NOTHING SACRED: Shakira raqs!

[First Written 2/4/2002 -- Commentary at the end.] If I was teaching full-time, I'd try to put a picture of Shakira on every poster I put up. I mean, let's look around, folks. There's a bleedin' raqs dancer on the Billboard Top Ten! "Belly Dancers" are now on MTV (when the bother to show videos...) Kids, Teen, coming into classes to learn to dance like Shakira or Brittany! Free freakin' PR! And what have I seen as our overall response? "Eh. Shakira's good. Brittany's a slut. Whatever. I can't be associated with them." What-freakin'-ever. Sure, there's an argument against jumping on the fad bandwagon. Some of the crap we went through in the 80's could be associated with being labeled a "fad". At the same time, there's a depth to raqs now, in the 21th Century, that was (from the accounts I've heard/read) lacking 30+ years ago. It's time to pounce on the mainstream, folks! And we have ways now, ways that were lacking only a handful of years ago. We have people, like Shakira, who can speak directly to the youth of America, the youth that is all-important to the future of this dance. We have the ability to teach what they only know a little of, and teach it well. We have the ability to teach people like Brittany the real soul of raqs, to help her develop skills she might not even know she has. But we risk frittering it all away, by hiding in the little cubbyhole we've carved out for our dance. By snubbing people who might want to learn more from us, we show ourselves to be less. Is there risk here? Of course. But we risk just getting into our bedlah. We risk the laughter of friends and family. And, to me, the risk here, that we'll get passed by, is no worse than those, and may, just may, change that laughter to admiration.

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I shall never live down " What-freakin'-ever". Even if it's a slag-off. Why is this true? Why does the entire community slag off anyone who's picking up the raqs vibe? Why do we spend more time making fun of folks who know no better, as opposed to education? Part of it, I believe these days, is that education is hard. It takes a community devoted to the task, which isn't likely to come from the scattered remnants of the "bellydance" world. Few dancers have the time, or the energy, to look at such "big picture" efforts, and when they do, it's a small piece of a bigger picture. There's no Clay Shirkey to promote articles like "A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy " -- the kind of articles that make you dig deep into the collective assumptions of the sub-culture. We need that rich culture, the people who can ask people to think outside the box. Here's an idea, a place to start. We won't escape the disdain of the mainstream until we escape the assumptions of ingrained Orentalism. And these assumptions are ingrained on the part of both the Western and Middle Eastern dancers. And worse, we think they are not just the best way to be, but the only way this dance can exist.