By Nelly Mazloum

Application of Oriental Dance Technique should be supported by an organic structural teaching following the body’s central manner of moving in space. To relate the body to Egyptian modes of dancing studies should be made on social beliefs, old and new; mystical concepts, old and new; aesthetic percepts, old and new belonging to a tradition, old and new. Only in this way something essential can be salvaged of a Dance form that has come to us from panarchaic times.

Present artists with an eye for truth and a feeling for beauty are exerting sincere efforts to preserve the genuine aspect of Middle Eastern Dances. They are seriously trying to save it from the clutches of crazy commercialized exhibitionistic provocation actually distorting the artistic expression it enrobes and degrades its psychological meaning.

Oriental Dance is an art of historic tradition where voluptuousness and tenderness are intimately tied to sensual consciousness inspiring humanity since the beginning of time. It is a unique art worth preserving in its pristine form.

In 1990 I wrote: "Love is the awakening of imagination, roaming the labyrinths of fancy, where the external ideal is pursued and found only to be lost over and over again. "La Danse Orientale" is the archetypal representative of this conception.

Woman has to move in a world of mystery and wonders, scattering promises of heavenly delicacies, becoming flesh and disappearing behind veils, leaving trails of expectation which fill the atmosphere with a sweet anguish until she reappears to make the dream a reality. Oriental Dance is the art of fascination in its purest form."

Unfortunately, since Napoleonic times the term "Danse du ventre" has been stuck indiscriminately to all Egyptian dancing like an indelible tattoo. Later when the English came to Egypt it was translated form the French into Belly Dancing, only to carve the mark deeper into the flesh of every dancer, good , bad or right down rotten. A stigma which has lasted to the present day!

It is time such affront be redressed and Oriental Dance find its honorable place amongst the Pantheon of ancient dance Art.

The Hawanem (ladies) style of dancing in Egypt is a refined and most cultivated way of dancing ever adopted by women in history. In the past the ladies: SAYEDATE, of aristocracy danced for their own enjoyment in the seclusion of the "Haramlec" where men were banned and strangers forbidden to enter and watch.

This way of dancing went on until the late thirties when royalty was still in power.

The professional local dancers were performers of tribal descent like the Ghawazee who were paid for their shows and differed in quality and style in their dancing to please the spectators. The descendants of the Ghawazee style were the first ones who later become dance teachers in the West. And what we have today is a hodge-podge of their tradition mixed with the aroma of the Shykhana, tea shops that were also taverns, where men gathered to have fun. That is where the soldiers and officers of Napoleon and later Queen Victoria’s armies spent their nights. That is what they saw and were shocked at first then fascinated to the point of making Europe boil with gossip on the ‘mysterious’ happenings of the Orient...

Unfortunately the real Eastern tradition was never discovered by the West. It is regrettable that this situation remains stuck to the same point ever since.

The dance forms of Egypt have a remarkable reservoir of themes, styles, steps, gestures, rhythms, hip and foot work, head and torso movements, which abound with all possible human expression. They cover an endless array of meanings in natural, simple, body language which is a rich source of dance material that must not be lost.

What do we need to do? First of all we need a radical change of out look.

Oriental Dance is a panarchaic way of moving the body which, for me, is the future of total physical training for women of all ages.

It has absolutely nothing to do with sex but gains its drive from sources of energy in the body which release pent-up emotions and spiritual ways of moving, suitable to the feminine physiology. It frees the body from choppy angularities, and abrupt discontinuity of muscular harmony. It saves the allure from collapsing in points of equilibrium resisting the pull of gravity. It eases the struggle lying between surrender and obsessions which twist the body with defensive armors.

It unites the intellect to the heart, the heart, to body consciousness and consciousness to freedom.

Oriental Dance is an archaic art that has preserved a wisdom of great importance for us women and we owe it the place it truly deserves.

Copyright ©Nelly Mazloum, 1996