RSSActual History Versus Modern Ideal
10 Jan 2010 1 Comment
in Belly Dance History Tags: belly dance, bellydance, feminism, Goddess, history
Over the past year I’ve done a lot of research in the field of bellydance. Most of this research has been into the history of the dance, with a strong interest to its relation to pregnancy and childbirth. I was quite surprised (though I should have expected it) how clouded the details of the history of this dance are! It seems no one knows the actual origins of bellydance. Instead, they just seem to be making educated, or not so educated guesses, as the case may be.
When it comes to discerning the actual history from the conjecture, things can get pretty tricky. The more a particular image or archetype calls to you, the easier it is to be swayed by your own wishful thinking. The image of a woman who is likely dancing in an Egyptian painting must be a bellydancer. A reference to a woman dancing with zils or finger cymbals in the Bible or any other historic text must be a bellydancer. Many people think of the Gypsy dancer with her tambourine and know she’s a bellydancer too! In a lot of these sources we truly have no idea what the real situation was. As Shira has said, “There was no YouTube back then”, so how can we know for sure? Without documentation of the movements, costumes, people, and performances, we can’t truly have any idea whether any of these people or cultures practiced bellydance long ago.
Most of the information available on bellydance is quite modern. Most of the modern image of bellydance comes mainly from the early 1900′s. At this point it was introduced at the World’s Fair and brought to several nightclubs in Europe. The harem fantasy really took hold. This is also when the term “belly dance” came into use, given the dance focused on the work of the abdominal muscles, something European dances of the time did not do. With exotic movements and risque costumes that were very different than anything Europe and the Americas knew, it’s not surprising that this dance took on the feel of being very sexual and sensual. Since the history of the dance was not recorded by anything but a “Western” perspective, it is hard to say what the dance was like before European influence.
There are stories from various cultures about the uses of bellydance as a cultural experience. As with any history, it is hard to tell how much of it is fact and how much has changed over time. Many of these stories are handed down from generation to generation. It is impossible to tell the origin or how much has been changed or fabricated over time. Oral histories are often challenging to track and validate.
Whatever source of information you find for the history of bellydance, it is always good to look at the source before taking the information as fact. Look at what is accurate and what is the perspective of the writer. Some facts of history can be perceived in a variety of ways. I’ve had mentioned to me that there are statues of ancient women holding snakes, so this is proof that women once danced with snakes in ancient temples. While that is a very likely and acceptable concept, for all we know these depictions could have been women flailing around snakes to drive out the demons, or perhaps showing that snakes were kept and maintained by women to keep the rats and mice away. Without actually having been there, it’s left to our own creative minds to determine what is true.
In the end, we can only look at the past from our modern perspective. Look at the history presented from every angle. Is there some other potential meaning to this historic artifact or writing? Could this be telling me something else? Take in all the details, all the information, and then do what any good historian does, make the best educated guess possible. After all, there’s no way to know without building a time machine, so all we have is our best guess.
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SugarRell
Jul 10, 2010 @ 14:52:23
I absolutely love this . I’ve been wanting to learn bellydance sice I was little ( I dream of jennie days … I guess I’m telling my age , lol ) It did’nt strt comming into fruition untill 2002 when I got my first Bellydance vhs . I’ve done countless hrs of reasearch but have yet to find a summation like yours ! Fantastic !