Belly Dance Style Part II
American Tribal Belly Dance
Belly dance is even found among American tribal groups. Their costuming is distinctive with black and silver suit, and facial illustrations to replicate tribal tattoos. It has a unique and colorful, costumed character of its own by use of choli tops from India, tightly wrapped turbans, Afghan jewelry and camel tassels. The tribal musical instruments deployed here include a different type of hand drums, miz mar, zornas, and saz. There are so many individual troupes performing accordingly their style. Carolena Nericcio is known as “Fat Chance Belly Dance” led the American Tribal belly dance on the later phase. Carolena’s brand of Tribal belly dance, innovated a unique supportive way of impulsive group choreography. American Tribal Belly Dance style is developed by the great matriarch of the dance Jamila Salimpour, and manifested through her dance troupe; Bal-Anat. Jamila is often called the mother of belly dance in America. While this form of the dance included elements of Middle Eastern and North African dance styles from Byzantium, the resurgence, and Victorian era, it was leavened with a good deal of old-fashioned show biz theatrics. Introduced in the 1970s at California-style renaissance pleasure fairs, women who experienced Tribal belly dance became transfixed! It quickly defined itself as a wildly popular American style. American Tribal Belly Dance performances might include the balancing of swords and other props, snake dances, and folk line-dances.
Night Club Belly dance/Cabaret Style
You will find so many night clubs where belly dance is danced in cabaret style. The Averoth in Boston featuring the famous George Abdo, Ali Baba, the 7th veil, the Fez in Los Angeles featuring maroon Saba and George Kiyart, the Bagdad and the Casba, Pashas in San Fransisco, the Feenjon Cafe in New York, Haji Baba in New York and San Diego, the Sultans Lounge in San Diego, the Apadona in Newport Beach featuring John Belizikian and Var Daghdevirian, Ceders of Lebonon, Greek Village, Grecian Corner in Seattle, Parthonon Salt Lake City , Minara in San Jose were the famous belly dance night clubs of past. All of these clubs contained large dance floor for public participation in folk dancing and free style dancing to traditional ethnic music, or to Middle Eastern pop disco. The musical instruments used here are oud, bazooki, keyboards, drums, violin, kanoon and vocals. Costumes are flamboyant and gleaming, with beads and sequins rather than the heavy, woven, embroidered, coined look of tribal costuming. They are equipped with live musical accompaniment.
Now, dancers usually tend the term “Night Club” belly dancing. In the U.S., the term “cabaret” meant an ethnic family restaurant and bar, largely and colorfully supported by ethnic patrons. Customers, both men and women, moved kerchiefs through the air as they danced folk dances: Lebanese debke, mizerloo, Greek sirto, or Zorbekiko between the floor shows of the featured bellydance stars. Today these belly dancers usually stage a multi-faceted routine. Sometimes on a raised stage they perform to afford the audience a better view.
American Classic Style Belly Dance
In the early 1970s this style describes the bellydance performed and refined by few American men and women. The American women from Swedish, German, Greek, Syrian, Mexican origin became rapt with the belly dance as an artistic investment. Belly dance was becoming as wholesome as apple pie in America and this could only help its reputation for women internationally. This synthesized belly dance evolved from many cultures and resonated within women as deeply as their very DNA. This dance intrinsically belongs to every woman, so it easily goes beyond all borders.
Even there are so many Magazines which dedicated to the art and catering to its ever-widening population of devotees sprouted up in America: Habibi, the Belly Dancer, and Arabesque were among the pioneer trade publications. As they undertook to seriously study and refine the depth of belly dance techniques, dancers also began to recognize and define an overview of the dance’s commonality and structure. In Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and New York this trend loomed large. Throughout the nation, American dancers with exotic names like Princess Sheharazade, Ellena the Persian Kitten, and Jodette, swirled on stages, flooded with colored lights, to the rhythms of live Middle Eastern music, amid the savory aromas of ethnic cuisine. Historically belly dancing was imported from Egypt by the immigrants. It should be mentioned in this connection Egyptian dance businesses flourished to meet the enjoyment of the western woman’s love of this dance. Many Lebanese and Turkish women today study with Delilah’s Belly Dance video series.
Yet some people believe that it is from different origin. It may be somewhere from Turkey, Greece, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Central Asia, Lebanon, Israel, Armenia, The Balkans, Persia, Iraq, India, and Africa. However, all these cultures have their own unique customs, traditions, languages, foods, music, and dances, yet each recognized some form of the belly dance as a part of their heritage. Earlier to the 1970s, in most cases, the dance was not well affected and was staged at a fairly basic level. In the less conservative American environment, the dance began to flourish into its full prospective. Belly dance classes spread everywhere at the community centers and colleges. The American style of belly dance included cultures from around the globe and added its own liberating identification. One of these trademarks was the steady development of the gymnastic use of the mask in the dance. Another was a wider stance and bolder use of space than in the Middle East. The American Classic style began spreading all over the world, even spinning back to sway dance in the Middle East.
Ancient Egyptian Pharaonic Style Belly Dance
Pharaonic Style Belly Dance exercises stylistic costumes portraying a time in history and are enthused by the study of Ancient Egyptian art, ritual, symbols, Gods and Goddesses, hieroglyph, and the deployment of creative imagination. Laurel Victoria Gray and Delilah are two famous women in this belly dance style. They have done much with this style in a featured production of “Egypta”. Delilah’s solo role as “Hathor” and “Cleopatra” as well as her depiction of “Isis” in the video “Dance to the Great Mother” in 1981 also epitomized this belly dance style.
Music choices in this style have a modern dimension. Superciliously follows modern interpretations. As for example, music created by composer Steven Flynn for Gray’s productions or in line with the instrumentation revel the fact. Professor Jihad Racy in “Tribute to Ancient Egypt” is also may be compared with that. Other examples include chantress Ani Williams’ use of voice and harp in recording “Songs of Isis” or Layne Redmond’s use of framed drums in various recordings.
Folkloric Belly Dance
Folkloric Belly Dance style integrates the dance movements of the people. Popular ethnic folk dances such as the Fallahin and others are used as a framework for introducing the folkloric roots of eastern dance, from which belly dance emerged. Reed cane and stick dances are used by belly dancers in routines for a folkloric flair. Folkloric routines will be featured in belly dance stage shows in the Middle East and elsewhere. Some of today’s male performers create supporting folkloric dance roles along side the female belly dancer.
John Compton and Rebaba, early students of Jamila Salimpour and Patty Farber, currently direct and perform with a folksy group of supreme stage performers called Hahbi’Ru. Hahbi’Ru can often be seen at California Renaissance fairs.
