March 2005 Archives
[Originally written for a thread on tribe.net, but I went into Angry Young Black Man mode, so it's here, now. Needed some bloody content, anyway...]
There's the original issue about the Islamic culture slowly turning against guy raqs dancers as it became more anti-female. Mohammad himself was very pro-women, and his first wife was a rich trader who subsidized his early preaching. As things like veiling became mandatory, you start to see, especially in the early 'Abbisid cultures, fewer and fewer women able to function in the public sphere.
By the time the European culture was regularly interacting with the various Islamic gov't (starting, really, in the late 1500's), it was a series of cultures were women had almost no voice. One thing that dance provided was a space for non-traditional women --and men -- to function and make money; there's references, for example, to dancers being lesbians in Ottoman culture, and I think we all know, by now, the intrinsic built-in nature of one's sexual preferences. Needless to say, they weren't getting anywhere in the mainstream cultures, so dance provided a space for them to live in.
And the Europeans managed to rip much of that away. By the time of the infamous World's Fair, the concept of male dancers as a professional group had just about died out; the Europeans who spent tons of cash in the Middle East didn't want to see them! So they began to shy away even more, and the women flourished in this realm, which lead to late-Victorian era Europeans basically telling everyone that only women danced, because all they'd see were women dancers. Hello, Catch 22!
As a result of the European preference for female dancers, the already-disreputable concept of anyone making money from dancing took, from the guy's perspective, another, near-final blow. Men in the modern Middle East, with damn few exceptions, don't dance for money, _ever_. It's harum, taboo, and, from what I understand, about as well-regarded as whores in our mainstream American culture, but not quite the same; the sad sub-context of "you're not good enough to make money any other way" is emphasized to a horrific degree when it's a Middle Eastern guy who's dancing for cash. Dancing for fun? A-OK if you're allowed to dance in general, and that issue is one that I'll just stay off of, for now. I think this'll be long enough!
Anyway, so the Europeans start with an idea of this dance as being a) too damn sexy for words, and b) for women only. Thanks to an oral tradition, the Western concept of "authoritative texts", and the now-traditional Middle Eastern snubbing of anything that smacks of dance, the history gets written that raqs is female-only, because that's all anyone really cares to remember, and it's certainly all they ever see! And that's where you start to see the Western concept of Orentalism (as explained by Edward Said) really begin to hit hard against the concept on this dance. In the West, you start to see the "belly dancer as half-naked sexpot" ideal that all the record covers of the 30's through the 609's are famous for. Worse, it's replicated on the Eastern side by the construction of the raqs shaquri edifice, with the sexy and eye-catching bedlah reflecting the sexuality that the Western travelers (not to mention the now oil-rich Saudis, who are completely entranced by the idea of nearly-naked women) expect, and pay big bucks for. Sex sells, history gets flushed down the toilet, and women become very talented sex objects -- again. (c.f. qaina, the famous highly-trained and costly slave women/dancers of the 'Abbisid era.)
So. Now comes the feminist era...and the reclamation of raqs, specifically raqs shaquri. Now, women have a powerful tool to work out the issues regarding sexuality with. Since it's "women-only", guys can't be part of the "inner circle", making it a safe space. Since it's a solo dance, it's empowering to the women who feel that any form of criticism is part of the "patriarchal structure". Since it's from "over there", there's no rules for anyone to really follow. So you now get to have "guilt-free sexuality/sensuality", since it's re-worked with feminist symbols and meaning. And then comes the re-re-working into Goddess theology, where belly dance is the direct descendant of sacred women priesthoods. For those women, there will be NO reconciling with men being an active part of the dance, no matter what historical references I throw out.
