THE COLLABORATIVE HEART OF MODERN BELLYDANCE :: neon

The typical motivations of women interested in learning bellydance are:
- seeking new experiences, escaping the ordinary
- self-improvement: working on being attractive through beautiful movement and dress-up
- self-improvement via self-discovery, e.g. gaining self-confidence through self-acceptance, or expanding one's joy of life through sensualilty
- ambition, desire to perform, to be a star
- the need to be involved and broaden one's social opportunities, seek female companionship or an artistic environment
- fitness

To sum up, bellydance is sexy, liberating, artistic, exotic, evocative, ageless, and also somehow very modern, and that's why it appeals to the widest imaginable range of modern women.

None of these reasons has anything to do with an academic interest in dance or an attraction to dance as a discipline. That's why purist or historical, or stylistically-rigid approaches to teaching bellydance and insistence on the Middle Eastern theme for the art that has flourished in the West for over 100 yrs, succumb to the wave of contemporary, thematically and stylistically unconstrained forms of bellydance and inclusive methods of instruction.

A bellydancer's technical skill can be easily evaluated with a good degree of objectivity - from basic to highly evolved. Control, precision, pacing and sophistication are either there or not. But stylistic choices within contemporary bellydance can be evaluated only based on general aesthetics - “this looks good and this doesn't” - not within the framework of a consistent stylistic system: That doesn't exist.

The appeals to dancers to be responsible guardians of "The Dance" from the "authentic/historical" camp or from "proprietary"-style instructors insisting on attribution and exclusivity, grow more and more remote, or, rather "out of context." The expanding landscape of bellydance makes these appeals sound like self-serving motions to promote one's stylistic direction or instructional turf, no matter how candid these motions are.

Historical or stylisticaslly-frozen dance forms cannot compete in appeal with trend-driven styles that respond perfectly to every fluctuation in look and vibe desired by modern students of dance, and that allow them to co-create the style as they learn it. In the same way that the participatory web enables mass creativity to contribute to shaping cultural phenomena, the "open doors" approach to dance styles enables collaboration that is drastically changing our dancescape - this collaborative feature is at the heart of what makes bellydance so modern and appealing.

Comments

[Alyra]

Well put, Neon. I absolutly agree!

[Naraya]

Thanks Neon...you can certainly feel your passion concerning the dance!! I have to be the voice of disagreement though on a couple of topics. I'm an academic. I lecture on the history of Middle Eastern dance have have devoted my life to the academic discipline of studying the dance and charting it's historical progression. Therefor, although I do agree that women dance for a multitude of reasons that are beautifully listed above, I do not think academic interests should be excluded or in any way immediately looked at as a necessarily negative influence. I understand you're feelings of the "authentic police" and people who espouse the virtues of dance as they think it's always been performed however that said, a historical perspective does not necessarily equate with a "stylistically frozen" one. There is much to learn from our sisters who hold the roots of the dance and attempt at embodying the the historical versions of the dance as they see them. The trick is for both historical dancers as well as "new generation" dancers to learn from the other and continue this beautiful tradition together.

[Neon]

Dear one, thank you for your comment! Responding to your observation about the value of academic knowledge of dance/dance history - I don't question it at all. As a matter of fact, the post above is entirely based on my ongoing research - entirely academic in nature - of the trends and forces that shape dance on the popular scale. It goes w/o saying that we all, as dance educators, promote understanding of the roots of our genres, but our livelihood as artists (as opposed to art critics/researchers) and survival of our creative work depends on something entirely different: on our sensitivity to the current state of culture and on the extreme selectivity of our artistic choices - ability to strip our creative offerings of everything non-essential. To flourish we must be ahead of (or find unique facets in) the current creative trends (rather than in the imitative tail) and academic angle/historical perspective is of no help here. The forces that make certain things in bellydance take off and others wither have nothing to do with what bellydance was even 10 yrs ago - it's all about the larger picture of our cultural and demographic "now." I don't mind "authenticity police" at all (some of my friends are authenticity police and I admire the integrity of their views/thought system) - my statements simply record the position of the stylistically-closed systems and preservationism in the current dancescape.

[Mariyah]

I have to agree with what Naraya says above. I see no sense to the animosity that seems to exist between those dancers who are drawn to the dance as a the beautiful cultural art form that it is and those who wish to fuse and take the dance in different directions.
Indeed, some of the greatest dancers I know are those that freely travel to both sides. Being strongly rooted in the cultural and historical context of the dance and at the same time having a strong vision towards fusion and innovation. The history only makes the innovation richer.
As Naraya said above a cultural perspective or a historical one does not indicate one which is "stylistically frozen"
I agree that cultural interest is not what brings most student to the dance. But, for many it is what keeps them there, a richer context beyond dress-up or an alternative to the gym. This is not history. The dance is current in its "authentic" forms around the world and learning them does not mean stagnation.

[Neon]

Dear one, thank you for a great comment. "Animosity" and relationships btw dancers - were not discussed in my post. The subject is the limited appeal of the stylistically-closed prescriptively-taught systems as opposed to native trend-driven developments in dance. We observe hundreds of scenarios of being attracted to dance, of learning to dance and of dancers' artistic success - some of them are more common for our current Western reality. Think of the "typical," not of "ALL" possible scenarios. "The dance is current in its "authentic" forms around the world and learning them does not mean stagnation" - true: Egyptian and Turkish styles of bellydance are evolving, alive and modern in their native context. They are evolving bec. the widest strata of people contribute to the development of these dance forms based on their current cultural demands and exposure to trends, in an unconstrained manner w/o referring to rules, dos and don'ts. These forms are trend-driven on their native soil. However, imported into, say, the US cultural reality, they lose their native cultural and trend context and are commonly taught only prescriptively. Foreign learners (whether you learn a foreign language or language of dance) have to refer to dos and don'ts and rules. This is the essence of my post: historical dance or imported systems are a great enrichment for students and good business for studios here and there, but the contributions of, say, US dancers to systems like these will not persist, they will be washed away by native cultural change (both here and 'over there'), while Western-born stylistic systems evolve organically on their native soil, they respond to local trends and allow dancers to contribute to the evolution of their chosen style practically from step one. Take language: for me as a foreign speaker of English it would take genius to be able to contribute to the stylistic development of the English language, but you, as a native speaker do this naturally - in natural collaboration with other modern users of the language - by favoring certain turns of phrase or strata of vocabulary and avoiding others.

[Tanna]

Dare I hope that I am one of those friends you refer to who is also a member of the authenticity police? LOL!! (Although an examination of my repetoire would indicate that I am a very lenient member of that force.)

What a great discussion!

[Neon]

You certainly are!!! - somehow intricacies of saiidi technique mixed w Kid Rock turn into gold in your hands.
And that, too, is my point:
being art, not serving art.
As an observer I may belong with the authenticity police as well, but as an artist I want my work to be innovative and survive. Of everything I absorb as a learner, I take only few things in my hands as a creator.

[ISIS]

I love what you have to say about all of this AND I totally agree with you. Thank you!!!