Spring Break
Men can figure-eight their hips, too
Men nationwide are learning the once-female exclusive artform of bellydancing
Issue date: 9/12/05 Section: Showcase
No you are not at a male strip club, and you better not laugh: To the small and still-underground band of male followers, belly dance is about serious artistic expression.
Thirty years after Mikhail Baryshnikov proved that men could do ballet and John Travolta discoed his way into sex-object status, Drakon is one of the male aficionados who are putting an equal opportunity spin on the dance long associated with beaded bras, genie pants and coy femininity.
So what if women rave that belly dancing is great for toning childbirth muscles? Turns out some men like figure-eighting their hips, too.
The spectator reviews were mixed. One man used the word "fantastic."
But Los Angeles-based drummer Ziad Islambouli, who performed at the convention, said such theatrical dancing would not go over in his home country of Lebanon.
"In the Middle East, I wouldn't accept it. It's all about the woman and beauty, and it's a very feminine thing."
Actually, male belly dance performance has a long precedent in North Africa and the Middle East, says Anthony Shay, a dance historian at Pomona College in California, and co-editor of "Belly Dance," a book due out this month. For centuries, professional males dressed in a sexually ambiguous costume, working the same hip swivels as women.
They were even included in the 1893 Chicago's World Fair, where an American entrepreneur first coined the term "belly dance" to introduce the art form to the both titillated and scandalized U.S. public.
But colonial powers strengthening their dominance in the Middle East after WWI considered men's belly dance a scandal to Victorian morality and stamped it out (allowing women to continue).
But both men and women still "belly dance" at domestic social gatherings as they have throughout history, Dr. Shay says, although strict Islamic societies forbid women from dancing in front of men not related to them.
Dr. Shay said the West's "pink and blue syndrome" when it comes to dance moves isn't shared by other regions of the world, pointing to the similarities in female and male movements in salsa and Polynesian dancing.
Thirty years after Mikhail Baryshnikov proved that men could do ballet and John Travolta discoed his way into sex-object status, Drakon is one of the male aficionados who are putting an equal opportunity spin on the dance long associated with beaded bras, genie pants and coy femininity.
So what if women rave that belly dancing is great for toning childbirth muscles? Turns out some men like figure-eighting their hips, too.
The spectator reviews were mixed. One man used the word "fantastic."
But Los Angeles-based drummer Ziad Islambouli, who performed at the convention, said such theatrical dancing would not go over in his home country of Lebanon.
"In the Middle East, I wouldn't accept it. It's all about the woman and beauty, and it's a very feminine thing."
Actually, male belly dance performance has a long precedent in North Africa and the Middle East, says Anthony Shay, a dance historian at Pomona College in California, and co-editor of "Belly Dance," a book due out this month. For centuries, professional males dressed in a sexually ambiguous costume, working the same hip swivels as women.
They were even included in the 1893 Chicago's World Fair, where an American entrepreneur first coined the term "belly dance" to introduce the art form to the both titillated and scandalized U.S. public.
But colonial powers strengthening their dominance in the Middle East after WWI considered men's belly dance a scandal to Victorian morality and stamped it out (allowing women to continue).
But both men and women still "belly dance" at domestic social gatherings as they have throughout history, Dr. Shay says, although strict Islamic societies forbid women from dancing in front of men not related to them.
Dr. Shay said the West's "pink and blue syndrome" when it comes to dance moves isn't shared by other regions of the world, pointing to the similarities in female and male movements in salsa and Polynesian dancing.