“The Beautiful, the Exotic …”

Emic and Etic in the Stage Names of Belly Dancers

 

Andrea Deagon

 

Among belly dancers in the West, adopting an Arabic (or pseudo-Arabic) stage name is a significant element of self-identification with respect to the art, to the Arab world, and to themselves.  In an etic view, this practice fits easily into the discourse of orientalism, where Arab culture is appropriated as a mechanism through which the Western subject interprets herself.  In particular, it elaborates women’s double-sided use of the orient, both to re(de)fine themselves as the sensuous object of the male gaze, and to create a liberating persona that allows transgressive behavior.  From an emic perspective, though, the stage name and its acquisition show a wide range of relationships to the orient both real and imagined, as dancers describe the personal journeys that resulted in their stage name (or decision not to use one).  Choosing a name, or being given one, is a rite of passage, in some cases one that must be returned to again and again before the name and the dance persona are in alignment with one another.  For some, an Arabic name, especially when bestowed by an Arab mentor, signifies acceptance within the Arabic community, while for others the journey to the name has only to do with self-exploration in a largely Western cultural milieu.  The tension between the etic and emic readings of the practice highlights the variability of the Western subject in the dynamic of orientalism, and reveals how the same practice may reflect diverse constructions, and relationships to, a real or imagined orient.

 

Naming the Ethnic Dancer

 

While dancers in Western forms such as ballet and modern dance do sometimes take stage names, the practice is not widespread, nor is “taking or not taking a stage name” an opportunity for self-exploration that all dancers in these forms must somehow address.  Yet in ethnic dance arts, we the viewing public still embrace the fiction that representatives of a native culture are entertaining us.  We are often not receptive to these arts being portrayed by people of  obviously “white” ethnicity: African and most Asian dance, for example, may be poorly received unless performed by people of African or Asian descent.  In other ethnic forms, such as Spanish or Middle Eastern dance, the wide variety of ethnic types in those regions makes it just possible for dancers not stereotypically Spanish- or Middle Eastern-looking to satisfy Western audiences of the authenticity of their performance.  Yet a Spanish name, or a name that is Middle Eastern (or at least exotic) seems to be the norm for most dancers in these fields.  The dynamics of commercial viability and personal self-definition apparently require the manufacture of an “Other” identity for the performance of these dances, perpetuating the idea that they are displays of some essential foreignness for the West, while privileging the artistic statements created in Western forms as universal in their significance, and therefore appropriately danced by people of any nationality, with any sort of name. 

 

One of the elements of the dance culture of the Middle East, the female solo dance known there as raqs sharqi[1] but here as “belly dance,” has taken root and flourished in Western popular culture, not only as performance but also as a pastime for ordinary women.  Despite ups and downs in popularity, it has been a fixture of the recreational dance scene in the United States for nearly four decades.  Both in its early years as a fad in the era of “women’s lib” and the sexual revolution, and in its current multi-cultural manifestations, it has sometimes taken forms that bear little resemblance to the actual arts of the East – forms that coexist, in the Western milieu, with more traditional Eastern dance styles.  Its widespread popularity arose because, early in this period, it came to be understood as a women’s dance: expressive, personal and inclusive; particularly able to promote the emergence of both the sensual and the sacred; allowing women to shed the bonds of our puritanical culture and live – at least for a little while – a more complete, more pleasurable, and more embodied life. 

 

In part, this reading arose from realities of the dance as it had come to be practiced in the Middle East.  Although the hip, torso and arm-centered movement vocabulary of the dance is used there equally by men and women, since the beginning of the 20th century women’s performance had been privileged and glamorized in elite urban venues, making raqs sharqi in effect a women’s art.  The dance was indeed sensuous, not necessarily in its movement vocabulary but in its use of time and of varying qualities of movement.  Like other Islamic arts, it was abstract, expressive, and oriented toward creating an emotional resonance between artist and audience.[2]  It is easy to see how belly dance developed the reputation in the West of being all about sensual self-expression – even while the idea of “self-expression” seems something of an anomaly to dancers in the East.[3]  In addition, some elements of Middle Eastern culture in general added to the Western belief that belly dance was liberating for women.  While Western women remain imprisoned in what Islamic feminist Fatima Mernissi calls “the size six harem,”[4] more ample body types are considered attractive in the East.  While Americans in particular seem to be always pressed for time and oriented toward achievement through labor, the Middle East privileges a more leisurely, if no less effective, way of conducting both life and business.  It is easy to see how these cultural differences developed, in the Western imagination, into the belly dance culture’s embracing the idea that the dance offers Western women the blessings of inclusive standards of beauty and leisurely time for oneself.

 

Throughout its tenure on American soil, and more recently in locales ranging from the Arctic Circle to the Pacific Rim, dancers who embrace this form, in either its new or traditional manifestations, have taken dance names.[5]  In an etic view, the dancer’s assumption of an exotic name may be seen as the appropriation of an Arab identity, and one which perpetuates the tendency to define Muslim women as sexualized odalisques.  Even if, as Reina Lewis expresses it, Western women’s “differential, gendered access to the positionalities of imperial discourse produce[s] a gaze on the Orient” that is less pejorative than dominant masculine paradigms,[6] the promulgation of an Eastern Otherness in the dancer’s assumption of an exotic name remains problematic.  The assumption of a dance name elaborates women’s double-sided use of the orient, both to re(de)fine themselves as the sensuous object of the male gaze, and to create a liberating persona that allows transgressive behavior.  In claiming an otherness that their belly dancing gives them the ability to name, Western women both claim the right to the alterity of the imaginary Orient, and compartmentalize it.  As one dancer says, “Jill is too abrupt a name for someone trying to evoke a sense of incense, and Faizeh is too exotic for scrubbing toilets.”  Given the elements of fantasy and illusion in the decision to “become Faizeh” (or Aziza or Jehan), the modern belly dancer’s adoption of an Eastern persona can be read as a development from the troubling dynamics of gender, orientalism, and race that blossomed in early 20th century aesthetic dancers’ interpretations of the East: disquieting interweavings of different modes of alterity that evoke transgression only to safely encapsulate it in performance that ultimately confirms the unassailability of the Western imperial stance. [7]

 

At the same time, in an emic view, one which examines the dynamics of naming practice from inside the subculture of belly dance in America, the uses of the dance name reveal a multiplicity of relationships that defy easy categorization.  As individual dancers proffer the narratives of how they got their names,  stories evoke ideas that range from harem fantasy to true friendship, positions that range from ignorance of even an imaginary Orient to participation in venues where “Occidentalism” more than orientalist paradigms define the dancer.  The belly dancer’s naming stories show the multiplicity of positions possible for the Western subject in relation to a real or imagined Orient – including the position of Western object of the Eastern gaze.

 

The Emergence of the Dance Name, 1950-2000’s

 

Western culture has had a longstanding place for the portrayal of the sensuous Eastern woman by the women of its own demi-monde, from the peris and bayaderes of mid-19th century ballet to the many “Visions of Salome” that took the Western world by storm in the decade before World War I.  Yet it is important to realize that the East also has a long-established place for foreign women performing its own dances professionally.  The Western belly dancer is not merely a projection of the West.  She developed in a liminal space in which new interactions of East and West played out in performance.  The history of how belly dance and its naming practices emerged into popular culture illustrates a complex cultural intermingling that incorporates issues of identity and representation.

 

Because the professional performance of dance is regarded as shameful in the Arab[8] world, and dancing professionally often means repudiation by one’s family, it is not a career often chosen by Muslim women who have other options.[9]  The 18th and 19th century travelers’ accounts that give us our first detailed information about dance and dancers in the East emphasize the fact that many of the performers are ethnically different from the mainstream: gypsies, Jews, Christian Armenians, and so on.  While the West clearly has a tradition of Western women performing the East in ways that consolidate its colonial vision, the East also has a tradition of outsider women performing the dance that transgresses appropriate roles for Muslim women, yet provides such an important social outlet for joy and celebration. 

 

In the 1950’s, in a spirit of multicultural interest, Arab nightclubs in American cities began to be frequented by non-Arabs, and belly dance began to catch on as mainstream entertainment.  At the same time, according to dancers, musicians and aficionados of the time, [10] it became difficult for Eastern dancers to get visas to come to the United States to perform.  Western dancers and variety performers began to see opportunities in the demand for belly dancers.  The Eastern expatriate community, too, saw the potential for its own entertainment needs to be met by Americans who were willing to learn the art.  Professional dancers’ adoption of stage names was encouraged – was in fact de rigueur, both in order to represent the exotic East to the Westerners who visited ethnic clubs, and to appropriately embody the beloved dance to Eastern expatriates.  Dancers who began performing at that time talk about being named by the restaurant owners, musicians, wives, other dancers, and other Eastern friends who took them under their collective wing and taught them how to be dancers in an Eastern milieu. 

 

So both Arab and non-Arab communities had a stake in the creation and the naming of the Western belly dancer.  The American could enjoy the spectacle of the Orient, embodied ironically in the Western women who danced it under suitably exotic aliases.  The Eastern expatriate could fill the available position of “foreign performer of our dance” with non-Arab women, thereby preserving both the cultural product of the East – however generic or inauthentic some renditions might be – and the integrity of the Muslim family. 

 

Demand for belly dancers continued into the 1970’s, and at this time, in alignment with the sexual revolution and the burgeoning of “women’s lib,” belly dance emerged into the mainstream as a pastime for ordinary women.  One thing everyone “knew” was that belly dancers had exotic names, and for many hobbyists, taking a dance name was part of the fun.  From fulfilling the audience’s fantasy of the beautiful and exotic, the dance name began to be more relevant to the fantasies of the woman who claimed it.  In the 2000’s, it is still common for dancers to use dance names.  Yet belly dance has proliferated and diversified in its popular manifestations.  While some dancers diligently study the latest Egyptian trends, others cultivate dreadlocks and tattoos and dance to techno music.  Often the names adopted by today’s belly dancers are not designed to imply an Arab identity.

 

This brief glance at the recent Western history of belly dance reveals that the dance name is not simply a Western appropriation of a fantasized East, but a creation of a fantasy that involved participation by both expatriate Middle Easterners and the Western women who were drawn to the dance.  Moreover, the power dynamics of the broader culture – an imperial gaze that defined and diminished the Eastern world – were, within the dance community, virtually reversed.  The Middle Eastern expatriates with whom belly dancers worked generally held positions of relative influence and power.  They were employers who could hire or fire, musicians who could make or break a dancer’s show, mentors who could help or withdraw.  Furthermore, in a time of widespread redefinition of gender roles, belly dancers performed their sensual art in the midst of an immigrant culture that was both more and differently patriarchal than the mainstream of American experience.  Consequently, the vision of one-way power politics that still sometimes haunt our readings of East-West interchange are undermined by the details of this vibrant period of cultural exchange.

 

Name, Status, Community

 

If the history I have outlined draws attention to the complexity of the dance name as a signifier of intercultural dynamics, the emic view, the view from within the dance community, reveals a system of knowing oneself and others that underscores fluid and differing relationships within the dance world, the general public, and the Arab expatriate community.  In what follows, I will discuss several perspectives that emerge from belly dancers’ narratives of how they got their names, exploring ideas of process, personal significance, self-exploration, and relationships with others, in particular the Arab community.  I will begin with the uses of narrative.

 

I began interviewing dancers about their names in 2004, but since early in my dance career, which began in 1975, I have often spoken with dancers on this topic.  Speaking about their names is something dancers do, and many of the naming stories I have heard had some polish on them, as they had been told again and again, gaining refinement and narrative direction.  Dance narratives say something about the values and experiences of the dancers who tell them.  Amani Jabril, for example, who has made a career in Arab-American relations, emphasizes the role of Arab friends in naming her, while the eclectic Maia Benezir emphasizes the input of family and friends.[11]  The narrative of Ilyana, a dancer oriented toward Tribal performance, emphasizes the suddenness and rightness of a flash of insight, while my own typical dance narrative emphasizes both my search for integration of the academic and the performative aspects of my life.  Different dancers do, of course, arrive at their names in different ways, but the slant of the dance narrative itself serves the sociological purposes of self-identification to others in the dance community.  What a dancer emphasizes may confer status, such as a name given by a well-known mentor or by Arabs in appreciation of the quality of her dance.  They may define what a dancer considers valuable or special in her own dancing: Ilyana’s openness to inspiration, for example.  The dance narrative usually contains a reference to the meaning of the name, which also gives insight into what the dancer considers important in her own relationship to the dance.  These stories are often shared when dancers are getting to know each other, and the question “How did you get your dance name?” often serves multiple purposes, answering some, though rarely all, of the questions dancers have about one another: “What do you consider important in dance?  Who is your teacher, mentor or friend?  What is your audience?” and so on.  The narrative of the dance name therefore serves multiple purposes within the dance community, allowing a fluid and casual negotiation of issues of values and status as well as a basis for illuminating the range of potential meanings of this multifaceted and diverse dance. 

 

Many dancers specify that the dance name is a reflection of something deeply personal that the dance has enabled in them.  The arrival at a dance name may be portrayed as a sudden choice, an outside intervention, or a determined search, but fundamental to it is the function of the name as a code for revealing the essence of the dancing self. 

 

Ilyana’s narrative, mentioned above, emphasizes a flash of sudden inspiration.  She does not, however, mention a meaning for her name, which is a central trope in other naming stories; still, the way in which the dance name came is the key to her essence as a dancer.   At the other extreme, many dancers describe choosing a name as a deliberative process, pursued seriously until the right name is finally found.  Sabine, a dancer for sixteen years, took her dance name only after she’d been dancing for seven years.  “I wanted an old name … I did not want a name that was cute or flirtatious, as that does not fit my style of dance … Sabine is an ancient tribal name.”  Maia Benazir enlisted her friends’ help in choosing a name that would suit her.  “I found a list of names that sounded good, and were easy to pronounce … and meant something.  I sent the list to my friends, and it came back unanimous: My full name means: the creative force that flows through everything the likes of which have not been seen before.” 

 

The name’s meaning is usually significant: so significant that some dancers feel that their dance names may actually work to integrate aspects of the self that have been closed out of their everyday experience of life.  “I was not comfortable enough to go onstage as me – I really needed something to hide behind,” says Pandora.  “My little shy self needed a big arrogant character to play with and to literally get lost in… now the stage persona isn’t totally separate from me but just another part of me.”  Badriya comments, “I am somewhat shy and reserved in real life … I thought a stage name would be a way to shed all that when I got on stage while still maintaining an air of mystery.”   Surraleah also feels this element of wholeness: “Throughout my life, I have tended to be ‘careful,’ introspective and even introverted.  Through dance I have discovered the other side of my persona … the exuberant, the passionate, the full-of-life side of me that many times had remained hidden in mundane daily activities.  I am not a “different” person when I dance.  I am a COMPLETE person.”  In essence, the name represents an aspect of the self that is honored in dancing, or it allows an integration of spirit that may not arise spontaneously in the mundane world. 

 

These naming stories reflect an aspect of belly dance that has been a part of its rhetoric since its American blossoming in the 1960’s : the notion that it induces and supports a freedom from punishing cultural restraints.  The dance name is an aspect of a dance persona that adds something to the dancer’s real life.  What is adds may be perceived as a new aspect of the self, one that fades in mundane existence: Jill/Faizeh’s breath of incense, for example.  It may also be described, as in Badriya’s narrative, as an integrating factor that spills out into the dancer’s experience of mundane life.  This interesting bifurcation of what the name represents seems, in either case, to endow the dance name with a mystical significance: either to unite the soul or to nurture the oppositions which exist within it. 

 

While the dance name is clearly important to one’s identity as a dancer (and often as a person), one aspect that is glaringly absent in the recent narratives of dance names is the idea that the dance name represents an Arab persona.[12]  While professional dancers of the 1960’s and ‘70’s might well have taken exotic names to perpetuate the illusion of the foreign seductress, I have not found in dancers of more recent years the idea that taking an Arabic name represents an attempt to pass as an Arab, or that an Arabic dance name will cause them to be mistaken for “real” Eastern women.  Indeed, many of the belly dance names of the 2000’s are not of Arabic (or Turkish, or Iranian) provenance.  For one thing, many dancers have embraced dance styles, such as American Tribal Style  and Tribal Fusion, which are based on Middle Eastern techniques but depart substantially from traditional Eastern aesthetics.  They often do not take dance names, or take names that are not Arabic.  Some traditional belly dancers also have non-Arabic names.  Amongst those who do use Arabic names, the majority treat Arabic something like a code.  It allows them to choose names that have the dual purpose, to paraphrase Maia Benezir, of sounding nice and meaning something. 

 

Nevertheless, implicit in these stories is the idea that the dance name has to be something that the dancer instinctively recognizes as meaning herself, regardless of whether it is her given name or one she or someone else chose. 

 

The adoption of a dance name is something of a rite of passage, a fact of which belly dancers seem to be aware.  Most dancers take a dance name around the time of the first performance, even though that performance might only be a studio party.  For some, this provides an opportunity to become known by names they have already chosen; others may feel pressure to choose a name that does not meet the criterion of inner resonance.  The choice of name is usually accomplished without ceremony or formality: the dancer simply informs people of how she would like to be known, and that is that.  Now she has an answer to the questions, “What’s your dance name?” and “How did you get it?”  Because the beginning of performance is so often the opportunity for the dancer to begin to use a dance name, being called by one’s dance name is often a welcome sign of status in the dance community.  As Shareen el Safy, who has taught upper-level dance seminars across the United States and Europe, comments, “In my experience, dancers like to be called by their dance names.  It’s an acknowledgement of  their achievement in dance – something they’ve earned.”  The dancer Ilyana observes that being called by her dance name is “ an acknowledgement of years of work …. thousands of hours of rehearsals and stress and exhilaration and laughter …”  Not to belabor the point, but in many societies, significant rites of passage may be marked by the bestowal of a new name, whose use consolidates the new identity both personally and in the social context.[13]  For the emerging dancer, hearing her new name spoken in public cements her identity as a “professional.”[14]

 

Although it has aspects of a rite of passage, for many dancers the choice of a dance name is an iterative process, one which involves trial and error, and may reflect growth as a dancer and a person over the years.  Many dancers have stories of first names that didn’t work, or of being pressured into taking a dance name when they ultimately preferred to use their given name.  For example, Tribal style dancer Sharon Moore says, “I picked a name because ‘everyone had a name.’  I felt I had to have a name because that is what everyone does.”  She eventually dropped it.  Nita Collins comments, “When my stage name was announced and I would go out and dance, I always felt kinda like a fake.”  She eventually stopped using a stage name.  Others “outgrow” a name, or need a name that is “a better fit.”  Malika Negwa says, “I used to have a different stage name – no one could ever remember it.  Then I changed it to Malika … meaning Queen, which fit my dance persona perfectly.”  This aspect of process represents the perception that one grows into the dance over time, and that development, improvement, and even radical changes of perspective, are all part of the potentialities of this dance form.  As the dancer matures, both as a person and as a dancer, the important issue of her name for herself may reflect this growth.  Again, the motif of growth and transformation through belly dance emerges in the tropes of the name.

 

The Arab Community and the Name

 

While some dancers journey inwardly for their name, for others, the name reflects connections with the Arab community.  In my own experience and that of the many dancers with whom I have spoken, Arab audiences generally prefer for a dancer to use an Arabic dance name.  It shows that she is willing to identify herself with that community in a fundamental way.   Many dancers of all generations have stories of names bestowed by beloved teachers or by dancers or others in the Arab community.  A few examples suffice: For Suzanna del Vecchio, the change was slight: she was dancing as Suzanne, and the musicians who announced her made it “Suzanna.”  The dancer Amani Jabril was given her name by a Saudi friend who had trouble pronouncing her given name.  Soon “Amani” was how she was known to her Arab friends, so it was a short step to using that as her dance name.  My own protégée, Samra, was named by the Lebanese owner of the first restaurant where she danced.  It was an important acknowledgement of her acceptance as a professional dancer by those whose culture she was representing.  For Taaj fi Qalbi, an Arab friend’s bestowal of her surname signaled an appreciation of an element of her dancing she valued herself.  Shareen el Safy was honored beyond her expectation when the Egyptian dance star Hala Safy gave her her own surname.  Likewise, the dancer A'isha Azar performed for years in a restaurant run by the Azar family.  When she asked the proprietor if she could use his last name for her dance articles, he told her, “A’isha, you are an Azar.” 

 

For these dancers and many others, the dance name reflects an identity that is formed both in the context of, and with the complicity of, the Arab expatriate community.  While aspects of belly dance in the West may reflect a fantasy orient in which the orientalist tropes of sensual and spiritual interweaving, seductive leisure, and timeless luxury converge, many dancers who move into the professional realm, or whose local community contains a substantial Arab element, find themselves participating in a truly Eastern art.  For these dancers, many of the now-standard  interpretations of Western women dancing the East – the spectacle of white women performing racial otherness, the reduction of the East to a timeless imaginative space – have little relevance.  For dancers who work in a largely Arab (or Turkish, or Iranian) milieu, the dance name reflects the mastery of a difficult and subtle dance language whose requirements (e.g. emotional content, a circularity of exchange between dancer and audience, and rhythm or music styles that require specific qualities of movement) they have troubled to learn.  It is impossible to learn them without participating in, and privileging, the Arab community. 

 

“The Beautiful, the Exotic …”

 

The title of this paper devolves from an experience I had while living and performing in New Zealand some twenty-five years ago.  Although I was not using a dance name at the time, the proprietor of the Greek-Cypriot venue in which I was to perform did not want to introduce me as “Andrea,” since that was a man’s name in Greek.  We ultimately compromised on “Anathea,” a name with which I felt little connection, and abandoned after leaving New Zealand.  But whenever I performed in this venue, I would hear myself announced, “And here she is – the beautiful, the exotic … Anathea!”

 

“The beautiful” was not always an element in the Western view of belly dance, which countless 19th century accounts described as twitching, convulsing, jerking, and contorting, while its performers were described as fat, ugly, greasy-skinned and -haired, and personally repulsive in other ways.  When Western women, from Ruth St. Denis to Vaudeville’s Salomes, began portraying the East in droves from the early 1900’s on, the popular imagination remembered the beauty of the painter’s odalisques, and allowed the “Eastern” dancer to partake of it, even while placing the significance of her beauty largely in the sexual realm. 

 

“The exotic”?  Sometime by the 1920’s, “exotic dance” became a euphemism for dance with an overtly sexual content, while the more decorous definition of “exotic” as “foreign” or “outlandish” remained in play.  When belly dancers joined the array of legitimate nightclub acts in 1950’s America, they represented the exotic East with an overtone of the “other” sort of exoticism.  But what did I, with my fair skin and flying red hair, represent to the largely Cypriot expatriate audiences for which I was dancing in New Zealand?  It might have been the exoticism the Westerner attributes to the Orient; after all, Greeks have tended to ascribe an Eastern origin to hip- and torso-centered dance despite its longstanding presence as an integral part of Greek folk dance tradition.  But the exoticism I represented may also have been a different sort: the exoticism of the wild and heedless American girl who lacks modesty and propriety, or who is willing to sacrifice them for a little onstage adventure.

 

In the revisions of post-colonial theory of the 1980’s and ‘90’s, the idea has emerged, in several manifestations, that the true motion of the Western uses of the East is not a simple one-way imposition of the colonial power’s vision, but a more viscous sort of interchange, in which the sites of contact between different cultures – perhaps cultures that cannot be defined as purely Eastern or Western – together create the realities of the colonial moment.

 

This is certainly the case in the world of belly dance in the West.  One of the classic tropes of orientalism is the binary opposition of East/feminine/feminized and West/masculine/masculinized.  But in my dance world, this trope was reversed: Eastern expatriate males have hired me, fired me, praised me, ignored me, guided me, honored me, treated me with scorn or respect or resentment or affection, played the music I craved or given me a boring set with their eyes half closed, and in many other ways, shaped my experience of the dance.  The feminized and feminine West came knocking at the door of the masculine East, and was welcomed or turned away in patterns that had to do more with the specific subculture of belly dance than with the colonialist perspectives of the broader orientalist discourse.

 

My name was often a topic of conversation in those shifting sands.  Why did I not take an Arabic name?  “Andrea” was musical enough to suffice, but I – like other dancers with whom I have spoken over the years – was often treated to masculine conversations about what my name should be.  Should I be Aziza?  No?  then Helwa, or Asmahan?  No?  Jehan?  In the end, it took an edict from my male, Lebanese mentor, Ibrahim “Bobby” Farrah, to reinforce my decision to dance under my given name.  “Bobby says Andrea is the perfect name for you,” his assistant informed me.  So let it be written, so let it be done.

 

The process of achieving a belly dance name may or may not take place in an Arab context, and it may or may not be a difficult process, as it sometimes was with me.  But in the dance world at large, it remains a trope of internal search and internal meaning, whether that meaning is discovered by your self, your teacher, your friends, or your Arab mentors or employers.  It is consciously a symbol of both accomplishment and community.  Together the history of dance names in the West, the guiding paradigms of post-colonial theory, and the narratives of dancers show the variety of meanings this claiming of identity can take.  Ultimately, the dancer’s adoption of a dance name reflects far more than a one-sided colonialist appropriation of the Orient as an imaginative space.  It is a process in which many kinds of personal relationships, whether they are friendships or power struggles, contribute to a process in which personal identity must continually be reassessed in the light of new knowledge.  It is a process which must be continually retold, and occasionally rewritten, as the bonds of friendship, working relationships, and community require.  The variability of the narrative of the dance name is a microcosm of the variability of the Western subject in the discourses of orientalism, and the continuing rewriting of real and imagined relationships in the liminal space of performance.

 

 

 

 


[1] Raqs sharqi translates as “Eastern dance.” According to the late choreographer and dance historian Mohammed Khalil and other Egyptian artists, the term appears to have been coined sometime between 1910 and 1930 in Egypt, as an element of the transformation of the solo dance into a glamorous, urban form.  The term “belly dance” is a translation of “danse du ventre,” which appears to have emerged in the late 19th century, and in America at least, came to replace the more polite term previously in use, “oriental dance.”  The term “belly dance” itself was not in widespread popular use before about 1950, but when the dance emerged into the American mainstream, “belly dance” was apparently everyone’s term of choice.

[2] On the parallels of dance and other Islamic arts, see Lois Ibsen al Faruqi, “Dance as an Expression of Islamic Culture,” Dance Research Journal 10.2 (1976) 6-17.  On the emotional focus of performance art in the urban Islamic world, see Ali Jihad Racy, Making Music in the Arab World: The Culture and Artistry of Tarab.  Cambridge: The Cambridge University Press, 2003.

[3] Dancer-researcher Shareen el Safy, who has done dozens of interviews with Egyptian dancers over the past 20 years, has observed that even when she asked specifically about self-expression in the dance, the dancers with whom she spoke were puzzled about what exactly she meant, although emotional experience was a key element of their performance.  Personal communication, 3/13/2005.

[4] Fatima Mernissi, Scheherezade Goes West.  New York Washington Square Press, 2001, 208-220.

[5] I use the term “dance name” rather than “stage name” because even dancers who do not perform professionally – or perhaps at all – may take dance names.

[6] Reina Lewis, Gendering Orientalism: Race, Femininity, and Representation.  London and New York: Routledge, 1996: 4.

[7] As articulated, for example, in Jane Desmond’s study of Ruth St. Denis’s Radha (“Dancing out the Difference: Cultural Imperialism and Ruth St. Denis’s Radha of 1906.” Moving History/Dancing Cultures: A Dance History Reader.  Ed. Ann Dils and Ann Cooper Albright.  Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 2001: 256-70) and Amy Koritz’s treatment of Maude Allan’s The Vision of Salome (“Dancing the Orient For England: Maude Allan’s ‘The Vision of Salome.’” Theater Journal 46.1 (March 1994): 63-78.

[8] In this paper, I use the term “Arab” loosely to include all the peoples of the Middle East.  I use it both because Arabs are the dominant ethnic group with whom belly dancers deal in the West, and because “Arab, Turkish and Iranian” is too awkward to repeat frequently.  There are, of course, different cultural beliefs and practices between different areas of the Middle East, and between different individuals from within any given culture. 

[9] The most complete study of the social difficulties faced by professional dancers is Karin Van Nieuwkerk, A Trade Like Any Other: Female Singers and Dancers in Egypt.  Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1995.  More recently, Natasha Senkovich’s 2006 film, The Belly Dancers of Cairo (Arc), reveals that the difficulties described by van Nieuwkerk’s informants have not much changed.   

[10] My information on this period comes from years of conversations with dancers who performed then, as well as from personal narratives published in The Gilded Serpent’s North Beach  Project, (http://www.gildedserpent.com/articles5/northbeach/newnbhallway.htm).  Most informative on these issues was Morocco (Carolina Varga-Dinicu), based in New York, whose performance career began around 1960.  The defining work on the development of the Arab club scene, which focuses on the creation of a hybrid musical style, is Anne Rasmussen’s “An Evening in the Orient: The Middle Eastern Nightclub in America,” Belly Dance: Orientalism, Transnationalism, and Harem Fantasy.  Ed. Anthony Shay and Barbara Sellers-Young.  Costa Mesa, California: Mazda Publishers, 2005.

[11] Most of the quotes from the naming narratives in this paper are from either face to face or e-mail interviews by me; a few others are culled from Internet discussion groups.

[12] Looking Arabic, though, and being mistaken for an Arab by either ignorant audiences or Arabs impressed with one’s dancing, are tropes in the discussions of the belly dance community.  Dancers who “look Arabic” are aware that they may be seen as Arabs by their Western audiences, and this mistaken identification is often seen as a commercial advantage, in that some Western audiences prefer to maintain the idea that they are being entertained by exotic foreigners.  I have not heard any dancer ascribe a meaning to this that goes beyond the professional entertainer’s views of the empoying audience as untutored and open to manipulation.  At the same time, in contrast to the 1950’s through early 1970’s, it is uncommon for dancers who do not look Arabic to try to “get the look”; the dance persona, together with the dance name, are elements of the performing self rather than mutable elements that can be transformed to the expectations of the audience.

[13] See, for example, Rubie S. Watson, “The Named and the Nameless: Gender and Person in Chinese Society.”  Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective.  3rd Edition.  Ed. Caroline Bretell and Carolyn F. Sargeant.  Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001, 166-178.

[14] “Professional” is a loosely used term in the belly dance world.  Of the many dancers teaching and performing in the United States today, very few make their living wholly from dance (or without substantial reliance on a partner for financial support).  In general, the meanings of “professional” range from “someone who has been paid at least once for a dance performance” to “someone who often dances for pay or has often danced for pay in the past” to “someone who makes a living from dance.”

 

Bibliography

 

Al Faruqi, Lois Ibsen.  “Dance as an Expression of Islamic Culture,” Dance Resource Journal 10.2 (1976) 6-17.

Desmond, Jane.  “Dancing out the Difference: Cultural Imperialism and Ruth St. Denis’s Radha of 1906.”  Moving History/Dancing Cultures: A Dance History Reader.  Ed. Ann Dils and Ann Cooper Albright.  Middletown, Connecticutt: Wesleyan University Press, 2001. 256-70.

Koritz, Amy. “Dancing the Orient For England: Maude Allan’s ‘The Vision of Salome.’” Theater Journal 46.1 (March 1994) 63-78.

Lewis, Reina. Gendering Orientalism: Race, Femininity, and Representation.  London and New York: Routledge, 1996.

Mernissi, Fatima. Scheherezade Goes West.  New York: Washington Square Press, 2001.

Racy, Ali Jihad. Making Music in the Arab World: The Culture and Artistry of Tarab.  Cambridge: The Cambridge University Press, 2003. 

Rasmussen, Anne.  “An Evening in the Orient: The Middle Eastern Nightclub in America.”  Belly Dance: Orientalism, Transnationalism, and Harem Fantasy.  Ed. Anthony Shay and Barbara Sellers-Young.  Costa Mesa, California: Mazda Publishers, 2005.

Senkovich, Natasha. The Belly Dancers of Cairo.  Arc, 2006.

Van Nieuwkerk, Karin. A Trade Like Any Other: Female Singers and Dancers in Egypt.  Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1995.

Watson, Rubie S. “The Named and the Nameless: Gender and Person in Chinese Society.”  Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective. 3rd Edition.  Ed. Caroline Bretell and Carolyn F. Sargeant.  Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001. 166-178.

 

© 2007, Andrea Deagon

 

Andrea Deagon received her Ph.D. from Duke University in 1984, and is now an Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where she directs the Classical Studies program and teaches Women’s Studies.  She has taught and performed oriental dance from her late teens.  Her essays on dance appear regularly in Habibi.