Why Belly Dancers should study Folkloric Dance of the Middle East

Some of us naturally love to study history, and some of us don’t. When I was in grammar school, it was my least favorite class, mostly because of the way it was presented. It was memorizing a name, a place and a date (ie, John Doe discovered something in a specific year). Boring! I just could not see the value of the dry material.

Of course, as I got older and literally lived history and even created some of it within our beloved world of belly dance, my opinion changed. The subject of oriental dance is a passion of mine (in case you couldn’t tell! LOL). I used to ask my teachers, my mentors, and the musicians I worked with all kinds of questions about the dance, the culture, the music, etc. I collected whatever books I could find on the topic of belly dance…and for a long time, they were books that only tried to teach movements, not offering much about the history. When the internet arrived, I was one of the first dancers to publish online articles about oriental dance. Since then, the internet has exponentially evolved into a vast source of information.
After 40+ years of being involved in oriental dance, I can look back on the decades with hindsight. That timeline shows me how I came to be a successful artist. Without studying our dance history, past and present, I could never have earned a full-time living from dance and could never have appreciated the value of our dance as an art form.

When you explore how our dance came to be, you will learn to appreciate the depth of the culture, its traditions and its evolution. You will see how dance, music, art and fashion are intertwined. They are the ways a culture expresses and communicates FEELING.
Here are some reasons why belly dancers should study Middle Eastern dance history:

• It provides us a better understanding of a dance that is a cultural identifier. To ever be taken seriously as a Middle Eastern dancer, you must develop an understanding and respect for Middle Eastern culture.
• It expands our own lives and view of the world. Middle Eastern dance has existed nearly 8,000 years old. Such a depth of history grounds us and clarifies where we stand in the timeline, what we can contribute, and how we can progress the art form.
• Seeing how Middle Eastern dance history developed inspires your personal dance journey. When you know where you came from, you will know where you stand today, and how you may keep shimmying into your future. Can you identify your own dance lineage? Who did you train with? Who did your teachers train with? This is your personal dance genealogy, and it impacts the entire evolution of Middle Eastern dance, even if you believe you are one tiny dancer lost in a world of dancers. Dancers of every kind all over the globe proudly share their unique lineage. As a dancer, you should choose to maintain credentials that are about quality, not quantity. Knowing your dance history will make you a great representative of this ancient dance form. You will be respected as a viable contributor to this dance over and beyond the casual hobbyist who cares only for self-gratification.

I would like to bring up one more essential reason why you should study the history of our dance form. It is because it will broaden your performance base so that you can present folkloric dance of the Middle East, not just oriental dance. Folkloric dances include themes such as Saidi, Melaya, Fellahi, Saudi (Khaleegi), and Ghawazee dances. Your knowledge of history will give you the ability to take each of these special themes and represent them correctly. Middle Easterners will appreciate you even more as a performer! But the biggest reason to take time to focus on folkloric dances is because it will enhance your overall emotional expression, even when you are performing oriental dance.

Why is emotional expression important?
Anyone can learn to be an excellent technician of Middle Eastern dance. While their movements are beautifully executed, their performance will feel empty to the audience without the ability to emote. Dance is meant to be an emotional experience for both the performer and the audience.
Every audience seeks a performer that shares their passion. Great dancers provoke an emotional response, whether good or bad. What they never want is no response at all. Neutrality means the audience does not care about what they just experienced, and they will leave the show with a feeling of apathy.
The dancer who successfully connects with their audience on an emotional level experiences a wonderful side effect. You are creatively stimulated by the audience’s reactions and then will dance even better. After the show, you will feel an unparalleled ‘high’ that is rewarding and exciting. Once you experience it, you will seek that ‘high’ every time you perform.
Folkloric dances are ‘character’ dances, in which you play a role. For example, take an Alexandrian Melaya dance. In this theme, you play the woman who goes to market in the port city of Alexandria. You are wearing a dress, a scarf on your head, a burka on your face, and are wrapped in a black opaque garment called a melaya. The dance is telling a story, where you go to the market and engage in an innocent flirtation with a sailor. You are dancing in a gently enticing way, being playful, sweet, and rather shy, but trying to flirt at the same time. Playing this role, you must project with your body language and facial expressions. Perfecting a folkloric dance, you will build your skills to express various emotions whenever you dance oriental dance, too.

Below is a photo of me in a Melaya costume.  For an example of a Melaya dance, please take a look at this YouTube video clip from my YouTube channel of me in a classroom (not in costume) so that you can see the style of movements and hear an example of the music: https://youtu.be/2uX4LglVCss

Folkloric dances are fun to learn and can easily be adjusted from a solo to a duet or group dance. Middle Eastern folklore and history are invaluable to the belly dancer that wants to be the best dancer she can be! Enjoy your research.