Bellying up to a serious art form
By Will Kilburn

Boston Globe Correspondent
September 26, 2004

The scene at the first Boston Belly Dance Awards last Sunday night was
one of contrasts: part amateur recital, part professional competition;
celebratory, yet serious. But overall, the event at the Brookline
Community Center for the Arts in Coolidge Corner was about the medium
itself, which can seem both fervently traditional and strikingly
modern.

”A lot of people out there think that it’s just a pretty girl in a
costume with no skill, or a stripper, or whatever the media has fed
them,” said Juliette Dagmar, better known as Johara, a local dancer
and teacher whose company, Snakedance Productions, produced the
awards. ”But it’s an art form that takes years to perfect.”

There are many variations of belly dance.

”In Turkish-style belly dance, they tend to borrow from gypsy folk
dance,” Johara says. ”They use finger cymbals, they do the deep back
bends, they do the deep bends, they do a lot of rail work. It’s the
kind that most Americans are familiar with, because that’s what was
popularized in the ’60s. With Arabic-style, the music is Egyptian or
Lebanese, they don’t do much veil, hip work, and shimmies are more the
feature. In the Arab world, they use a lot of [electronic] keyboard
now, more than in Turkish-style music. The Lebanese here are playing
what’s popular in Lebanon and Egypt right now; the Armenian-Americans
that are playing Turkish music are playing really old music, most of
which was never intended for a belly dancer.”

When belly dance was introduced to the West many years ago, it wasn’t
done well, according to Jeanne Handy of Portland, Maine, one of the
judges. ”The form was taken out of context, and it was misrepresented
and misunderstood.And so a lot of times if you ask an Arabic person,
‘Do you belly dance?,’ they’ll say, ‘No.’ ”

Handy, who performs and teaches under the stage name Jamileh, added
that belly dance has fought two battles at once in New England: the
Puritan suspicion that anything this fun must somehow be immoral, and
the tendency by some venues to put dancers in the spotlight too soon.

”There are some amazing performers out there, and then there are some
that really aren’t ready to be performing yet,” she said. ”If you see
a good belly dance performance, you will leave it intoxicated, but if
you see a bad one, you will leave it thinking, ‘Mmm, I’m not so sure.’
”

That’s a problem the awards competition, which organizers hope to make
an annual event, sought to address by placing competitors into two
divisions. The first, ”Promising Amateurs,” featured eight dancers
relatively new to belly dance. The second, ”New Performers,” was
reserved for six who had been perform ing for between six months and 2
years. Those with more experience were ineligible to participate.

After completing her first-round performance in the professional
round, Samantha Young, an English-as-a-second-language teacher from
Quincy, wore an expression of giddy relief.

”The judges had these sort of deadpan faces,” she said. ”I’m used to
performing at student recitals where I know half the audience because
I getmy students to go, so it was the first time I performed against
people that are actually judging me, as opposed to just going ‘Good
job,’ which is what usually happens.”

Belly dance performances are held regularly at the Middle East in
Cambridge, Tangierino in Charlestown, and Layaleena Entertainment’s
clubs in Boston and Cambridge.Will Kilburn can be reached at
wkilburn@globe.com.