Evolutionary Theory

There is a crisis, of sorts, in the dance world that I've alluded to in the past. I'll not alluded to what I believe is the core solution -- and the reason Tribal's look and feel have become so popular in America, especially. The reason lies in this commentary that's taken from a article about the future of Science Fiction writing:

if your market share is collapsing, it seems to me that the thing to do is to stop doing whatever it is that didn't work, and pioneer a new field. Going back to the 1930s doesn't work because the pulp era relied on certain underlying cultural and political assumptions that are at odds with the modern zeitgeist. Going back to the 1950s will work only insofar as it clutches on to the conservative and change-phobic old farts who are nearing retirement age. What we need to do is to go forward to the era of dot-com 3.1415926535 ... (an infinitely receding string of irrational optimism in the procedurally generated but chaotic future) and grab hold of a new audience by the short-and-curlies.

This is, from all accounts, exactly what Badi‘a Masabni and others did with the creation of Raqs Sharqi. Why are some of our dancers afraid to do the same?

Granted -- Badi'a could be said to have pandered to the Saudi and Western tourists in her creation/encouragement of Raqs Sharqi. Does that make what she, and other dancers like Samia Gamal, any less works of art? And if that is art, and worthy as art, given the radical changes from what you see on the early films of raqs to the early post-Badi'a Raqs Sharqi, is that less or more of a change than what came out as ATS from the San Francisco cauldron of Salimpour-influenced technique?
The question no one seems to what to answer is all about ATS being a Western creation? Are we, indeed, Not Allowed to innovate in the raqs realm? Can Egyptians be influenced by Ballet, and call it art, but Americans influenced by Raqs Sharqi are thieves? I don't think so.
I will say that it's not as simple as all that. Some of it has to do with the popularization of the term "belly dance", and how that woefully-popular term influences thoughts. That Tribal uses the term near-universally does not aid those of us who see it as a branch off the Raqs Sharqi/Beledi/Shaabi tree.
And I think some of it is a mixture of legitimate worry. Mingled with that is outright fear that this "new thing", in combination with the ever-increasing pressure of dancers "over there", will utterly destroy Raqs Sharqi even as similar pressures eventually decimated the Ghawazee dancer's numbers.

From a Western perspective, what's ironic is that the calls to return to the "real, native dance" increase even as the opportunities for dancers overall increase. Never in the history of Raqs Sharqi in the West have there been so many chances, so many places, so many opportunities for new dancers to learn. It's true that more experienced dancers, ones not running studios or doing BDSS tours, are having serious issues staying afloat (for reasons I hope to go into in another article), yet the "let a thousand flowers bloom" reality is, in and of itself, changing the face of the dance.

My hope -- and I plan to document ways to make this happen -- is that we, as a dance community, have a golden opportunity to make those flowers grow, and to seed the world with our dance form, in all it's varieties. We're already doing it, and we need to continue to work together, to build an umbrella of words and thoughts for everything raqs. We in the West have the power to make things happen, to help protect dancers "over there", to encourage the growth of the artform all over the world. Let's use that power to define the from, and to encourage it's evolution and growth.

More to come.