There are NO POLES
IN BELLYDANCE!
Bellydance! Strip Tease! Pole Dance! Have you noticed the trend at dance and fitness studios? More and more, I see bellydance being taught along with strip tease and pole dance. It strikes me as odd that these three topics are being marketed together under the banner of “women’s empowerment.” The general idea is that “sexy dances empower women” by enabling us to unleash our inner Goddess/sex kitten/superwoman.
After many years of studying Middle Eastern dance and culture, I’m a little heartbroken when I hear people say that bellydance is sexy. What’s wrong with calling Bellydance sexy? It’s wrong because it reduces bellydance to its lowest common denominator… and the value of the dance is then minimized from something powerful to something superficial.
I’m not impressed with sexiness. It doesn’t take talent to portray sexiness. Sexiness suffers from over-kill in our society. Madonna French kissing Britney Spears, enough! Bare flesh is everywhere we look. Sadly, the attention we gain through sexual provocativeness is short-lived, if we have nothing more substantial to offer beyond youth and beauty.
Bellydance is not superficial. Research has shown that categorically in the study of passtimes as well as the arts, bellydance and middle eastern dance attracts the highest levels of women with secondary, graduate, and doctorate level educations. Why? It is ALIVE with cultural symbolism, expression, art, and the energetic exchange that takes place between a dancer and her audience. You see this also in Polynesian dance, which thankfully has not been thrown in to this misinterpreted mix of physical expression. It is not just wiggling the body. That shimmy the bellydancer just made goes back centuries and was felt around the world. The moves are synonymous with the feminine spirit, which encompasses the mind and all that is woman. It was formed in the heat of the desert tents; invented by women for women. It was Hollywood who made it into a dance for the "Sheik". The dance and music have been handed down for thousands of years from mother to daughter, from sister to sister, and is older than the Bible.
You know that that feeling when you are full of joy or sorrow so much that you want to jump out of your skin, but we don't know how to emote sufficiently? THAT is the essence of bellydance. Bellydance form and structure teaches us HOW to express this raw emotion. That is not the same as sexual energy. And, that is why you see so many women turning to classes and showing up with their hip scarves on in groups. They get a taste of that expression and they can't get enough of it. For professional bellydancers their audience gets a small slice of this exhileration whenever they perform. It is beauty in it's purest form and very captivating.
Bellydance is life-altering for the women who do it. Bellydance is a lifestyle. It’s deeply emotional. Every dancer I know resonates with the dance as a personal expression of identity. We start making our own costumes and sewing our expression into creations of fabric and fringe. We learn about the origins of our dance. Our lives are deeply entwined in our dance. The longer we dance, the more it takes over our lives. We study. We collect what we need to grow as dancers: costumes, cymbals, music, drums, shamadans… Slowly we decorate our homes to reflect our ever growing identity as dancers: a drape of fabric here, a sword on the wall there… We never stop building and growing as dancers.
When we join a dance class, it brings a new sense of meaning to our lives. We become part of a living community. We build self-esteem through mastering a skill, and expressing our unique creativity. Dance provides us the opportunity to role play outside of our daily reality. We thrive from the support of our dance sisterhood. What does this have to do with sexiness?
Is this trend toward unleashing our inner “sexiness” really empowering? Or is it, in fact, a harmful and misleading detour on the road to finding our true power? Why is bellydance even included in this trendy 'triple-threat sex package' that is gaining popularity in dance studios? Has bellydance been reduced to just a fusion of Belly-Pole-Strip… with no cultural references at all? If so, am I the only one who finds this sad? I'd love to hear your thoughts...
