Wither
‘race’?
There is an issue I set aside
last time for reflection: does the race of belly dancers matter? How does it
affect the genre’s mobility in global consumption domains?
I think it does, albeit in a
less straightforward, if not reverse, way. The Euro-Oriental pop teachings of
famous dancers, such as Isadora Duncan, who introduced a hips-free,
torso-and-head dominated choreography, blended alleged Grecian with alleged
Egyptian movements to make an alien dance palatable to Westerners. Victorian
antics had their global equivalents back then. Since shaking any part of the
body that connected to domains of reproduction (hips, breast) in front of
spectators was de facto indecorous, Duncan’s whiteness should retain its bodily
relationship with ‘civility’ in some other way. Though never dissociated from
the budding 1920s femme fatale
cinematic persona, Grecian stylistics could at least cast an alien genre in archaic
European culture’s familiar colours and ‘pass’ as the female dare-nots’ fashion.
Orientalism
redoux
Duncan’s innovations barely
reached the folk terrain of the true ‘Orients’ that they cannibalised to
generate the aura of professional respectability in the European and
transatlantic West. As I explained before, in these contexts, danse du vetre or raqs sharki continued to be associated with prostitution and other
forms of generous female mobility. Its subsequent romanticisation in Western
pop domains either ignores its twin Orientalist and sexist associations or
stresses them to the point that it shunts its artistic uniqueness aside in
favour of some bizarre activist discourse. There is, to be sure, ample truth in
the twin racist and sexist crux of the dance style’s histories. But its contemporary
global commoditisation requires a different approach that allows space for an
investigation of new hybridisation, new border-crossings and exchanges between ‘East’
and ‘West’ – if there ever were such uniform geopolitical spaces.
Image R. Tzanelli, 'Helena Bellydancer (Leeds, UK)'
Appearances
I grew up in a country proudly
advertising its own feminine poetics through a version of belly dancing called tsifteteli (literally, ‘of two strings’
to refer to the musical instrument that accompanies the music). Feminist
politics abound, the style’s history is sieved through several chapters of
persecution, migration and dictatorship moralism (Stavrou Karayanni 2004).
However, now that I do not partake in its rituals any more (being an Anglicised
migrant myself and living at the other end of Europe where is also ‘home’), I
am struck by the significance of ‘appearances’ in the dance’s execution back
then. By this I refer to the spectators’ expectation that the dancer (amateur
or professional) looks the part phenotypically: that she is a brunette, with
long luscious hair and a brown complexion. Belly dancing beauties (conventionally
koúkles, dolls) had to be
domesticated versions of the Oriental imaginary, for their performance to
acquire verisimilitude. This paradoxical expectation is not dissimilar from
that which English professionals encounter, as I recently found out. It is as
if their Northern whiteness robs them of their bodily skills, their ability to communicate
art to students or even be attractive enough to neo-Orientalist consumers (more
correctly, ‘attractiveness’ may be dissociated from skill, thus degenerating
into harassment).
It seems then, that there is
still a politics of race at work in belly dancing discourse, only it is a
politics of reversal: the white subject appears to ‘lack’ in essence, in need
of providing ‘proof’ (professional credentials) to be granted ‘passing’. In the
same context female ‘blackness’ transforms into a phenomenological standard
only as ‘surface’, ready to be voraciously consumed by audiences. Entertainment
aside, the politics and poetics of belly dancing are to be treated seriously –
for their surface is depth in need of investigating in the social sciences.
REFERENCES
Stavrou Karayanni, S. (2004)
Dancing Fear and Desire. Canada: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.
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