I have asked a group of researchers, dnacers, choreographers,
anthropologists to respond to my introductory post and some of them
generously agreed to share their thoughts and insights. Below is the
response of Adham Hafez, dancer, choreographer and composer.
The first thing that comes to my mind when I watch a baladi-dance solo (because usually it is performed as a solo), is what do people think this is about? I will start by my own answer and then I will continue with the rest of the text:
I think it is about being present to explosive physical extremes. I think it is about being generous, reciprocal, sensual (and not necessarily sexual or erotic), and complex. It is also – mainly- about alternative modes of ownership.
Belly-dance, which I prefer to call here 'baladi-dance' because it refers more to an aesthetic, an emblematic complex term and set of relations rather than it does refer to a practice localized in one body-part, choreographically speaking. Baladi (or Balady) could mean so mean things; kitsch, popular art, something national, and literally means 'my country'. With such complexity of a term, the performance practice itself is of equal complexity if not more.
Many times one would be asked "what is Egyptian in your contemporary choreographic work?" The answer always was: "Everything that you can't see." I would extend this answer to 'baladi' also; everything that you can't see is what is Egyptian about it.
What baladi-dance offers in terms of 'Egyptianess' is quite the invisible. It is the ownership of a body lexicon that allows so many innuendos and subtle choreographies to take place. It is the negative space that creates enough distance to mitigate ownerships and histories. It is an aesthetic that is about communication more than anything, and hence the necessity for the very old artifact (on our side of the world) and quite the 'contemporary' tool: the reciprocal gaze of the performer/audience. It is the admittance of a cultural heritage without the political romance that comes with it. It is the writhing body of a woman (or in several cases that of a man) without a mere hint of pole-dancing and striptease. It is the woman celebrating her body without a feminist institution.
Baladi dance then is the constant reminder of what it is to generate physical discourse, and to experience ownership culturally. The dance is that of 'my country', and without hints of nationalism it reeks of cultural ownership, culture here as a denationalized anthropological experience; something that 'we' own and have accumulated over decades, centuries or maybe longer and we could now recognize it through certain sets of relations when it takes place. Something that 'we'- and we is a group of people that are bound by the stretches of land they inhabited and stories they have shared and accumulated, rather than by their language or alphabet (that changed quite a few times), or their religious practices or their flags. The ownership of 'baladi' here (and a slice of culture generally) rids heritage of the need of national belonging, and replaces it with a certain act of cultural belonging, as amorphous in its very essence as culture is in its nature. What Baladi-dance then succeeds in achieving triumphantly is indeed this abstract sense of belonging, almost 'depoliticizied', something that operates on/through/within a subtle terrain of taste, aesthetics, cultural accessibility and communication.
What is also very inspiring about Baladi-dance then is how it stands now within a palette of many 'contemporary' practices of dance and performing in Egypt (to be locally specific). The confusion about the ownership of time that Egyptian contemporary dance problematizes is met with effortless presence (rather than answers) in Baladi-dance. And, if the questions that Egyptian contemporary dance raise are more within the paradigm of: who owns this? Is this ours? Have we reappropriated it the way we have done electricity? Is this a universal practice or do we have to learn 'foreign languages' for it? The questions that Baladi-dance invoke then are more within the paradigm of: this is 'ours', we don't need to ask many questions about the country of origin/ the name of the country of origin at the time, this is not nationalist in a reductive way of understanding politics and nations yet this is 'ours' culturally speaking in a very direct and basic way of understanding and exercising culture.
This genre of dance, so-commonly called 'belly-dance' and in worst case scenarios coined 'oriental dance', moves culture, and moves with culture, dealing with the issue of ownership from physical discourses, and through generous presence hints at invisibilities that are necessary in shaping how 'the other' understands her/his fellow 'other' when it comes to artistic practices.
The first thing that comes to my mind when I watch a baladi-dance solo (because usually it is performed as a solo), is what do people think this is about? I will start by my own answer and then I will continue with the rest of the text:
I think it is about being present to explosive physical extremes. I think it is about being generous, reciprocal, sensual (and not necessarily sexual or erotic), and complex. It is also – mainly- about alternative modes of ownership.
Belly-dance, which I prefer to call here 'baladi-dance' because it refers more to an aesthetic, an emblematic complex term and set of relations rather than it does refer to a practice localized in one body-part, choreographically speaking. Baladi (or Balady) could mean so mean things; kitsch, popular art, something national, and literally means 'my country'. With such complexity of a term, the performance practice itself is of equal complexity if not more.
Many times one would be asked "what is Egyptian in your contemporary choreographic work?" The answer always was: "Everything that you can't see." I would extend this answer to 'baladi' also; everything that you can't see is what is Egyptian about it.
What baladi-dance offers in terms of 'Egyptianess' is quite the invisible. It is the ownership of a body lexicon that allows so many innuendos and subtle choreographies to take place. It is the negative space that creates enough distance to mitigate ownerships and histories. It is an aesthetic that is about communication more than anything, and hence the necessity for the very old artifact (on our side of the world) and quite the 'contemporary' tool: the reciprocal gaze of the performer/audience. It is the admittance of a cultural heritage without the political romance that comes with it. It is the writhing body of a woman (or in several cases that of a man) without a mere hint of pole-dancing and striptease. It is the woman celebrating her body without a feminist institution.
Baladi dance then is the constant reminder of what it is to generate physical discourse, and to experience ownership culturally. The dance is that of 'my country', and without hints of nationalism it reeks of cultural ownership, culture here as a denationalized anthropological experience; something that 'we' own and have accumulated over decades, centuries or maybe longer and we could now recognize it through certain sets of relations when it takes place. Something that 'we'- and we is a group of people that are bound by the stretches of land they inhabited and stories they have shared and accumulated, rather than by their language or alphabet (that changed quite a few times), or their religious practices or their flags. The ownership of 'baladi' here (and a slice of culture generally) rids heritage of the need of national belonging, and replaces it with a certain act of cultural belonging, as amorphous in its very essence as culture is in its nature. What Baladi-dance then succeeds in achieving triumphantly is indeed this abstract sense of belonging, almost 'depoliticizied', something that operates on/through/within a subtle terrain of taste, aesthetics, cultural accessibility and communication.
What is also very inspiring about Baladi-dance then is how it stands now within a palette of many 'contemporary' practices of dance and performing in Egypt (to be locally specific). The confusion about the ownership of time that Egyptian contemporary dance problematizes is met with effortless presence (rather than answers) in Baladi-dance. And, if the questions that Egyptian contemporary dance raise are more within the paradigm of: who owns this? Is this ours? Have we reappropriated it the way we have done electricity? Is this a universal practice or do we have to learn 'foreign languages' for it? The questions that Baladi-dance invoke then are more within the paradigm of: this is 'ours', we don't need to ask many questions about the country of origin/ the name of the country of origin at the time, this is not nationalist in a reductive way of understanding politics and nations yet this is 'ours' culturally speaking in a very direct and basic way of understanding and exercising culture.
This genre of dance, so-commonly called 'belly-dance' and in worst case scenarios coined 'oriental dance', moves culture, and moves with culture, dealing with the issue of ownership from physical discourses, and through generous presence hints at invisibilities that are necessary in shaping how 'the other' understands her/his fellow 'other' when it comes to artistic practices.
And, perhaps as a final note, it's
worth mentioning that the question of the 'ownership of the score' in
Baladi-dance always remained 'effortlessly present' and equally mystifying the
way the practice operated within its cultural lineage vis-à-vis how its people
inhabit or own it. Baladi- solos were always known by the names of their
dancers, and almost never by the name of the choreographer. The ownership
resided in the body/dance of she-who-delivers and those who witness, and
nothing else beyond this immediacy speaks loud enough when she is dancing.
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