Read My Master's Thesis
Newsletter Archive: October 31, 2019
Hello dance community,
With this newsletter I'm distributing a downloadable PDF of my master's thesis on bellydance history and issues of representation in American bellydance.
Since I finished it in 2012, I've been reluctant to share my thesis (which I wrote for my advisors at the World Arts and Cultures department at UCLA) with the general public because I have been concerned with how bellydancers might react to me taking us all to task for our unexamined orientalist tendencies. (I feel a bit sheepish now for my lack of bravery).
Photo by Rodin Eckenroth
(I'm surrounded by research books for my thesis and I'm looking a touch exhausted)
Another reason for my reluctance is I've done a lot more research in the last 7 years since writing this document and I would love to make a ton of edits to the book!
Rather than editing a new version, I built a dance program, Dance Cohesion, where bellydancers can learn about the interesting (though, often racist and imperialist) history of bellydance.
I do think that American bellydancers are becoming a more aware group of people, but we still have A LOT of waking up and anti-racist work to do, including me. I hope sharing this book contributes to that work in a helpful way. I welcome readers to send me their thoughts, challenges, and considerations after reading.
Thesis Abstract
In this thesis I argue that bellydance serves as a site for practitioners to transform their sense of self, transgress social boundaries, and build community, but that this transformative potential is compromised when the Orientalist assumptions that have historically been embedded in the practice are not recognized or challenged. I begin by highlighting particularly salient moments in Egyptian and American bellydance history from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century, emphasizing the intercultural exchange and sociopolitical factors at play during the form's transnational development. I then examine the choreographic and rhetorical strategies American bellydancers since the 1960s have employed in their attempts to access the transformative and transgressive potential of the dance. I show that these strategies have given rise to new genres that either uphold or combat the tendency in bellydance performance to represent essentialized notions of gender and ethnicity, ultimately revealing the form as a heterogeneous complex of practices that grows more self-reflexive and critical throughout its various formations. Through choreographic analysis of foundational bellydance movement vocabulary and the organizational structures of Improvisational Tribal Style I explore how engaging with the physical practice of bellydance can allow people to expand their sense of self beyond societally-imposed boundaries and to form inter-subjective community. I conclude by raising concerns about issues of representation in American bellydance, questioning the discourse of authenticity, and offering some considerations for charting a course ahead.
Please email me if you'd like to respond with thoughts, corrections, questions, etc. If you'd like your words to be read by more people than just me, I will include your response in a blog on my website (just let me know you want your response made public when you email me).