Table Of ContentBelly Dance
Around the World
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Belly Dance
Around the World
New Communities,
Performance and Identity
Edited by CAITLIN E. MCDONALD and
BARBARA SELLERS-YOUNG
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina, and London
LIBRARYOFCONGRESSCATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATIONDATA
Belly dance around the world : new communities,
performance and identity / edited by Caitlin E. McDonald
and Barbara Sellers-Young.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7864-7370-0
softcover : acid free paper
1. Belly dance—Social aspects. 2. Dance and
transnationalism. I. McDonald, Caitlin E.
II. Sellers-Young, Barbara.
GV1798.5.B43 2013
793.3—dc23 2013018394
BRITISHLIBRARYCATALOGUINGDATAAREAVAILABLE
© 2013 Caitlin E. McDonald and Barbara Sellers-Young.
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, i ncluding photocopying
or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
On the cover: Lynette Harper and Rahma Haddad explored their
shared Lebanese roots and Arab-Canadian identities through
dance and storytelling in Bekaa Valley Girls: A Lebanese Sagaat
Vancouver’s Dance Centre (photograph courtesy Harry Brewster)
Manufactured in the United States of America
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com
Table of Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments 1
Introduction: The Interplay of Dance and the Imagined Possibilities
of Identity
BARBARA SELLERS-YOUNG 3
What Is Baladi about al-Raqs al-Baladi? On the Survival of
Belly Dance in Egypt
NOHA ROUSHDY 17
Finding “the Feeling”: Oriental Dance, Musiqa al-Gadid, and Tarab
CANDACE BORDELON 33
Performing Identity/Diasporic Encounters
LYNETTE HARPER 48
1970s Belly Dance and the “How-To” Phenomenon: Feminism,
Fitness and Orientalism
VIRGINIA KEFT-KENNEDY 68
Dancing with Inspiration in New Zealand and Australian Dance
Communities
MARION COWPER and CAROLYN MICHELLE 93
Local Performance/Global Connection: American Tribal Style and
Its Imagined Community
TERESA CUTLER-BROYLES 106
The Use of Nostalgia in Tribal Fusion Dance
CATHERINE MARY SCHEELAR 121
“I mean, what is a Pakeha New Zealander’s national dance?
We don’t have one”: Belly Dance and Transculturation in
New Zealand
BRIGID KELLY 138
v
vi Table of Contents
Quintessentially English Belly Dance: In Search of an English
Tradition
SIOUXSIE COOPER 152
Delilah: Dancing the Earth
BARBARA SELLERS-YOUNG 168
Negotiating Female Sexuality: Bollywood Belly Dance, “Item
Girls” and Dance Classes
SMEETA MISHRA 181
Digitizing Raqs Sharqi: Belly Dance in Second Life
CAITLIN E. MCDONALD 197
About the Contributors 211
Index 213
Preface and
Acknowledgments
We live in an era of globalization. Socially, culturally and economically,
flows of commodities and power cut across physical and geographic bound-
aries; in particular the power of technology, including but not limited to the
internet, creates new communities which transcend geographic boundaries.
Thus, it is necessary to raise new lines of inquiry to examine the ways in
which communities form in this globalizing era. Studying these emerging
communities requires engaging with them in multiple physical localities as
well as understanding how these groups contact one another, and how they
transmit and address questions of legitimacy about the identity-forming sub-
ject that brings them together.
A popular cultural performance form within the framework of global
culture is a dance form referred to in Egypt as raks sharqi, but known popularly
as belly dance. This dance form is the practice of individuals who trace their
heritage to North Africa and the Middle East and many others who have no
biological roots there but trace their creative identity and fictive bodily pres-
ence to this part of the world. As such, it participates in the global flows of
images of men and women dancing within the expressive frames of their
bodies to images associated with popular conceptions of North Africa and the
Middle East.
As a dance form moves across cultural boundaries, it participates in dia-
logues between the forces of globalization and a resistance to alterations of
existing power structures, specifically in reference to masculinity and femi-
ninity and related gender roles. This tension results in two emergent tropes:
first, an attempt to suppress the influences of globalization by restricting its
effects and returning to older, more traditional ways of life that make cross-
geographic flows of cultural and economic capital (and the types of community
formation resulting from these flows) far more difficult than current tech-
nologies allow. Second, an endeavor to appropriate all the advantages of glob-
alization while leaving behind some of the less desirable elements and replacing
1
2 Preface and Acknowledgments
these with more highly valued elements of “local” culture; in other words cre-
ating a new process of “glocalization” in which local themes are superimposed
on global themes, creating new localisms. Belly dance becomes in this volume
of essays a way to examine these global/local forces through the lens of a pop-
ular dance form.
This book would not be possible if it were not for the support of families
and friends who have listened to the ideas over coffee and extended dinners
or read versions presented at conferences. This manuscript would also not be
possible without the generosity of the global belly dance community.
Caitlin: would like to thank her parents who have been an unwavering
source of support and encouragement in continuing to seek out new, inter-
esting, and bold questions about the human experience. Special thanks are
also due to Professor Kristin Zahra Sands, who first allowed me to explore
belly dance in an academic context; Professor Mike Siff, who brought the dis-
cipline of human-computer interaction to my attention; Professor Julie Abra-
ham, who introduced unexpected questions about the boundaries and vagaries
of gender; Professor Gabriel Asfar, whose Arabic courses were so much more
vibrant than linguistics alone; and Professors Nadje Al-Ali and Christine Alli-
son, whose guidance and insight helped me to blend it all into a richly-flavored
stew.
Barbara: would specifically like to thank Anthony Shay whose insight
into the dance as a space of identity formation has been invaluable. Other
influential people in the creation of this volume include Berri Leslie and Kim-
berly Sellers-Blais who throughout their lives have always been willing to
attend a dance concert. A special thanks to my granddaughter, Kinsey Free-
man, whose observations on life have caused me to rethink my own. I am
very grateful to Angela Zhang and Carol Altilia who created the space and
time for me to work on this project and to Jade Rosina McCutcheon who has
challenged me to never be afraid to engage new ideas.
Introduction: The Interplay
of Dance and the Imagined
Possibilities of Identity
BARBARA SELLERS-YOUNG
Aesthetics are inherently social. The formal properties and presumptions
intrinsic to the production and consumption of art are communicative
currency developed by and circulating between artists, audiences, and
critics, binding them together in interpretive communities, serving as bases
for exchange in the public and private conversation that constitute art’s
relational and affective lives.—Judith Hamera (2007, 3)
The imagination is now central to all forms of agency, is itself a social
fact, and is the key component of the new global order.—Appadurai
(1996, 31)
When Gustave Flaubert (1996) wrote his account of visiting Egyptian
dancer Kutchuk Hanem in 1877, he participated in the discourses of 19th cen-
tury globalization to create an image of sensuality that would become the
popular version of Arab women which would be replicated in paintings, post-
cards, performed at international fairs and festivals and integrated into films
and television. Post-colonial theorist Edward Said coined the term “Orien-
talism” to reference this phenomenon. Said’s review of the approach of Western
writers, scholars, and artists to the Middle East formulated a theory of artistic
imperialism and its relationship to power and the imagination. Since then,
other scholars (MacKenzie 1995, Alloula 1986, Collingham 2001, Graham-
Brown 1988, Lewis 2004) have expanded his original discussion to include
visual arts, media and the performing arts. These scholars note the impact of
“latent” and “manifest” Orientalism in the dances of Ruth St. Denis (Desmond
1991), dances associated with folklore companies and their goal to define a
national identity (Shay 2001), the construction of the Arab as performative
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