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dance company, competitive team
palo alto, CA
Female singers and dancers were performing in the Middle East throughout ancient times. These woman fell into two categories: the awalim, highly-trained female musicians and poets who performed exclusively in the harem for the women of the house, and the Ghawazee , “gypsy” dancers who performed for public events such as festivals and weddings. Upon their arrival in the 1700s, foreign (European) visitors only saw the Ghawazee due to cultural norms. This gave rise to the Orientalist imaginings that would take Europe by storm throughout the Romantic age. The Victorian desire for the exotic created fantasies that visitors to Egypt wanted to see. These ideas were preserved and spread through photos, postcards, and the travel journals of Western visitors. When these visions did not appear to be reality, much to the disappointment of the tourists, some of the performers of Egypt saw an economic opportunity and started to fulfill these visions and earned a living from it. This created a vicious circle in which Egyptian women stereotyped as indolent, lazy, over-sexed creatures of low “virtue” because the only women Westerners saw were the public dancers and sex workers. The Egyptian government, in an effort to fight this negative view of their women, forbade public performance and eventually relocated the performers to upper Egypt. All female belly dance performers were now seen as shameful by their own people, a prejudice that still holds sway in Egypt today. The idea that “culture” was something to be exhibited and viewed was perpetuated by the development of museums for the masses, and most importantly, the World’s Fair or Universal Exposition, first held in London in 1851. These exhibitions brought actual people from around the world to be living displays for European visitors. This very objectification of a culture made it something “other” and largely inferior, and entertaining which further sustained the power dynamics of colonization. The “Street in Cairo” exhibition at the World’s Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago in 1893, displayed infamous “belly dancers” and the legendary dancer “Little Egypt”. Belly dance went on to American cities, vaudeville, and Hollywood. The two-piece cabaret outfits that we often associate with belly dance came from the Oriental fantasies of Hollywood. These fantasies in turn fed the imagination of Cairo nightclub owners, who took the Hollywood image of a belly dancer and blended in a bit of ballet to make it more theatrical, and the rest was history.
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Female singers and dancers were performing in the Middle East throughout ancient times. These woman fell into two categories: the awalim, highly-trained female musicians and poets who performed exclusively in the harem for the women of the house, and the Ghawazee , “gypsy” dancers who performed for public events such as festivals and weddings. Upon their arrival in the 1700s, foreign (European) visitors only saw the Ghawazee due to cultural norms. This gave rise to the Orientalist imaginings that would take Europe by storm throughout the Romantic age. The Victorian desire for the exotic created fantasies that visitors to Egypt wanted to see. These ideas were preserved and spread through photos, postcards, and the travel journals of Western visitors. When these visions did not appear to be reality, much to the disappointment of the tourists, some of the performers of Egypt saw an economic opportunity and started to fulfill these visions and earned a living from it. This created a vicious circle in which Egyptian women stereotyped as indolent, lazy, over-sexed creatures of low “virtue” because the only women Westerners saw were the public dancers and sex workers. The Egyptian government, in an effort to fight this negative view of their women, forbade public performance and eventually relocated the performers to upper Egypt. All female belly dance performers were now seen as shameful by their own people, a prejudice that still holds sway in Egypt today. The idea that “culture” was something to be exhibited and viewed was perpetuated by the development of museums for the masses, and most importantly, the World’s Fair or Universal Exposition, first held in London in 1851. These exhibitions brought actual people from around the world to be living displays for European visitors. This very objectification of a culture made it something “other” and largely inferior, and entertaining which further sustained the power dynamics of colonization. The “Street in Cairo” exhibition at the World’s Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago in 1893, displayed infamous “belly dancers” and the legendary dancer “Little Egypt”. Belly dance went on to American cities, vaudeville, and Hollywood. The two-piece cabaret outfits that we often associate with belly dance came from the Oriental fantasies of Hollywood. These fantasies in turn fed the imagination of Cairo nightclub owners, who took the Hollywood image of a belly dancer and blended in a bit of ballet to make it more theatrical, and the rest was history.
view more