What Am I Doing?

[shanmonster]

I'm a dancer. But what kind of dancer am I? When I do my own thing, incorporating elements of Middle Eastern, modern, jazz-lyrical, modern dance, martial arts, tumbling, yoga, and flamenco, I always refer to it as experimental dance. That's not my usual variety of dance, though. I'm mostly hired out as a "belly dancer." Now, I really dislike that term. I think "belly dancer" is very misleading, partially in that I use a whole hell lot more of my body than my abs when I dance, and also because the term is fraught with stereotypes. A belly dancer is seen by the vast majority of lay people as a Hollywood hoochie-coochie dancer, mesmerizing her (and it's always a her) audience with lascivious looks, sensual wriggling, and a big ol' plastic gem in her navel.

Now, I do my damnedest not to fulfill those stereotypes when I dance. When I dance at multicultural events, I choose music from Lebanon, Turkey, Algeria, or Egypt. I usually perform raqs sharqi (Egyptian, with more than a hint of Turkish). I generally wear costuming representative of dancers from those regions. On occasion, I wear American Tribal Style tassel belts. Whenever anyone asks about these belts, I'm always sure to tell them it's representative of a North American style of Middle Eastern dance.

But doesn't that seem odd? To say North American Middle Eastern dance, I mean? It's either one or the other, isn't it? So what exactly am I doing when I wear these costumes yet use a Middle Eastern vocabulary of movement?

So what the hell am I doing up there on stage, anyhow? Is it still raqs sharqi even if I'm wearing North American costuming? I'd love to call what I do just plain ol' dance, but that's just not specific enough. How can I do a decent job educating the populace when I don't know how to describe what I'm doing?

Comments

Re: Hoochie-coochie dancing?

[f00dave.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, the first half of his statement was pretty much exctly what Lev was getting at between 10pm and 2am on Friday night. As I've repeatedly told him, you wouldn't have misunderstood him (or visa versa) if the transaction had been done in a different form.

Elaboration on the latter: Lev is a 'visual' thinker, who uses words like pictures, while you are an 'auditory' thinker, one who has an easier time with words on paper (for example). I'm more in the former category, but also somewhat in the latter, which makes me poorer at either sort of work, but better at 'mediating' or 'translating' between folks in different bins. I can sit between you and Lev and help you two to make sense of one another (sometimes), and I've had a similar effect between Lev and Oleg on occasion (Oleg is also "auditory").