[From an interview with Morocco conducted by Dr. Barbara Sellers-Young, PhD at the request of the Oral History Archives of the Dance Collection of the Lincoln Center Library of/for the Performing Arts in New York City]


BSY: So, a misconception is the idea that this is only a female dance.

M: It’s a western, racist, orientalist assumption. It’s—because in Egypt, in Turkey, I mean, you should look up a couple of Tarik's papers on it. One is on my web site, the other is in the “Belly Dance Book.” There were lots and lots and lots of male performers, especially in public, and especially in eras where it was forbidden for women to perform in public. It was the coming of the colonials, who wanted to see women dancing for them, because it was their sexist/racist sexual fantasy. And if you’re coming and paying all this money to a very poor woman…because the women who danced in public for men, strange men, who were not in their family, were either poor, extremely poor, or full service professionals. You pay a full service professional enough money she’ll hang off the rafters and sing “Dixie” while gargling and twirling hula hoops. They did not--well there were some who did want to see the boy dancers, but they could not show this to their fellow men--so they would want to see it in secret. But, what happened is because there was no longer any real work for them…Think about it: how many chimney sweeps do you see in New York today? Or in California? Used to be a viable profession. There were lots and lots of chimney sweeps, because every house had a chimney that needed to be swept, because they used fires. We don’t anymore. Now there are a very few, highly paid chimney sweeps again because people are using fireplaces. Well, there were lots and lots of male dancers and we’re talking the colonials with the money, with the oppressive government, where you do what we say, and we’re paying you a lot for this but we don’t want to see that in public. That’s what happened.

BSY: So it just disappeared as a result. Now [was it] those kinds of misnomers about the dance within the United States, that led you down the path of all your research trips abroad or was it something else?

M: What led me down the path of what?

BSY: All your research trips abroad or was it something else that was--?

M: It was something else. The research in what I could find in books that were right here, and also in asking all the grannies…and the aunties and the mothers and the sisters. What I found interesting at that point, but it wasn’t the final push, was that a Lebanese grandmother told me one thing and it was kind of similar to what a Syrian or a Jordanian or Palestinian or an Iraqi grandmother would tell me, but it was different from what a Turkish or an Uzbek or an Azerbaijani grandmother would tell me. It was different from what an Egyptian grandmother would tell me. Then the Moroccans, the Algerians, the Tunisians had a different story. The Saudi's had a totally different story, and it was like, which story was true?!?.

Then sometimes, within the same country, there were lots of different variations.

“Oh, we don’t do it this way. Here, we do it this way.”

“Oh, no, we do it this way.”

Especially things like the Debka. This town would do it this way; this town would do it that way. In this town the men and women dance together; in this town the men and women never dance together. In Turkey all bets were off because the men and women [almost-M.] always dance together. The Armenians would do it in a certain way and they would tell me that if they got too bouncy or happy about it their relatives would say,

“Stop that. Do you want people to think you’re a Turk?”

Then, if the Turkish girls were being too shy or reticent the grandmothers would say,

“Stop that. Show your joy. What, you want people to think you're a shy Armenian?”

But it wasn’t until 1963 when in [response to what were] hilarious events, I ended up at a rehearsal of the people who would be performing at the Moroccan pavilion in the 1964 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadow Park (Queens, NY). Amongst the Schikhatt, the Gnaoua, and they had the tray dance, Danse du Plateau or Raks al Seniyya, the Houara, there were three women who did Guedra. There was something about it that totally blew me away.

BSY: Now Guedra is not a dance.

M: Not in any way, shape, or form. It is a trance ritual from the Blue people of the Sahara. There was no one else around I could really talk to about it. The women were there, they spoke French and Tamahaq. They didn’t even speak much Maghrebi Arabic. They spoke some, but I didn’t speak Maghrebi. I didn’t speak Tamahaq. However, at least I spoke French and so we could communicate…to an extent, but there were things they couldn’t explain, that they said that their leader, B'shara could. But B'shara was in Goulmime, on the edge of the Sahara, in Morocco. I wanted to know. I had to find out. So, I called my mother and asked her for four hundred dollars and she wanted to know what for, and I said,

“Well, I want to get a plane ticket. I want to go to Morocco.”

“You want to go where? Why?”

She thought I was totally crazy, but I think it is a tribute to my powers of persuasion that I got Rosie to part with four hundred bucks and I got my butt to Morocco, because I had some money too, but I needed to make sure I have at least a return ticket. I was very fortunate in that I was also under the protection of these two great, kind and generous fellows, Rachid el Idrissi and Hassan Berrada, who were the ones who invited me to that rehearsal in the first place and who said if I had any problems, this is where their families were, this is who I could go to. But I got myself to Goulmime [and] by an unbelievable stroke of luck that I can only assume was that this was what I was meant to be doing, as soon as I got off that stupid donkey in the middle of the square in Goulmime, with my butt sore…. (You never want to ride on a donkey with a skinny butt, ever. It is not a comfortable mode of transport.) This young woman and I connected with each other because except for the fact that she was about six shades darker, forty pounds heavier, and a head shorter than I was, we looked just like each other. I looked more like her than her sister. She took me by the hand and took me home to meet her aunt. Guess who her aunt was?

BSY: Well,

[The young woman's aunt was B'shara. –S.K.]

M: I was meant to learn Guedra.

BSY: And how long were you there?

M: I was there for four and a half weeks the first time. Then, I figured, Okay, I got my feet wet, now I can go other places. I started going to Egypt in 1964. And to every place else I could get into with my American passport and being a female, traveling by myself. There were a lot of places that would not let me in because I was female and by myself, but, I did get wherever I could, and usually because I knew people and I knew, because I had learned within the culture, I knew how to behave, and how to dress. So I started traveling.

BSY: Now, did any of the connections with the people that you had met in New York, did you get connected to their families at all?

M: Of course. Of course. Sure. Otherwise I wouldn’t have gone to begin with.

BSY: Right. So, that became—it wasn’t just the political connections through the Moroccan Pavillion, it was, which actually you know—

M: They just liked me. They thought I was crazy, and they have a special affection and tolerance for crazy people – even female ones.