by Tiffany Bisconer

The whole dance company was sitting together around Suhaila who was giving us the low down on an upcoming performance. Even though at that time I had been performing with the Suhaila Dance Company for about a year, this was my first exclusive Middle Eastern event. We were leaving for LA in 2 weeks to perform at a Ragheb Alama concert. Now that the show was set and rehearsed, we had to go over the details of conduct and personal presentation. The preparation for the performance seemed more intense than what I had just started to get use to for events that catered to specifically American audiences. The training and integrity behind the performances was solid no matter who the audience was but our presentation before and after what happened on stage was the topic of conversation as we sat around and listened. A big portion of the talk was of cultural awareness, since the majority of the dance company was American. What belly dancing means in Middle Eastern culture is much more complex and rooted than what it means in America. Walking into this event it was important for us to be aware of our conduct and image in order to be respected as much as possible as women and belly dancers. As the impromptu talk came to a close our homework was to find a respectable and classy gown for the evening of the performance by next weekend to get it approved before we left on our trip. Since I was still in that punk-rocker-turned-belly-dancer phase an extra credit homework assignment for me was to find a way to cover my tattoos and all the piercing holes in my face. Not easy tasks.

So, first of all I didn’t own a dress. Unless I counted the slip I would wear with my metal clad boots and three pairs of ripped tights, I had nothing redeemable as classy in my closet. I was grateful we had the conversation in just enough time for me to try and pull something together, so I didn’t show up like Cinderella without the make over to the Ball…. Though the Glam-school 101 was a little brutal, I understood the necessity of representing the Dance Company and Suhaila in a respectable way. But wow….this was just one of the many times in this journey where I felt like the world’s most unlikely belly dancer. Being the city girl that I was, the only place I knew of to get a “glamorous and classy” dress was the Foxy Lady in the mission district. The shop was a Vegas style stripper supply haven tucked in the seedy underbelly of San Francisco. The Drag Queen that was working that day took pity on me and helped me find the only “prude” dress in the store, meaning I guess because it was the only one that wasn’t see-through, even though the side slits went way above my waistline. The antique silver dress was long with rhinestone straps and I grabbed the matching glass slippers and flew out of the store thinking how funny it was that I felt like I was playing dress up when the sales girl felt totally at home in a whole different gender! I went home sewed up the slits and brought it in for genre approval. A week later we were on our way to LA.

When we arrived at the show it was non-stop from the moment our feet touched the LA soil. I was just as anxious about putting on my new dress as I was about performing! Before the show we were all dispersed in the lobby of the concert hall where they had Arabic music on tape and videos of Egyptian and Lebanese dancers. Sifting through Om Kalsoum tapes had me distracted enough to forget for a moment that I felt uncomfortable and vulnerable walking around in a dress. I ended up buying one Om Kalsoum tape and one Hakim tape to get a souvenir of something rich in sound and something new and pop-ish. One of the first things about dance that grabbed my passion was the music; my heartstrings were pulled stronger by an older genre of Arabic music. I tried to collect albums by as many artists as possible. I was excited for the evening that lay ahead because not only did we get to share our show with this audience, but we would be able to hear the music from the concert after we danced.

Being here I could feel that the women were women and the men were men, unlike in the American way where women have also found ways to cross the lines between the two gender roles. It was apparent that there was an unspoken code of conduct and “place” set for women and men in the Middle Eastern culture. I kept thinking how unaccepted belly dancers were into the familial structure, how no matter what it was never appropriate for a belly dancer to marry into a well respected Middle Eastern family. It was crazy to think of belly dancing in that context because in the states women take belly dancing as a form of expression in movement with limited stigma reflecting on their ability of being a wife and mother. I felt lucky to be able to enjoy the richness of the culture that belly dancing came from, but to feel the physical and emotional freedom of being an independent American woman. In both cultures though, the belly dancer is held as a representation for women of sensuality, beauty and freedom. Also the dancer is the physicalization of the music and in Middle Eastern culture the poetry of music is extremely important. In the lyrics and instrumentation you can hear the dimensions of emotion and passion that can bring a whole audience to a frenzy…or to tears.

After the hurricane of getting 15 dancers in costume and make up, we all stood by the stage ready to go on. The pre show nerves were bouncing around in my body, but as soon as my foot touched the stage they disappeared. Through the performance I felt like we were dancing for an audience who understood the dance, and felt the music because they were of it. It was and unusual sensation to feel the audience respond to sections of the music that an unfamiliar ear doesn’t grab onto. When the beat dropped into Saidi the whole audience clapped with open hands with their whole body involved. It was exciting because there was no reserve in the display of involvement from the audience. They were just as much a part of the performance as we were. As we left the stage the concert hall was in a roar and then they continued the party without us……!

After this night I realized what a difference it made performing for an audience that was of Middle Eastern decent because it felt like both sides of the stage were coming from the same perspective. I also realized how complex the views of male and female were in Middle Eastern culture. The strong lines of separation and clarity in roles, both good and bad, were not present in an American lifestyle. There’s a need and desire for both the female and the belly dancer within the social base. I learned in this moment that the passion, possession and emotional charge I loved in Arabic music were the mirror of the culture that the music was drawn from. The same instinct that structures a family unit was the same cultural instinct that led a Middle Eastern audience to sit and watch the belly dancing show that night and clap through all the musical breaks that are lost on an American audience. Through the appreciation of the dance and music of personal lineage they could feel connected to their culture even inside the US, and though there is a love/lack of acceptance relationship with the concept of a belly dancer, they have to have them as a part of the celebration of their culture.