Belly Dance in the Context of the Western and Arab Islamic Societies The present work deals with the development and social status of the belly dance and professional belly dancers in the Arab Islamic society and examines to which extent that status was influenced by the West and how the belly dance made its way to the Western culture. The work concentrates on the 19 th and 20 th centuries with a special focus on Egypt as a centre of the belly dancing. This work is supplemented with a questionnaire, the results of which depict the development of the social status of the belly dance and dancers in the Arab society at the beginning of the 21 st century.

Submitted by Glauber de Assunção Moreira (glauber.moreira@ufba.br) on 2018-09-21T17:59:53Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação_Sara Jobard.pdf: 1808991 bytes, checksum: 27f97bbbd0b4bd40b68483d0c57fbbd4 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Ednaide Gondim Magalhães (ednaide@ufba.br) on 2018-09-25T12:47:23Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação_Sara Jobard.pdf: 1808991 bytes, checksum: 27f97bbbd0b4bd40b68483d0c57fbbd4 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-09-25T12:47:23Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação_Sara Jobard.pdf: 1808991 bytes, checksum: 27f97bbbd0b4bd40b68483d0c57fbbd4 (MD5) / Essa pesquisa discute como acontece o fenômeno da presença cênica, a partir de uma irradiação energética no ator quando ele está no palco. O objetivo principal é criar uma prática corporal capaz de manipular essa energia, a partir de um processo de ativação dos chakras, desenvolvido com base em uma abordagem somática da técnica da dança do ventre e investigar sua aplicabilidade na prática teatral. Primeiramente, aborda-se o termo presença cênica e sua utilização nas artes cênicas, principalmente quanto ao trabalho do ator. Em seguida, são discutidos os conceitos de consciência e energia, por compreender presença cênica como um processo psicofísico, que envolve esses dois elementos. A fim de proporcionar ao indivíduo uma percepção maior de si mesmo, aqui denominada de consciência corporal, é proposta a utilização de exercícios de uma das técnicas de Educação Somática – Fundamentos Corporais Bartenieff. Para a etapa de ativação energética, é sugerido exercícios da técnica da dança do ventre. A efetividade dos exercícios propostos é estudada em duas práticas: a preparação corporal, realizada no estágio docente, e a preparação da pesquisadora para o espetáculo teatral Véu Carmim, nos quais foi possível observar melhoras relevantes no desempenho dos atores quanto à presença cênica. Foram constatados resultados significativos para a ativação energética de atores a partir de uma abordagem somática da dança do ventre. / This research discusses how does the phenomenon of actor’s presence happens, from a radiation energy on the actor when he's on stage. The main objective is to create a body practice to manipulate this energy from a process of activating the chakras, developed by a somatic approach of belly dance and investigate its applicability in theatrical practice. First, it is approached the term actor’s presence and his use in the performing arts, particularly in the work of the actor. Then it discusses the concepts of consciousness and energy, to understand actor’s presence as a psychophysical process that involves these two elements. In order to provide the individual a greater sense of self, here called body awareness, it is proposed to use exercises from a technique of Somatic Education - Bartenieff Fundamentals Body. For energy activation is suggested exercises of belly dance. The effectiveness of the proposed exercises is studied in two practices: the body preparation, performed on stage teacher, and the researcher’s preparation for the spectacle Véu Carmim, in which we observed great improvements in the performance of the actors on the actor’s presence. Significant results were found for the energy activation in actors from a somatic approach of belly dance.

This thesis is an ethnography of the global belly dance community with particular reference to the transmission of dance paradigms from Cairo to the international dance community. Key words describing my topic include dance, gender, performance, group dynamics, social norms and resistance, public vs. private, tourism, and globalisation. I hypothesize that social dancing is used in many parts of the world as a space outside ordinary life in which to demonstrate compliance with or to challenge prevailing social paradigms. The examination of dance as a globalised unit of cultural capital is an emerging field. With this in mind I investigate the way this dance is employed in professional, semi-professional, and non-professional settings in Egypt and in other parts of the world, notably North America and Europe. Techniques included interviewing members of the international dance community who engage in dance tourism, travelling from their homes to Egypt or other destinations in order to take dance classes, get costumes, or in other ways seek to have an 'authentic' dance experience. I also explored connections dancers fostered with other members of the dance community both locally and in geographically distant locations by using online blogs, websites, listservs and social networking sites. I conducted the first part of my fieldwork in Cairo following this with fieldwork in belly dance communities in the United States and Britain.

Belly dance is popularly practised in the West, and every year, thousands of enthusiasts and professionals from around the world travel to attend belly dance festivals in Egypt, which is considered the cultural centre of the dance. This bachelor’s thesis examines the discourses produced by Western or ʽwhiteʼ belly dancers from Sweden and Finland, on the topics of tourism in Egypt and belly dance festivals in Egypt. The texts are analysed using James Paul Gee's discourse analytical framework, combined with postcolonial theory, complemented with an intersectional approach. From the postcolonial and feminist perspectives, belly dance discourse in the West and tourism discourse are problematic, as they perpetuate Orientalist tropes and unequal global power structures, which build on colonial discourse. It is hoped that by identifying and questioning these aspects of discourse that are problematic in terms of equity, this study will make a small contribution towards mitigating its adverse effects, and towards social change. / <p>ORCID for Mavis Hooi : 0000-0002-0049-1095</p>

No description available.