On Shira's tribe over on tribe.net (no, tribe isn't dead!), she referenced an article on Gilded Serpent in which another dancer wrote with a fair amount of disdain about those who rally behind the idea of retaining historical and cultural elements of bellydance (what is often termed "The Bellydance Police"). You can see the discussion, and link to the article, HERE. Shira follows it up with a great analogy, which I thought would be nice to share over here. So without further ado, I give you Shira's take:

"Let's say I write a 17-line poem with each line containing somewhere between 8 and 34 syllables and call it haiku. Now, the "poetry police" killjoys would tell you that such a poem does not conform to the properties of haiku (3 lines in length, with 5 syllables in line 1, 7 syllables in line 2, 5 syllables in line 3) and therefore is not haiku. Now, this poem may well convey my vision, my passion, my joy, and a completeness in my quest for beauty. These things would certainly qualify it as "poetry", but they don't qualify it as haiku.

But if I enter that poem in a haiku writing contest, should I expect to win? Should I expect journals that specialize in haiku to publish it, simply because I have chosen to declare that it is haiku, even though it does not contain the properties that people well-versed in the form would recognize as haiku?

If I start teaching classes in how to write haiku, should it be okay that I encourage my students to write any poem of any structure they please, all in the name of their vision, their passion, their joy, and a completeness in their quest for beauty while still calling the end result haiku? 

I would argue that no, it may all still be POETRY, and it all may all be worthy of being read, but there is a certain basic set of properties that must be met before you identify it as a specific genre of poetry. It still deserves to be written, and shared if the poet wishes to share it, but ultimately there should be truth in labeling."

Have a read, and let me know what you think:

http://www.gildedserpent.com/cms/2010/11/03/jasmine-june-intro-tribal-fusion-belly-dance/

"The “fusion” in Tribal Fusion Belly Dance makes this dance genre elusive and tricky to define. Two dancers could have nothing in common except a few core movements and a couple costuming pieces, and yet both could define themselves as Tribal Fusion dancers. While this can be confusing, both to outsiders and to Tribal Fusion belly dancers, the freedom that fusion grants is exactly what makes the genre so attractive.

The other side of the coin is that sometimes Tribal Fusion Belly Dance is interpreted to be completely open-ended. This can lead to dancers changing or ignoring technique, musicality, and proper training. 

From Mish Mish via BellyTalk, a NW discussion group for bellydancers. It is confirmed by what Jamila told us at her weeklong, that she was essentially the one who conceived the sword as a bellydance prop:

"In Turkey and Arabic countries, dancing with a sword is done mainly by men
as a display of skill in combat or to prepare for battle. My troupe used to have
a Druse from Lebanon who did a spectacular sword dance his father had taught him
and I have seen videos of a Persian dance troupe where the men feign battle and
dance in unison.

Dancing while balancing a sword on your head has become popular in the United
States with soloists and troupes but there is no such tradition in Arabic
countries where balancing something on your head is a part of daily life, so
it's no big deal The idea for this dance can be traced back to Jamila Salimpour and her
seminal dance troupe, Bal Anat who became famous performing at the Renaissance
Fair in California in the 1970's. Jamila was inspired by an Oriental painting
from the late l9th Century by French artist Jean Leon Gerome of a group of
musicians and a dancer, probably a ghawazee, dancing with a sword balanced on
her head and another held in her hand. The swords belonged to the Turkish
soldiers in the background who had undoubtedly hired the dancers to entertain
them. A replica of this painting appears on Aisha Ali's recording of "Music of
the Ghawazee" As Jamila's influence spread throughout the USA, so to did the
practise of balancing a sword on your head."

Tribe isn't as dead as many people think, and over on Shira's tribe, there has been a lot of eager discussion about bellydance fusion and its legitimacy as bellydance. Some purists posit that it is an insult to the cultures from which bellydance comes from to change it or fuse it in any way. I have long held the belief that the nature of human culture is that things grow, change, and evolve over time just by being brought into a new environment. Nothing stays the same, and in the world today it is even more true--we are becoming a global culture where things will mix and mingle and change whether we want them to or not.

Now I *DO* agree that some fusions have moved so far away from bellydance, it doesn't fit the genre any more. And I agree that a lot of these more recent "infractions" are being perpetuated under the mistaken moniker of tribal. But that is another topic altogether. This particular post by Spoon addresses the idea of "change as insult" quite well and I wanted to share.

"American Cabaret is the original 'Fusion' style of bellydance in America. You see... a dance follows the music and in this case we had musicians from all over the Mediterranean and Middle East coming together and playing music with one another. They learned or were already familiar with the music of multiple countries so as to give the widest number of people at a given venue a taste of home. When the music blends together the movements start to blend together and American Cabaret fused multiple forms of Orientale dance together into one. Was that an insult, the destruction of dance tradition, or was that a representation of the natural way that cultures interact when brought into close proximity?

Today Arab-American music and Mediterranean-American music sounds different than the its parental styles. This is because there has been yet another cultural exchange; this time it was not simply between Islamic nations, this time the exchange occurred on our home soil and in some cases a more global soil. Thus pulling in influences from all over the world. Where the music leads the dance will follow.

What we are looking at is not confined to dance, if it were it would be an easily resolved issue, this is both a generational and a cultural issue. As the music of North Africa and Asia Minor has migrated outward and mingled with other influences, as is often the case when emigration occurs, the resulting sound has reflected those changes. In America the visual result has been American Cabaret, Tribal (not specifically ATS) and then its offspring, Tribal Fusion and ITS. Each represents a stage of musical and cultural development that have evolved hand in hand over the years. What I would like to know is if some of you honestly expect that two cultures would come into contact with each other and not leave any kind of visual impact on one another.

I think to understand fusion you have to understand diffusion. Take a bowl of water and add a couple drops of blue food coloring. At first the coloring will hold to its shape within the water but eventually it will diffuse evenly throughout the bowl if given enough time. This will happen every single time you try it because that is just how the universe works. Now to get a good idea of what America is take a bowl of water and drop in just about every color of food coloring you can think of and then wait. What color comes out dominant? What happens during that span of time where you wait for the colors to completely mix together? Do you really expect that all the little colors will keep to themselves in that bowl?

...Theatrical Bellydance and Gothic Bellydance I would like to point out are not actually dance forms, ie they have no official vocabulary of movement and are actually composed of multiple forms of Orientale dance including American Cabaret, Turkish Orientale, and even folkloric dances are often featured at shows under these banners alongside performances that weigh in with more theatrics or more of the Gothic cultural aesthetic. In these circumstances it would be handy to use the term bellydance as you would never be able to clearly state what actual form of bellydance would be present.

As for Amy Sigil of Unmata... would she have started considering her dance as not belonging to the bellydance family tree if she had not felt forced outside of it? I think that if you want a little more honesty in advertising in the bellydance community that we could all benefit from it. I would like to see Turkish Orientale dance when it is advertised as such. I think it would be very amusing to see this sort of honesty applied to the non-Tribal dancers. I largely suspect that many would not be able to distinguish what movements came from where and when nearly half as well.

~*Spoon*~

It's finally in the works. My registration is in, and I am going to the Jamila weeklong next month. Booking flights and hotel next, along with Renee who will be a TA that week so we are traveling together. I love these bonding travels with Renee, where we get to dig into our passion for dance together and share in it on a deeper level than the day-to-day grind of teaching and running a troupe.

The workshop itself? As soon as the first one was announced, I knew it was just an absolute "must do" for me. While I don't agree with the claim that Jamila was a "tribal dancer" as we understand it today, her influence is completely and inarguably inseparable from the evolution of tribal as we know it--her aesthetics and fusion of cultures was the inspiration for tribal and fusions of our day--and I am eager to dig into those roots and see how it influences my dancing today. It was that kind of "faux-kloric" dancing that got me excited about bellydance in the first place (studying with Aleili, from old school Yaleil) and I am excited to explore those roots in greater depth!

A little bit about Masha I hadn't read before after the jump.

Interesting note from a Gilded Serpent Article by Najia


Masha Archer"Masha Archer, one of Jamilla Salimpour's ex-dancers, always had a booth at the Alameda Flea Market. She had become a teacher of Belly dance and had a very large San Francisco dance troupe. Masha was friendly with me, and she could be dramatic and intimidating! She was decidedly artistic, and had split away from Jamilla Salimpour's group. She had her own dream and followed her dream. She and her husband sold exotic and ethnic jewelry at the Alameda Flea Market. They held large dance parties at their house. Although, she invited me to come to her parties, I never went because I knew it wasn't my kind of scene, and probably, I would not have fit in with her other guests."

"I saw Masha recently at a museum opening in San Francisco. She looked fabulous and even remembered me! Her hair was dark and slicked back like a Flamenco dancer. She was wearing large hair ornaments and her make-up was flawless. The artistic scene had won her over, and she went into fashion design; she had a real flair for it. If you saw her troupe, you witnessed something like Fat Chance, except that it was more elaborate. It was an original. There was enough Afghani jewelry on those women to sink a battleship! Fat Chance Belly Dance seems more limited in concept and almost dispassionate.

Masha had a social organization like Jamilla's. However, it seemed to me that Masha had a sexual-revolution outlook on life then. I heard rumors that her parties on Minna Street, San Francisco, were very "free-spirited." When dancers performed, they'd look intently into each other's eyes, and we'd laugh because it made it seem that there might be an orgy-happening soon. Belly dance was more sexual in nature back then; that was precisely why a lot of us took it up in the first place! Many dancers, musicians, and performers of the time were famous for their mantra: Smoke a joint, dance, then, go make love, not war. There were no serious thoughts about disease as is necessary now."

I don't think I ever saw this before. What a gem!

RE: historical dance, ethnic dance, authentic dance, etc

I definitely feel tied to the idea that what I am doing has roots in something larger and older than myself. There is some romanticism in it, sure, but for me, it is not about legitimizing what I do with that connection, but instead honoring a legacy of art and community, and at the same time making it relevant to my own art and community today. I am not interested in re-creating something from the past in my dance (as a former SCA member and costumer, I do like studying the details and recreating historical costume and such as a hobby, just not in my dance)

I definitely feel a lack of historical context in my own ethnicity, and there is something grounding in feeling like I have taken something passed down from history and molding it into something current and relevant for myself and my audiences. That's my two cents.