October 2006 Archives
The NY Times has an extensive article on the handful of dancers making up Iraq's still-extant National Dance Troupe. You can read the entire article for the next two weeks or so at "On Dangerous Footing in Iraq, Where Dancing Is a Courageous Act". Highly recommended; we here in the West sometimes forget....well, we forget a lot of things, I reckon. Things like:
[...]one of its members, Bushra Yousif, 21, a petite woman with delicate features who has been with the group for six years, received a note at home warning her to leave within 48 hours. A bullet was included in the envelope.She was probably singled out because of her profession, she said, but she will continue to attend rehearsals every day. She loves dancing too much, she said describing it as the highest form of art to "deliver a message through your body."
"Dying for this group would be like being martyred," she said, adding that it is a risk she accepts.
Dying for your art. How did we come to this? How did a country come to such a horrific proposition?
Be clear -- it is not the United States trying to kill artists. As much as our adventure in Iraq allowed this situation to fester and boil, it is native and nearly extremist elements at the core of this crisis. The artists, the doctors, the makers of things and the sharp in mind, are the future of Iraq as a peaceful, multi-cultural, and deep democratic society, one that respects all of it's people, not just the ones cowed into submission*. As they go to ground, or outright leave Iraq, the country falls further and further in the laps of those who eschew reasoned discourse for religious discord. Every attempt to pressure, or worse, kill such people is on more step on the way to a Islamic theocracy born of fear for the future.
And, for once, I have no idea how to stop it, no bromides as to a resolution. I'm still looking for a paddle for this creek...
* And yes, I use that word for both it's meanings in this context.
[...] the Gospels tell us that on the cross itself, as Jesus' last words, he cried out "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" His last words were of doubt, doubt that God was not there - the doubt these fanatics want to expunge from true faith.
I would never directly compare the interactions of people in raqs to the rich, and enriching*, chaos of religious obligation and belief. But I will talk about why I doubt almost everything that comes down the pike, when it comes to raqs shaquri -- especially historical information. And that's because almost everything is about the myths we tell, and the lies that make us feel better.
In another venue, I recently posted about a short film, a documentary of bravery and dance. I said, and meant, that it reminded me that, for many people, raqs shaquri, and the related forms, are works of healing as much as anything. We allow people to dance fully and completely, in ways that many other forms do not -- imagine being, say, 30 and starting to work at Ballet? It's powerful, a potent brew to change your entire world-view with, if it hooks you.
Yet we also allow, and sometimes encourage, people to personalize the dance. Because of the "mysterious background" which goes along with the "mysterious dance", because the dance's history is murky even amongst it's home environment, an environment not always happy to see dancing, it's easy to make a mark on it, to convince yourself that the mirage you see is the reality of the form. And it's not.
Not that I have a monopoly on the truth. But the all-too-common myth-as-fact that surrounds our form, the multitude of "origin stories" that no one ever bothers to document, and the insistence on "my truth" -- be it about the importance of Egyptian/Turkish/Lebanese style, or the "ATS is the best Tribal ever" commentary, make me tired and old. One can have respect for a form without being beholden to it.
Thus, I try my best to be the Doubting Thomas in the party, no matter the cost. To be the Apostate, the one no one's quite sure about. Because I cannot, and should not, say "this is true". That would be aligning myself with people and ideals I cannot believe in. Rather, I align myself with the seekers, the doubters, the Thomas of raqs shaquri, always looking for that next great kernel of truth to take home and polish.
Belief is not cheap. It costs. And if I'm going to believe in something, it must stand on stronger ground that my anger and frustration that the winds of style do not blow in a direction I care for. I must be able to prove, via a pattern very similar to the proving of Islamic hadiths, that what I say is not just my word, but the word of others of trustworthy character and thoughtfulness. Others must be able to follow the same road I have, and come to similar conclusions. In other words, the Scientific Hypothesis, the tool of doubters, everywhere, is my guide.
What I believe is unimportant. What I can prove, invaluable. Thus, I am, and will always be, an Apostate.
Racism, bigotry, and similar problems aren't at the root of Man's Inhumanity to Man, but they are the cover for the acts that define evil. That so many Americans are casual bigots towards "swarthy" people, is disturbing in itself. And I remind convinced that our horrific repudiation of habus corpus is centered around the belief that "they" will be the targets, not "me and mine".
Just wait, you stupid, stupid fools. Just wait and see where such laws lead, if left on the books. Many of us are going to fight to have them removed, because that's worth fighting for. I was naive to believe that it would never get on...but I'll not make that mistake twice, I assure you.
And others fight in other arenas. Jousting with the right-wing extremists is never a fun and happy moment; as the core of the so-called "anti-Islamofacist" movement, they have a religious zeal in avoiding all aspects of the religion, lest they be...hell, I dunno what the hell they're thinking. And neither, in some ways, does Ali Eteraz, an American Muslim who has taken the time to go into online fora devoted to right-wing causes and talk about Islam. His last adventure along those lines was in the Ann Coulter Official Chat space, where he encountered...well, I'll allow him to speak:
[...] I want to say that getting Muhammad called a pedophile, terrorist and misogynist didn't hurt me. Neither did it hurt that Allah was not even recognized as the same God as that of the Jews and Christians. It didn't even hurt that the thread was shut down. What hurt most was the way in which I was blatantly excluded from the conversation as if I were completely invisible. There were postings and conversations in which the commentators spoke to each other about "he," "the guy," "the Muslim apologist," "this experiment." It was as if I was not there. I was not Ali Eteraz. I didn't have a name. They described and discussed me without acknowledging me. I was no more to them than a vague idea. Not a person, but a pronoun. It was the most blatant case of linguistic exclusion I have ever experienced because even when a man has called me sand-nigger, it has been to my face and I have felt his spittle hit me and felt the actual tangibility of the moment. [Emphasis his.]
Knowing a bit about that sort of reaction, I concur. It's always easier to be confronted by hatred, at least for myself. The passive/aggressive approach is painful; it means someone has taken your voice away, and considers your word as less important than, say, their pet. How much more demeaning that than to be called "boy", or spit at, or have bottles thrown at you. At least then, you know there is hate, and you can confront it. Ali's confrontation is to be commended, and I strongly recommend the full reading of at least the entry referenced above.
What Ali describes is the work of the worst type of coward. The kind that hides behind the anonymity of the Internet, the distance between the computer and the world. The kind that distances themselves from acts that rip the Constitution in half, because it's all just on a computer screen. You can almost hear them saying "it's not real, now is it? When IO help those in power advocate laws that threaten "those" people, it's not real either; they don't count as people, after all. No real person would support Bin Laden; anyone who does, anyone who's part of that world, deserves whatever they get. And every Muslim is part of that world."
This is how they think. And the after-shocks of their thinking will display, to one and all, why they deserve the title of "narrow-minded".
If we, as a country, as a world, survive them, that is.
[Hat tip to Michael J. Totten for the initial reference; he's another blog you should be reading.]
Of course, now we have much of this computerized; most libraries have an online subscription to catalogs that'll do the work for you, no need to dig through dusty tombs. And now Google makes the research even easier. There's a Google News Archive that goes pretty far back, decades in some cases, to make it easy-as-pie to see not only the history of raqs shaquri from a mainstream POV, but also it's ups and downs. I've long maintained that you can map the interest in the dance by the articles in mainstream publications, and I daresay the Google News Archive entry for "Belly Dance" is a cool way to do some interesting research along those lines.
What's nearly as interesting when you read around is how we, as dancers, talk about the dance. We are getting farther and father away from the language of fantasy, and more references to the reality of the form are present in the articles coming down the pike today. Sadly, the old prejudices and biases pop up as well, from poorly-thought-out reporting on "lascivious hips" and "heaving bosoms", to dancer instructors being quoted as blindly reciting one of the "Belly Dance Origins" where they've clearly not done any research, or even credible reading. There's a lot of work to do.
When I wrote my Root Magazine article(s) on "The Continual Re-Mixing of 'Bellydance'", I spent some time avoiding the Elephant in the room, and trying to give all sides in this debate a positive spin. It wasn't the place, nor the time, to re-hash decade+ long arguments about the birth and intersection of Tribal from Raqs Shaquri; it was enough work just trying to give entertaining evidence for the overall act of raqs having grown and evolved in ways that we, as dancers, tend not to consider. We have few historians in the Western sense of someone at least once-removed from the actions involved; like Winston Churchill, many of our historians made history. And being in the way of history tends to expand your viewpoint...but also narrow it. Part of my goal was to be as detached as possible from whatever I'd been involved with, look at the data, and write about the historical track from a hopefully-new and innovative perspective.
Even though I didn't touch overmuch upon the brawl between Tribal and Raqs Shaquri, it was, and is, on my mind. This article, based on a talk the author gave, gives a hint as to part of that solution. This bit reached out and struck me hard enough to force fingers to keyboard:
STYLE IS NOT TO BE TRUSTED.
[...]style is irrelevant. In every one of these cases, from extreme abstraction to acute naturalism they are extraordinary regardless of the style. It's absurd to be loyal to a style. It does not deserve your loyalty.
Given that many people I know can barely tell the difference between Awalim and Fat Chance, it's obvious that, in many cases, the issue is far more about style than about any sort of substance. We're reacting, in many cases, to the appropriation of something like ethnic identity from native cultures, and re-working them in a Western mode. And there's a lot one can say about that, for both good and ill, but it rarely is heard over the Greek Chorus of Doom that some in the Dance community lay down upon the altar of Tribal. Which is interesting, given the amount of Hollywoodism that's part and parcel of 20th Century Raqs Shaquri -- a part that Tribal clearly rejects.
I contend that dancers, on average, fall in love with the dance from it's look and feel, it's style, rarely with the movements underneath; that seems to come later, after the sequins and veils, or cholis and tattoos, draw us in. Our internal fights reflect this, reflect that interest and focus in how we look over anything else. I fear the word "superficial" comes to mind, yet it's not, in a way; even as I underline the point of the quote, that style is unimportant, it also is true that, if nothing else, that which drew you in might draw a mainstream person out. And that's important to remember.
What's also important to remember is that the core issue is not to be pure, especially in art, but to encourage excellence and skill. Art survives because artists thrive. And in this climate in the West, especially in America, we risk far more by locking out honest artistic effort than to be open to new interpretations, even if they might be unwise, or even offensive. The work to do for education of new dancers is immense, and really hasn't been done -- but that's a whole story in itself. Worse, much of what is out there pushes a certain style -- rightly or wrongly -- without realizing that the best option for encouraging dancers is not to bludgeon them with your historical viewpoints, but to encourage them to seek out and study for excellence in whatever style that aim to go for.
Why skill over all other concerns? Skill and excellence, in and of themselves, teach nothing about ethics and social norms. Yet exposure teaches much, and travel -- be it to different countries or different teachers -- broadens the mind. Stepping out of one's "Style Chamber" teaches about how to look at dance from other angles. And striving for excellence over style teaches how to focus on substance over style. From there, the student will be more likely to understand the history in a deep and meaningful way, and to pick and choose based upon her/his real interests, rather than cloning the teacher's personal passions and studies.
With a cadre of dancers trained to be great dancers first, we would, indeed, see a sea change of dance. Now, as to how to educated them...hmmm.
All dance is open, right? I think we can all agree that it's nearly impossible to hide the structure of dance from anyone who's watching. But have you considered what else in this world is open to viewing, bare for all to see? And, perhaps, the positive implications of that openness?
One of the unsung reasons why the World Wide Web grew so quickly was HTML -- an open language. Not only was it not controlled by any one company, but it also cannot be hidden -- everyone's web page is unhidden, the code used to build it is always there to look at, legal or not. It made it easy to learn from...but you had to be willing to learn. And it's rare that anyone learned anything of importance from copying web pages; I've seen many a friend try it, watched people over the last 10+ years work, time and again, to make a page look like Amazon, or EBay, or any number of big-name places. And they always fail at copying, but the rare, rare few succeed at making something new of their own devices.
Imagine that with regards to choreography -- more to the point, the occasional fear I hear from some dancers that they'll have their choreography stolen. The implication is that the thief is looking to make their place in the world off someone else's hard work. And it's true that, from a legal and even ethical sense, performing someone else choreography is taking bread from the mouth of babes. No one's getting rich off this dance, and you're stealing from people who need to make money so they can keep learning, and in turn teaching us. No one's going to learn if we're all having to work at McDonalds in between gigs, right?
Which is why, of course, you should just give away your choreography to anyone who'll attribute them to you.
...before you loose your shit, let me explain. My primary instructor for years was Zarifa, who started studying with Cassandra of MN way back when, soon after Cassandra moved from San Fran, leaving Jamila behind. Cassandra gave Zarifa leave to teach us her coreographies, and we did, especially when she's come back from one of Cassandra's dance camps. And one time, we learned one in time to perform it in front of Cassandra, or dance Grandmother. First time meeting her, first time taking class from her, and here we are with the gall to do one of her works. Ballsy, eh?
And then, we found out that Cassandra was going to do The Very Coreography We Were Doing. I don't recall panicking...but you know, one's memories are always suspect. What was not so suspect was that we had to bring our A game, or else we'd look even more like chumps. But we didn't. We didn't shine, but we kicked it pretty well, even if I did goof on a couple of segments. And Cassandra, as headliner, was after us...thank goodness.
And she went on...and went on to make us look like chumps -- although I'm more than certain that wasn't her point; she was just dancing. She shined throughout her choreography, adding little bits, personalizing it, all while dancing easy and smooth, like she was walking through a field of daises -- that "glide-like movement" that many of the best Egyptian dancers have, and which so many of us strive to emulate. It kicked our collected asses to the curb, and showed us how much farther we had to go in the field. No. Competition.
Anyone can steal a choreography...or a web site. But very, very few are Cassandras, or Amazon.coms. A choreography is not a dancer, no more than a website's HTML is a web designer. Even if someone stole 3-4 of your dances, it's their technical ability that still shines through in every move they make.
For someone who're trying to make their mark as a dancer, can you imaging the power, and the prestige, of having dancers throughout the country put your name as the designer of their dance in flyers, and announced before they perform? There's even easy-to-use licenses that can make that good and legal. Take one step beyond, then, put the written outline of the choreographies online, with a link to the video of you performing it on your website, or on Revver (where the ads can get you money). Now, imagine the traffic they'd get, and the offers to come teach in it person? Anyone can, in theory, learn a choreography from a video and a writeup. Yet the point of a seminar is to learn it right, and in depth, and consistently, and to learn as a dancer, not just as a mover of muscles; that's hard to learn from copying, as all-too-many dancers have shown. Your point is to encourage people to hire you to do that, and making a name for yourself as a talented choreographer is one way to do that.
That's what 2 minutes of dancing felt like. That's what 20+ years of thinking and doing dance felt like on this body, so laden of late with more mundane and mental concerns. That's part of the seduction of dance, that we transcend this world of care. If you love, you can dance. On some level, and even without music, dance is the expression of love, spoken without words.
It's easy to forget why I fell in love with dancing, these days. Why it thrills my soul to wake up at 5am to dance, even as my body and mind struggle to follow along, and so often these days fail to do so. Why I miss teaching, with all the chaos and stress of the job. Why I wanted to follow my friends into the dance full-time, but, for a multitude of reasons, did not, nor will I.
My life, my goals, are elsewhere. But my heart stays with you, my dance. Forever.
The clear point of the original post is that every individual solider is responsible for his actions, orders or not, allowed or restricted. The World Court, nor, I suspect, many US military courts, would not find "I was just following orders" to be a Necessary and Sufficient defense, even if you protest the order within the chain of command. In those (thankfully rare) cases where violations of human dignity are so obvious, the original poster's point is that the only solution is to step outside of the regs, and submit to the penalties for insubordination, etc., over committing a potentially much worse crime. It's not a light step, but it may be the only moral step.
You might protest that, without military discipline, you don't have a military, and you'd be 100% correct. At the same time, if more soldiers were willing to stand up against clearly insane and illegal orders, we'd not have had the horrors of Abu Ghraib - horrors that those soldiers were prosecuted for taking part in, orders or not, protestations or not; we know that many of them have accused higher-ups of, at the very least, turning a blind eye to their activities. In the end, I'm not aware of whistle-blowing absolving you of any crimes that you've taken part in, in either military or civilian court. Your advice that soldiers must follow every order would be counter-indicative, in those circumstances.
ATTENTION US MILITARY PERSONNEL
You are not required to obey an unlawful order.
You are required to disobey an unlawful order.
You swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
The Constitution states (Article VI):
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
Here is article 3, the common article, to the Geneva Conventions, a duly ratified treaty made under the authority of the United States:
Article 3
In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions:
1. Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.
To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:
(a) Violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;
(b) Taking of hostages;
(c) Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment;
(d) The passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.
2. The wounded and sick shall be collected and cared for.
An impartial humanitarian body, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, may offer its services to the Parties to the conflict.
The Parties to the conflict should further endeavour to bring into force, by means of special agreements, all or part of the other provisions of the present Convention.
The application of the preceding provisions shall not affect the legal status of the Parties to the conflict.
Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions is straightforward and clear. Under Article VI of the Constitution, it forms part of the supreme law of the land.
You personally will be held responsible for all of your actions, in all countries, at all times and places, for the rest of your life. "I was only following orders" is not a defense.
What all this is leading to:
If you are ordered to violate Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, it is your duty to disobey that order. No "clarification," whether passed by Congress or signed by the president, relieves you of that duty.
If you are ordered to violate Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, this is what to do:
1. Request that your superior put the order in writing.
2. If your superior puts the order in writing, inform your superior that you intend to disobey that order.
3. Request trial by courtmartial.
You will almost certainly face disciplinary action, harassment of various kinds, loss of pay, loss of liberty, discomfort and indignity. America relies on you and your courage to face those challenges.
We, the people, need you to support and defend the Constitution. I am certain that your honor and patriotism are equal to the task.
