Death by Denotation

There's a simple problem with all the detritus currently running around on the med-dance list regarding "pure" belly dance: No one defines it. Not at all. It's assumed, in the course of discussion, that the reader "knows" what "belly dance" is. And the simple fact that "belly dance" isn't even the real name for this dance, should be indicator enough that the argument is bollicks, at it's core. It's an argument about nothing and everything. Why, you might maintain any number of comments on that -- for example, I imagine someone will read this, and say, "well, it's art -- I know it when I see it! And people 'know' belly dance when they see it, and that's all you need!" No. You can't have a discussion about anything without an agreement about what it is. For, if raks is about a native form at it's core, what makes up that core? Costuming? Movement vocabulary? Music? Some ethereal combination of the three? And if the latter, what stops it from being another form? Where do you draw the line, when even a significant portion of the "natives" spend much time/effort refuting the dance as "theirs"? I asked my question on the list, had them answered, and still disagree. I don't have time to fight it out on the list, but this is a note that after this semester, as an additional part of the promised Wikipedia entries on the family of raks, I'll be tacking the core issue -- What Is raks? What makes it different than any other dance form? Until that is answered, we can't even have a real discussion about fusion. Until that's answered, we're all just pissin' in the wind.