Yale Bulletin and Calendar

November 17, 2006|Volume 35, Number 11|Two-Week Issue

Members of the Yale Bellydance Society's advanced class perform some stretching exercises in a Payne Whitney Gymnasium studio as part of their warm-up routine.

Troupe hopes to dispel stereotypes
about ancient dance

"Twist, twist, up, down, shimmy, pop, pop," Yale graduate student Rebecca Berlow calls out to a group of women as she demonstrates some dance moves in a Payne Whitney Gymnasium dance studio one recent evening.

The coins on their hip scarves jingle and their arms gracefully sweep the air as the women replicate Berlow's moves in rhythm with the Middle Eastern music that plays on an iPod. As the women wiggle their shoulders, gyrate their bellies and roll their hips, Berlow reminds them to keep their movements subtle. "Nothing raunchy here," she comments.

Berlow and the other women are members of the Yale Bellydance Society, a four-year-old organization that offers instruction to undergraduates and graduate students in the art of the dance and participates in performances on campus and beyond. It also aims to dispel some of the negative stereotypes associated with bellydancing, most particularly notions of the dance as -- to use Berlow's word -- "raunchy."

"We are dedicated to educating people about the artistic elements of Middle Eastern culture," says Ainsley Dicks, a third-year graduate student in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, who assists Berlow and Yale Bellydance Society president Kristen Windmuller in teaching weekly classes offered at the Yale gym to members of the society.

Founded by Jade Haviland '05 with the help of other women interested in the dance form, the Yale Bellydance Society had less than a handful of members in its first year. Its membership increased to about 20 women last year and to 60 this year. The growing interest in the dance, says Windmuller, is due in part to the use of bellydance moves by popular contemporary performers such as the Latina singer Shakira, but other students joined the society after seeing campus performances by Yale's bellydance troupe.

The Yale bellydancers have performed at such campus events as Communiversity Day, Bulldog Days for prospective freshmen, the Winter Arts Festival, a multicultural open house hosted by the Admissions Office and various cultural events sponsored by international students at the University, among others. In addition, the troupe produced a two-performance bellydance showcase last spring and has ventured beyond the campus to perform at a dance showcase at the University of New Haven and for young students in the city's Worthington Hooker School, as well as other venues. The society also hosts henna parties and various special events.

Two bellydancing classes are offered at the gym, one for beginning students and one for advanced members of the society. In these, undergraduate and graduate students learn a variety of Middle Eastern and North African bellydance moves in distinctive traditions, including Egyptian, Turkish and Moroccan. They also learn some of the history and culture associated with the dance, which dates back thousands of years.

"Originally, women bellydanced prior to childbirth and as a fertility ritual," says Berlow. Adds Dicks: "It is still used during labor in some places, where women will bellydance around a woman giving birth. The stomach undulations and abdominal pulls that they do help to encourage the woman in childbirth to do the same to progress labor."

According to Windmuller, the dance style was first ,introduced in North America during the 1893 World's Fair, when a dancer dubbed "Little Egypt" performed a variation of Middle Eastern bellydancing as part of the Moroccan exhibition. Fair visitors were both fascinated and shocked by the dance style, which requires dancers to "isolate" parts of the body to move independently. The name "bellydancer" is believed to have been invented by fair promoter Sol Bloom to draw attention to the exhibition. Throughout the Middle East and elsewhere, however, bellydancing is often called "Oriental dance."

Bellydancing's more negative reputation evolved as bellydancers were sexualized in Hollywood films, according to Windmuller.

Graduate student Ainsley Dicks says the Yale Bellydance Society is "dedicated to educating people about the artistic elements of Middle Eastern culture."

"One of the things we're trying to do is to change the perception that bellydancers are like strippers," she says.

"There is no typical bellydancer," Windmuller adds, noting that unlike other forms of dance where being small, thin or young is paramount, bellydancers come in all shapes and sizes and can perform at any age.

"In fact, many people have come to bellydance later in life," says Dicks. "There are also many people who believe that you can't bellydance correctly until you have the life experience to put the emotional content into your dancing. So someone who is middle-aged has that experience to draw on."

One of the reasons Windmuller is attracted to the dance is because it allows performers to express emotion. "Each dancer brings a bit of their individuality to it," says the Yale junior, who was a jazz and modern dancer throughout childhood. She took a bellydance class in the hope of finding a dance experience unlike those she had known. While she has also studied salsa, she has been especially hooked on bellydancing since her sophomore year of high school.

"I wanted to escape the cliquishness that you find in other kinds of dance," she says. "In bellydance, there is a strong sense of community, where a lot of knowledge is passed online, from girl to girl or troupe to troupe. As a dance mainly performed by women, it is a way to promote sisterhood. It is also the most natural and freeing kind of dance I have ever done."

Dicks began bellydancing several years ago while a student at Queen's University in Ontario. "I saw a cultural show in which bellydance was performed and thought it was the most elegantly beautiful dance I had ever seen," says the graduate student, who has also been a member of the Yale Ballroom Dance Team.

"It is very different from the dances we are used to in North America because it's a muscular dance as opposed to a step dance," adds Dicks. "It is based on isolating particular muscles in the body rather than on doing different things with your feet. It is said of a great bellydancer that she can dance in the space of a single tile."

Berlow, a second-year graduate student in molecular biophysics and biochemistry, started bellydancing as an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins University. While she had never seriously studied dance before taking a class and joining the bellydancing troupe at Johns Hopkins, she is now among the more advanced dancers at Yale.

"Through bellydancing, I've been able to interact with a lot of other students, including undergraduates, who I would never have met otherwise," says Berlow. "A lot of us have become friends outside the club. The ties become much more than just our dancing together."

While the Yale bellydance teachers encourage anyone who is interested to join the society -- regardless of whether they've had previous dance experience -- they also acknowledge that bellydancing is very challenging.

"It takes decades to master it," says Dicks. "For people starting out, the most difficult part is developing muscle to be able to move your body in the required ways. For example, to draw a circle with your rib cage, you need to develop the muscles in that part of the body. It takes a while to be able to do it gracefully."

Adds Windmuller: "There are women who can shimmy [with their hips] while rolling their stomachs and balancing a sword on their heads. Bellydancing involves a lot of layering. In great masters of the dance, you see perfect control."

Contrary to stereotypes, men can also bellydance, and while the Yale club has no male members, the group does welcome them.

Yet, for many members of the group, the camaraderie of women who have united for artistic expression is one of the most enjoyable aspects of bellydancing.

"For me, bellydancing is an earthy, grounded dance," says Kimberly Hayden, a recent Yale College graduate who will begin study at the Yale School of Management next fall. "It's a wonderful way for women to fellowship with each other. I really enjoy the freedom of expression this kind of dance inspires and allows. It's liberating, and it's also a great workout."

-- By Susan Gonzalez

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