of dancers got ink, and students flocked to classes, eager foranything that gave the slightest hint of "exotic belly dancing". It was everywhere, and nowhere, and launched up and then sputtered out, right alongside Feminism, with thecoming of the Reagan Era. But sudden growth, combined with years of "exotic" andmythological concepts about the dance and its native cultures, left a mark on raqs sharqin America. The most obvious mark? The near-universal use of the term "belly dance";coined during the first craze for the form in the early 20th Century. It never describedwhat the natives saw in it, only what the carnie artists wanted to sell, and many peoplewere willing to buy, and believe.

Many newly minted American dancers were working "without a safety net", not thathere had been much of one to begin with. More women took up dance from someonewho's studied with someone for a bit in the 70s, who might have known the culture, omaybe was just going for a quick buck in the boom...but had little experience in the formand almost no expertise with the people, or the culture, in the Middle East. The artisticvisions of these dancers flew high and sometimes landed well. Re-mixes happened oftenas dancers took a bit of this, a piece of that, and a smidgen from some other dancer theyknew. Some stews were amazing, and some smelled of a mix that Betty Crocker wouldnever approve.

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But by then, the mold, and the mainstream concepts, of raqs sharqi were broken.In America, all too many of the new dancers should have been "raqasa", female dancersand artists to be respected and feared and shunned, as professional dancers were in theMiddle East. Instead, they were simply American "belly dancers", a source of thrills ofmany kinds, along with derision, of sniggering, and of friends wondering what dignity layin sequins, gold lame and push-up bras. The artistry of the dance was still there, alwaythere, could never really leave. Yet, in America, the entire dance was labeled by the lookand feel, not by the skill of the dancer.

This is why the irony of American Tribal Style Bellydance is that, in no small part,it is raqs sharqi. The movement vocabulary is an evolution, one again --- this time, fromthe Jamila (now Suhaila) Salimpour technique first developed in the 60's. So too, someof the aesthetics, as Jamila's seminal Bal Anat dance troupe featured performances withthe kind of ethnic look-and-feel that would end up being re-mixed heavily by twogenerations of women in San Francisco. The 2nd Generation, Carolena Nericcio, foundethe seminal Tribal troupe, Fat Chance Belly Dance, and the concept flew from the firstvideos she made.

The look-and-feel, if not always the demanding dance style, launched out of San

Francisco, across the US. The elements of dancers dancing for an audience and theirfellow dancers were new, and novel; the embracing of serious looks and strength avoidinthe "cutesy" aspects of raqs sharqi, opening up new aspects which keeping many of theoriginal Salimpour moves. The emphasis on anti-establishment looks was, perhaps, thefinal kicker; body art and darker costuming hooked into an America that was about todiscover and embrace Nirvana over Whitesnake, and an ex-pot-smoking boy fromArkansas over "another rich white guy".

Yes, despite the unique and complex improvisation format, a dance-by-the-seat-ofyour-pants style whose execution stuns many dancers, it is always the aesthetics, thelook and feel, which first captures the viewers of ATS. An ATS dancer looks like she

stepped out of a National Geographic magazine, like an Amazon of unknown origin. Andindeed, in the best -- or worst -- of American ingenuity, Tribal aesthetics are aconglomeration of worlds, a re-mix of everything we know about native cultures;Ottoman-style pantaloons got together with Indian cholis to slide past Romany Indianskirts and meet back in Turkey to swipe the turbans off their heads before running overthe Spanish Flamenco flowers-in-hair. Multiculturalism run rampant, it's oddlyintoxicating. Based upon its growing popularity, ATS was Change Writ Large.

Yet change doesn't stop because you want it to, and dancers new to the form,enthralled by the look of women, strong, with muscles rippling their tattoos and piercingin the dark rooms where the early ATS dancers worked, took it homeand re-mixed it ye

again. Another flowering of ideas, built on another remove from the "Motherland ofRaqs". Tribal Fusion Bellydance was born, with groups both branched off from FatChance, like Ultra Gypsy, and others merely influenced, like Zafira. And they addedinfluences from everywhere; hip-hop, modern, Romany Indian, no form of dance thatcould be minded was left unplundered. And if there is any truth to the ideal that raqssharqi is a Universal Dance, these estranged Grandchildren in their odd outfits are it, asthey birth Gothic Bellydance and a dozen other re-mixes of American life with OrientalMyths.

This has worried and concerned conservative raqasas, who see the native forms ashonorable, and worth emulating and saving. As the popularity of "fusion" forms grows,

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and the Belly Dance Superstars tour the Western world, a battle of words brews between"conservative" and "progressive" dancers. And the battle is interesting, not because ofwho'll win, but because the dance has grown so large and popular that it's seen as worthfighting over. It's a far cry from reading magazine indexes in the 80's, and finding not asingle article on the form in the Mainstream press.

Raqs sharqi has made an impact, for good or for ill, on the Mainstream that, thistime, might not be washed away. Just as the lovers of the traditional forms are in

resurgence for well-deserved attention and respect, the New Kids on the Block,symbolized by the popular dancer Rachel Brice, present the way of the West - to re-mix,re-develop, and, just maybe, crack the whole form into the Mainstream, once and for allDid Shakira's hips make things better for raqs sharqi -- or worse?

Time will tell. But tell me, what do you think?

================

Troublemaker, dancer, political junkie, programmer, layperson historian, costumer, geek

and Guy who Blows Stuff Up: Woodrow Jarvis "Asim" Hill's time is usually taken up byavoiding new projects like the bubonic plague. A man who's quiet interest in raqs sharqas a lad of 16 has transformed his life and his outlook on the world, he's currentlycoming out of a recent 4 year dance hiatus, and does NOT recommend it "for the waters"-- or for anything else.

He still seeks "The Big New Thing", fascinated by the lines and lies between mainstreamand dance culture, even as he digs for ancient information on raqs in history. He writesa raqs/dance-oriented blog called APOSTATE: Angry Young Black Man Does Raqs.,which contains enough writing to get him banned from the dance for life. Woodrow canbe reached at asim@mindspring.com, but warns that any brickbats won't hit him until

he gets back from his so-called "vacation".

http://apostate.raqsstorm.org/mailto:asim@mindspring.comhttp://apostate.raqsstorm.org/mailto:asim@mindspring.com