Lynette Harper

Lecture

Performing Identity: Transnational Dimensions Of Bellydance

Dance is a performance of cultural identity.

Whether “bellydance” is represented as entertainment, social activity, ritual, or art, it exists in relationship to multiple dance forms, geographies, discourses and ethnic/racial identities.

This illustrated presentation traces recent changes in bellydance styles and symbolic systems, and raises the questions about the present and future of dance.

Is it Raqs Sharqi or Danse Orientale or Bellydance? What is tradition, fusion, authentic, pure, appropriated?

While these ideas shift to take on new meanings of relevance, dance practices are diversifying.

Orientalism and beliefs in authenticity re-inscribe bellydance in new social and community contexts.

In North America, emergent forms known as Tribal, Gothic, Fusion regularly appear alongside regional, folkloric, and classical dances that explicitly trace their origins to the Middle East or North Africa.

“Dance signals and enacts social identities…our most explosive and tenacious categories of identity are mapped onto bodily differences including race and gender…ethnicity and nationality and even sexuality.” (Jane Desmond)

This lecture explores intercultural tensions in the ongoing transformations of bellydance, based on theory from dance scholarship, empirical research, practitioner’s insights and lived experience – and will definitely stimulate audience discussion.