Crazed: The Bellydance

Probably because most people who claim to be doing "Pharaonic" haven't seen fit to do any research into what "Pharaonic" might actually be. They just assume they "know".

You just totally clarified something for me - thank you. See, this whole time I thought your posts were more about discussing why we should (or do) play up sexuality in this dance only, not that we are objectified because of the inherent sexuality in the dance.

Yes, I have experienced the negative sexual stereotyping/backlash - not in a courtroom though! Ugh! That is horrible. And you are right, nothing seems to be changing.

sorry this is a long one, please bear with me...

If you look at the political context of history and RELIGION, we might shed a little different light on some of this stuff. Religion is a huge part of written history and it’s politics are played down in favor of belief, in favor of continuing the present belief system.

In Pre-Christian era, sex was thought of as a gift from God (who was assumed to be a woman, as today we assume it is a man). Sex and orgasm were believed to be one way that humans were above animals and closer to God. Sex was a part of the rituals used in Pre-Christian times in Middle and Near East.
This has been translated from recorded script by anthropologists. The difficulties lie in who is translating. One word has been translated from Sumerian cuneiform, as temple prostitute, when a less-biased translation is woman of the temple or woman who has dedicated her life to the temple/God. The temple was a place were sex was done.
This, seems to me, a very obvious reason for Judaism, Christianity and Islam to control a woman’s sexual activity and energy. To make such a sweeping change in the belief/lives of so many people, the current (of the time) system, had to be completely rewritten. This included the change from economic power and freedom to economic destitution, sexual freedom, worship among the grottos (a certain fig tree were planted by altars both indoors and out) and in the case of Judaism and Christianity, a changing of the female word ending for God, to the male, amongst many, many other changes.

It occurs to me, and there is no scientific bases for this, only what seems a logical conclusion (like how reasonable would it be for Egypt to be the only country not doing dances involving the hips),… that dances like these were used to build up sexual energy. That were then released through sex, at home or in the temple.
I do not think they were about seducing men. I think – again personal opinion – that they were used as a celebration of the strength of woman, the particular dancer and it was about her orgasm, not his.
Women carry a lot of strength and power in their sexual center. Our present culture does not allow us any leeway in it’s use… The only acceptable use for this energy is to satisfy your husband. (yes, I am being a little hard here to try to show where our attitudes of the last 2000+ years come from. These changes did not happen over night and there is no going back – only forward ☺)

My personal experience (and that of many of my students) performing in Central Europe where the dance is relatively new (because of communism), and the culture is relatively “traditional” Christian-wise, is that the men are pretty much afraid of me when I dance. They are not used to women showing their sexual strength and it makes a lot of them very uncomfortable. But the women respond positively and knowingly. Responses do vary, but this is the more common experience.
Here I must also differentiate between sexual/sensual and coquettish. The insecurity of many dancers who are looking for confirmation of their sexuality by a man is very Christian and, to me, not very sexy. It is placing a woman’s sexuality in the person who is seeing her and not inside the woman herself.

I will add that early mythos from Ancient Egypt have the same fig tree as sacred and many other connections with the mythos from Mesopotamia and Lebanon. It is thought that Lebanon is where Isis (Au set) found her brother/lover dead inside the sacred tree and had him brought back to life.
We know more about later Ancient Egypt when the focus/power had shifted from the female to the male. The myths were often much the same, just the emphasis had changed. In Mesopotamia, the invading peoples were mostly Patriarchal and often would just scratch the name of the old God off the tablet and inscribe the name of their own God over it.
The earliest traditions were verbal, even when their was writing, it was used primarily for accounting.

If you would like to know my source material for much of this contact me at bri@bathani.eu