Temple Dancer, Harem Girl,
Dollar in Your Bra-top Titillator?
by
Cheri Berens
While performing on stage one night in America, a male in the audience climbed up and came at me with a dollar bill in his hand. I smiled
and handled the situation with good grace, but missed a musical part in which I had planned the most skillful part of my dance. I used to
think, “What is it with this dance that everyone thinks it’s titillation?”. Now I think, “Why do dancers continue to train their audiences to
think this dance is nothing but titillation”. Am I the only dancer that wants the dance to be treated with respect? Often I hear “Well, you
know, its history, with fertility dances and temple prostitution.” This is a poorly informed response. During ancient times people grew up
dancing as part of life. Children, both male and female, danced with their elders during all celebrations, not just celebrations of fertility.
More importantly, the fertility was most often for the fertility of the soil and the harvest. They danced to celebrate a good hunt, harvest,
and life and death. All dancing had its base on this “social” expression. Dance was a means of expression for all parts of life.
In homes across the Middle East and north Africa and of people of Middle Eastern heritage who have moved a to far away countries, this
dance continues to be passed on from generation to generation. Are six year old girls who dance in their living room with relatives doing
a temple prostitute’s dance? Are guests at an ethnic wedding who dance and participate in the joyous occasion doing a sex dance? All
dance, whether jazz, flamenco, etc., is sensual and makes one feel alive and robust. Middle Eastern dance is based on folk dance, or
‘social’ dance, no different than any other regional dance that is done socially. In my native Sicily the unmarried people of the village
gather once a month in a hall for a night of polka dancing. The room is charged with robust energy and healthy attraction. Does this make
their folk dance a sex dance?
In Cairo when I take tabla lessons and am doing well with a rhythm, my teacher gets up and dances. Sometimes his daughter will dance.
Once when she was doing an incredible movement I asked where she learned it. She pointed to her father and grinned. He grinned back
with pride. Is he teaching her a fertility dance or a sex dance? Whether it is done in the home, at a social event or professionally
performed, the dance is based on the style done amongst the people. Middle Eastern people love to dance. It is part of their every day
life.
The dance becomes something else when the context is changed. Yes, thousands of years ago fertility dancing existed (and most often
fertility dances included male dancers). And later when wars were fought and people were captured and used for slaves, some females
were used for sex and as slaves, trained to dance for their masters' entertainment. But that is not what the history of the dance is. It is
wrong to take a minority situation and turn it into the history of the dance.
Middle Eastern dance is rich in history. Don’t fall prey to limiting yourself to the image of the temple dancer, the harem slave girl, or the
modern day dollar in her bra top titillator. For thousands of years the dance has been done with great joy as a social dance. A
sophisticated performance style has taken some of these social movements from this folkloric dance and developed into a style of its
own. This is the style we should help promote.
When ballet was in its developmental stage, it not only didn’t look like the polished dance we know today, but was considered ill
reputable. Like ballet, staged Middle Eastern dance has been going through a period of development, but while Egyptians were working
at creating a more professional staged dance appropriate for families, American dancers toyed with the exotic fantasy of the Middle East
and integrated it into burlesque and vaudeville. Early modern dancers Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn used the exotic,
fantasized, oriental image, but did not use any authentic movement. Together with burlesque and vaudeville, these modern dance
experiments were the forerunners of the development of American Cabaret. Egyptian cinema upgraded dancers to celebrity status and
respected composers created music for top dancers. Egyptian choreographers and dancers worked towards standards to help oriental
become accepted as a dance art. What has happened to American bellydance? Why is it seen primarily as titilation?
I returned to college several years ago and while attending, I witnessed a phenomena regarding dance and sensuality at college. Hip Hop
was included in the curriculum. It was very provocative and used pelvic movements that were quite sexual. Why were those provocative
dances seen as acceptable by the faculty, parents, and audience members at the college shows? . . . Because they were professionally
staged and choreographed and presented in an appropriate atmosphere and not presented in a way that could be misinterpreted as
sexual or aimed at men. If the dancers were dancing within the audience members or if they accepted tips on their body or even on the
stage, it would not have been acceptable. What turns a dance into a sexual dance is the atmosphere and presentation. As long as the
image of dollar bills sticking into bra tops and belly grams aimed at the ‘Birthday Boy’ prevail, the general public will not get beyond the
stripper image, nor will the dance ever be taken seriously as a dance art. All the work and training is in vain if we don’t start
acknowledging what we are doing. Why not promote the dance (and ourselves) as something of value?
COPYRIGHT 2003