From Ballet to Belly

I’ve forgotten the names of all of my elementary and high school teachers, but one name that will remain with me till the day I die is Dorothy Lister.  Dorothy Lister was my ballet teacher at the Joffrey Ballet School in New York City.  I studied--more like suffered--under her tutelage until the age of 15ish, at which point she quit the Joffrey, and I quit ballet. 

Miss Dorothy was, oh, just your average ballet nazi. :) Old enough to be my grandmother, she was a stickler for discipline and had zero tolerance for lazy feet, lifeless limbs, and other similar ballet crimes.  And she’d punish us too.  Whenever she caught us slacking off at the barre, she would angrily clap her hands and let out a shrill “STOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP!!!”  At which point the class, the piano player, and all of 6^th Avenue would freeze in frightened paralysis. She would then sarcastically imitate our mistakes to show us how dumb we looked, and literally yank our body parts into the correct position.  Miss Dorothy always ended these torturous episodes with her signature dirty look, which masked her grin of sadistic satisfaction.  She’d then carry on with class.  

 
Being that I was never prima ballerina material, Miss Dorothy and I had many, many of these episodes.  I remember one incident in particular in which she embarrassed the pointe shoes off me.  We were doing triple pirouettes across the floor, on pointe.  It was my turn to spin, and though I got off to a good start, I landed flat on my tush.  As if that wasn't embarrassing enough, Miss Dorothy then ripped the flowery hair tie off my head in front of the whole class.  Talk about traumatizing.  Especially at the vulnerable age of 14 or whatever I was.  She then barked that the reason I fell was because I didn’t spot my head, because I didn’t want my hair tie to fly off.  She was right.  

Those were the days when dance class was more like boot camp.  We reported to class 6 days a week.  We got corrected, yelled at, insulted, and sometimes even slapped.  We were told we were too fat, too skinny, too this or too that.  We learned discipline through the dread of Miss Dorothy.  We thought she hated us and thought we hated her, but deep down inside, we knew she loved us as much as we loved her.  Most importantly, we became better ballerinas because of her. 

You see, Miss Dorothy was a true artist.  For her, ballet was more important than anyone’s psychological wellbeing.  She was more interested in making sure the right people danced than in massaging her students’ egos.  There was no concept of “sisterhood.”  Interestingly, she got results.  Many of the girls who studied with her went on to perform in the most prestigious ballet companies.  Those who weren’t good enough, on the other hand, were told so.  They had the option of either quitting or continuing dance recreationally.  But performing?  Never.  In the ballet world, performing is a privilege, not a right.  The stage picks its performers, not the other way around.  Actually, this is true of most genres of dance.  Seriously.  I mean, have you ever seen weak hip-hop dancers in any music video?  

What dug Miss Dorothy up from the trenches of my memory is my ongoing exposure to the international belly dance scene. After seeing every type of “interpretative dance” imaginable being taught and performed in the name of belly dance, I’ve come to the conclusion that belly dance suffers from a serious lack of Miss Dorothyism.  

Don’t get me wrong.  I think it’s great that belly dance has become so popular around the world, especially since it is dying in Egypt.  And the feminist in me is all for sisterhood, female empowerment, and artistic license—all things lacking in the Egyptian belly dance community.  However, the purist in me is yearning for a Miss Dorothy to set things straight.  I mean, this goes way beyond bad technique.  We’ve reached the point at which we’re doing belly dance to American pop music.  We’re wearing black Playtex bras and spandex pants, jamming to the latest movie soundtrack and calling it belly dance.  We’re putting bindis on our foreheads and balancing everything but the kitchen sink on our heads.  And I'm wondering, why?

Let me make it clear that this is NOT yet another rant against the more established fusions such as Tribal and American Tribal Style (ATS), which have a codified technique, stage-worthy costumes, and have become independent dances in their own right.  I appreciate the depth of “the dark side” and am actually itching to try it.  Nor is this an attack on other types of ethnic fusions in which the performer exhibits a mastery of the dances she’s fusing, as well as appropriate costuming.  What I don’t get are all the careless mumbo-jumbo mish-mosh confusions I previously described.  The dancers who have limited to no technical foundation in any dance form who then jiggle their stuff to the latest hip-hop hit wearing Playtex bras and coin belts.  And then call it belly dance.  I mean, why not just do straight up hip-hop?  

(Don't get me started on the older generation of dancers who know better yet still produce and teach this kind of garbage.)

I know we Americans are all about creativity, and that’s generally a good thing.  It’s one of the reasons we’re a superpower (if I’m allowed to use that word to describe America).  However I think we’re taking it a little too far when it comes to belly dance.  Yes, technically we’re “creating” when we come up with our own homemade concoctions, but not all creations are created equal.  Some are just plain bad.  Creative evolution or fusion of any dance(s) should be based on a thorough knowledge of the mother dance(s)…as was the evolution of modern dance from ballet… as was the evolution of ATS from belly dance.  

There’s also something to be said for mastering an already established art form without necessarily creating a new “genre”…

I realize that there’s a market element to all of this.  Novelty sells. Whoever starts the latest craze winds up making and selling DVDs as well as the music and props that go along with it.  As my younger brother, of all people, painfully reminded me, this is what’s in demand these days.  To quote him directly:  “Why don’t you get your @$$ out of Egypt and start belly dancing to techno music here.  You could make mad money doing that.”  Exactly.  I could make “mad money” reinventing a dance that was never mine to reinvent in the first place.  I think I’ll continue being a starving artist, thank you very much. 

So why do we belly dancers feel the need to confuse belly dance with everything else?  What’s wrong with good old fashioned belly dance?  Is it too foreign?  Too difficult?  Is it not impressive enough?  Is it too sexy?  Not sexy enough?  Have we grown bored with it?  Have we even mastered it to the point where we’d have the right to be bored?  How many of us can dance to Um Kulthoum, or know how to interpret a mawal? (How many of us even know who Um Kulthoum was or what a mawal is?) And why are we dancing to American music?  Is Arabic music inferior?  Or do we just not understand it?  Are we not being taught properly by trained professionals who have studied and/or performed in the Middle East?  Are we too busy becoming instant super stars to invest time into learning the music, language and culture of the dance?  Are we content to fool our audiences because after all, the dance hasn’t gone mainstream and no one will know the difference anyway?  And then blame it on the “short attention span” of American audiences?

I think one of the biggest reasons we get away with all this garbage is that there are no authoritative institutions to define our dance, let alone set high standards and bring it into the mainstream.  We still don’t have the equivalent of a Joffrey Ballet or an Alvin Ailey.  There are also very few Miss Dorothy (and Simon from American Idol) types being honest with students about their potential. No one to tell us we’re too this or too that.  There are, however, too many of us looking for instant fame and fortune.

If there’s one reason for hope, it’s the fact that belly dance has made it to the universities.  Yes, most of the belly dance that is currently happening on the American campus is confusion, but perhaps some serious-minded students will approach the dance with the same academic rigor and integrity with which they approach the more traditional subjects.  Perhaps they will take the time to learn about the music.  Maybe even learn a little Arabic.  Because belly dance is inextricably linked to Arabic language and culture.  One really does have to have some level of familiarity with the culture to dance properly.    

Though I have nothing against people experimenting with art, I think we need to make a distinction between dance that’s worthy of the living room, and dance that’s worthy of the stage.  Especially since there’s already so much misinformation about belly dance and the Middle East.  This why I sincerely hope more women take a genuine interest in the traditional styles of belly dance.  Obviously, I’m biased towards Egyptian style, but there's also Turkish and Lebanese and even American cabaret.  The reason I love Egyptian style is because I find it extremely rich in technique, expression and emotion.  From Abd il-Halim to Abd il-Baset, there’s an enormous range of diversity in this genre that just doesn’t exist in our homemade fusions.  Not to mention all the different folkloric styles.  That alone should be enough to motivate us to take the dance seriously and do it justice.  

We shouldn’t need a Miss Dorothy to frighten us into dancing correctly, nor should belly dance class have to feel like boot camp.  Belly dance is much more enjoyable than ballet, and shouldn’t need that “do or die” approach to motivate us.  For the time being, however, I think a bit of that ballet-style discipline wouldn’t be a bad idea.  Or maybe I’m just spending too much time in Cairo, the only place where you don’t get a chance to dance unless you meet certain artistic and aesthetic standards.  But that’s how it is with every other dance around the planet.  Why should belly dance be any different?