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| Fantasy Fusion Bellydance |
| By Neon |
“Tribal Fusion” sounds
familiar to us now...but “Fantasy Fusion”-?!
What’s that?! Well here’s the scoop!
Arts evolve spontaneously, impetuously, swirling within
the interplay of cultural trends and social changes.
Analytical, critical thought follows the arts hesitantly,
describing, defining and labeling the elusive phenomena
of the artistic world.
The recent explosion in the popularity of bellydance
and the proliferation of many diverse styles and trends
within it, leave many of us wondering: Where exactly
do I belong in this mosaic of genres and subgenres?
The fact that there are now more styles than ever before,
causes us to look for differentiating words and definitions.
We all do "bellydance" but suddenly there
is a need to describe our styles more specifically,
beyond the basic term. We want to separate one style
from another. Because our dance arts are evolving so
fast, it is not surprising that there are a number of
genre areas that so far remain "undefined."
Here are a couple examples:
Example #1
If you dance commercially in clubs and theme restaurants,
use showy props such as wings or swords and don't adhere
to the modern or traditional styling of any of the defined
genres of Raks Sharqi (Egyptian, Lebanese, etc), how
do you describe your genre? "American-Cabaret"
is hardly appropriate, since this term is most commonly
used to denote a retro style, the Turkish-flavored bellydance
of the ‘50s-’80s era. So should we call
it "modern nightclub/commercial bellydance"?
There are nightclubs and nightclubs: some require "cheerleading
style" (the dancer performs to club music, the
crowd never stops dancing), others retain the"bellydance
show" format (general dancing stops, bellydancer
enters, performs, then invites the audience to join.)
Most of us, commercial bellydancers, are thus suspended
in a dance terminology limbo. Our genre is adjusted
to Western tastes, glamorized, dramatized and styled
to produce maximum effect in terms of how audiences
perceive our skill, and relate culturally to our act.
We've left traditional or narrowly-ethnic stylings behind,
we've fine-tuned our art to squarely fit the demand,
but as we leave our commercial venues and emerge among
our peers, as artists among artists we don't have a
term to properly define our work.
Example #2:
Example #2 is what this article is about. As an "undefined"
modern commercially-performing bellydancer, I also enjoy
peer-review and artsy events and productions - the parties
where artists perform for artists, such as studio showcases,
theatrical productions, or video. For these, I develop
performance numbers that deviate from the de rigueur
glamour and the "bellydancer look" required
at most commercial venues. The success of a commercially-performing
bellydancer is in superbly playing the role of a bellydancer.
Any deviations are possible as long as the performance
preserves the parameters that make the audience recognize
me as a "bellydancer" who is there to entertain
them. Well, if you've ever performed commercially, you
know that the demands of this image are actually quite
restrictive.
However, when I am not in a commercial setting, I don't
have to be "recognizable" as a "bellydancer"
by a consumer of commercial entertainment . And in my
artistic incarnation I don't care about consumers. I
want to be a mermaid, a demon, a warrior, a dragon...So
I start using music that doesn't evoke typical images
of bellydance, I cover my body with gold tattoos, I
dress like characters from my dreams. My technique is
still bellydance, but, unless it's Halloween, patrons
of my restaurant shows wouldn't get my drift...
Most of my NYC friends each have their own repertoir
of dreamy, exotic highly-artistic non-traditional dances
that they perform at peer-review events and in videos.
We love playing with spiritual, esoteric, medieval,
Gothic, goddess,astrology, mythology, nature, magic,
and other themes. Our dances echo the plots of fantasy
fiction, and borrow from the fantasy aesthetics developed
by a number of subcultures (Rock, Gothic, Comic-book,
Pagan, Renaissance/Medieval, and more).
What I am describing is a typical artistic path of a
modern bellydancer: There are many of us here in NYC
and beyond who develop creatively along these lines.
We embrace and pursue our bellydance dreams with passion,
play off each other's unrestrained creative fantasy,
follow only our imagination, support each other, grow
together, and remain undefined in the panorama of bellydance
terminology.
Our NYC circle has created an artistic collective -
"Venus Uprising" - working on a number of
projects related to our undefined genre of bellydance
- shows, posters, art, video, books.
Last spring, a few of us here in NYC woke up to the
fact that we need a name, a term... Something to define
us as a trend and as a style before our fellow artists.
You can't grow a trend if you can't sell it to your
peers first, and to do that you first need to define
it, explain what it is.
I work with dancers performing in all the diverse genres
of modern bellydance - Egyptian, Tribal, Tribal Fusion,
World Fusion, Gothic, etc. - and I can't describe my
own creative direction to them, because it doesn't have
a name.
"I perform....bellydance."
"What kind?"
"Um... commercial
bellydance....and....err....artistic bellydance - unusual,
highly-creative stuff, you know...with imagery from
dreams or fantasy novels, or comic books, or..."
"Fusion?"
"No. Every style of modern
bellydance is fusion. Fusion means anything and nothing."
"Does this style have a name?"
We can't grow until we have a way to define our genre,
make it distinct, refer to it without stumbling and
lengthy descriptions. Give me a name!
"How
about FANTASY FUSION BELLYDANCE?"
A bunch of us here in New York started calling our genre
"Fantasy Fusion Bellydance," or just "Fantasy
Fusion."
What do you think?
Forget about such relics as male fantasy, Orientalist
fantasy and harem fantasy.
It's the 21st Century. Think fantasy fiction, fantasy
art, fantasy film, manga, anime. ("female fantasy"!)
Our Fantasy Fusion unity is based on interest in imaginative,
exotic themes, in identifying with fantasy art/fiction
characters. Definitely not in similar technique. Some
of us stay within the vocabulary and technique of traditional
bellydance, others blend it more actively with modern,
jazz, and world fusion. And then there are dancers blending
Tribal technique, aesthetics and concepts with fantasy
themes and images.
Fantasy Fusion bellydance is not a technique fusion
(such as Arabic-Spanish, or bellydance-jazz). We are
talking image fusion. It's fusion of bellydance with
images unrelated to either the origins of bellydance
or to an image of a bellydancer as an entertainer (commercial
bellydance). A good example of an established distinct
genre of this nature is Gothic bellydance - a unity
of themes and image aesthetics combined with diversity
of technique.
Let us bury the word "experimental." There
is nothing experimental about our work. Although unnamed,
this genre is long established. It has been published
and performed on many stages to a lot of acclaim, quite
widely since the ‘90s. A lot of this theatrical,
imaginative fantasy work goes back to the ‘80s-’90s
when fantasy fiction, role play communities (such as
Renaissance faires), and other fantasy and escapist
genres, often with a strongly-feminine and empowering
slant, surged to prominence.
Bellydancers sought venues and expressions that would
take them away from "sexy" environments such
as nightclubs. They were looking for more freedom of
expression and creative search, and they sought to erase
the burden of "male fantasy" carried by traditional
performance bellydance (as opposed to social, family-style
bellydancing.) "Tribal" style emerged and
solidified as one of the responses to this demand.
Having arrived in the west as Orientalist fantasy, bellydance
took root and evolved as a fantasy art for quite a while,
revolving around the images of Salome, goddesses, magic,
vamps and harem drama.
In the pre-video age, dance researchers and dancers
performing in ethnic clubs saw the original "bellydance"
- folk and social dances of the Middle East and North
Africa performed in contexts close to their native environment.
But Western consumers of entertainment and the larger
dance community were not exposed to these dances in
their proper context until the late 20th century. "American
Cabaret bellydance emerged," blending the fantasy
"harem girl" or "glamour diva" image
with authentic ethnic dance techniques borrowed from
a number of dance cultures. It filled the demand for
fantasy imagery recognizable by a Western consumer.
But the further we departed from the Orientalist era,
the more distant and faint became the echoes of the
"harem fantasy." Older generations may still
relate to a Sultan's turban on a birthday boy's head,
but younger birthday boys and girls can't relate to
this retro spiel.
The dance world split and polarized: half of us pursued
ethnic dance authenticity, studying various forms of
old and modern Raks Sharqi (performance dance art) or
folk/social dances of North Africa, Turkey and the Arab
world. The other half pursued new fantasy themes and
imagery through the eclectic aesthetics of the Tribal
style, Tribal fusion, Gothic bellydance and all other
directions lumped together as "fusion."
Since this "big split," the word "fantasy"
has often been used negatively, as an antonym of "authentic
Raks Sharqi." And the word "fusion" is
often employed as an apologetic, to ward off purists
and traditionalists. Meanwhile there is a world of validity
to both terms in relation to our need as modern Western
creatives to appropriate things of beauty such as bellydance
and put them in a context where we can access them on
our own cultural terms.
We all use bellydance technique - more or less "authentic,"
more or less modern or modified. It can be simplified
and streamlined for group improv, it can be spiced with
jazz and modern for stage and nightclub performances.
Modern Raks Sharqi is a fusion of folk dances with jazz,
ballet and ballroom dance styles. Every modern bellydance
form is fusion. The big split does not begin with technique.
It begins when an artist decides what ultimately inspires
her - the cultures of the Middle East and the idea of
performing the dance as it has evolved in the Middle
East, or the images originating in the West, out of
Western music, history, aesthetics, and subcultures.
Many artists follow the path of Gothic bellydance or
Tribal fusion because these genres offer a non-judgemental,
open environment for work on both new fantasy themes
and new bellydance-based techniques.
What if you are not necessarily interested in one individual
theme/subculture from the fantasy realm, such as Gothic?
What if you don't perform Tribal Fusion? Perhaps you
would like to join our worldwide “tribe”...Fantasy
Fusion Bellydance. |
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