This is my response to a thread on another tribe. The question was about someone from a primarily Cabaret POV believing that ATS or Tribal Fusion styles are not Belly Dance. You who know me, know I like to go kind of deep, this was my response to what is or is not Belly Dance and the don't forget that question can be contexted for different discussions.

Every community whether cultural or biological walks a balance between holding and respecting traditions and welcoming the healthy improvisations and inspirations that define change and may eventually in turn become the traditions. Look to the process of evolution - some changes never really "took", others became the backbone and foundations for critical development, some changes were a flash in the night, some radical and big, some small and significant. The point is that that is what life is. It just isn't stagnant. I think one of our (our being us humans) biggest challenges is how we try to control and hold on and make everything concrete. We fear the movement under our feet, fear not having everything be solid and stay there. But in reality from the point of physics - acutally nothing is solid. Every moment molecules are constantly leaving their configurations, joining others, exchanging places. Right now all the elements that make up the body we feel is so surely us - are actually the very same that made up the world of neaderthals, we may have the same hydrogen, carbon or oxygen molecules that were in the body of Esther, Cleopatra, Nefriti or Joan of Arc. And you are sharing your heart, lungs, brain and body with the current rocks, trees, stone, earth and people around you now.

Some communities hold on tightly to their ideas, believing them to be concrete, conrolling the pace of change and improvisation so as not to have radical shifts, others hold very loosely, but each community has to walk this teetering tottering constant shifts and movements. Definitions and boundaries and idealogies, guidelines and then practices are critical to the well functioning of any community, but every community will be confronted with innovation and change. The secret is breathing lightly, holding softly, opening ones heart, pausing before one speaks and getting a reality check on REACTING.

How can one define belly dance? I think to most, and in most of the discussion that has happened so far, there is an assumed definition that references very recent history, so Bellydance is "understood" to mean that which has contemporarily come out of the fertile crescent, the Middle East - Dance Orientale. When cabaret dancers say Belly Dance we mean that form of dance that has been developed primarily on the stage in Egypt and there is ample evidence that the cabaret style's fundamental elements were folkloric in origin and balletic. This dance form which was originally very much performed by solo women on stage primarily for a male audience has become a very sophisticated art form and has as been discussed, become a deep part of tradition in the Middle East at weddings. The presumption is that if one is wearing some version of the bedlah and doing movements of the pelvis and torso primarily to Arabic music it is belly dance. However cabaret is not the kind of bellydance that has been done by women for women as long as women have been alive on the planet. This limited definition of bellydance does nothing to recognize the origin of women's movements of the torso and belly, the earthy, and firey spirals, figure 8's, shimmies, undulations , and circles, the highlighting in general of the creative energy inherent in the female body. The definition of cabaret belly dance may be BY DEFAULT, the all encompassing reference point in our contemporary times for categorizing what is belly dance, but for me that is just a small point in time.

The truth is I believe that this dance (forget what we're naming it right now) of undulations like a serpent in the body, of rocking back and forth on strong thighs like elephants, shimmies like the earth quaking or vibrating, sinuous figure 8's of powerful hips and pelvic encompassing the all creative womb and sacred passage way the yoni, rotating ribcage melting like endless waves into body rolls up and down the female form all point to a dance that is sacred and a fundamental celebration of life on Earth and a testament to the creative power and potential that by biology had been carefully placed in a women's body.

I want to tell you a story. Take a deep breath and feel yourself here and now, become one with the beating of your heart and the circle of your breath.

Once upon a time a long time ago, many many moons and suns before your present body came to be, your foremothers and foregrandmothers and sisters and brother/fathers lived upon this blue/green pearl land. Traveling in small bands, our early ancestors minds and bodies were acutely in tune with the vital and wild world around them. Smelling, listening, feeling the bones of their Earth Mother, they became acutley aware to the movements of water, when it would come, where it would be, when it may become a force of flooding destruction, or an obstruction to travel. They had to know intimately the movement of the bands of animals that roamed in huge or smaller herds, when they came, when they left, where they grazed. They had to remember the cycles of berries, leaves, edible roots and grains when they flowered and fruited, and when they came to fallow. Our foremothers and forefathers had to read the sublte changes in sky, or color and temperature, of smell of electric charge and were in awe of nature like we could never be now. Our early forbears were able to be present in gratitude and wonder because they had no understanding of chemistry, or physics, or biology. Upon seeing the magnificence of the sun day after day, the mysterious glowings and showings of the white pearl moon they imbibed the celestial phenomenons and earthly wonders as magical beings -for how could they be explained otherwise?

In this mindset it is no wonder that the realities of birth and death were acutley present and deeply respected as primordial passages. Life and death were intricately intertwined in the thriving and surviving of the tribe, the death of an animal could be life to the clan, and death of a significant clan member or many could mean the decline of the tribe. A slip on a rock crossing a river, a violent conflict with another human group, the attack of a wild animal, the loss of blood was critical. All of life it seemed was cogently interdependent. Deeply entwined with all that was around them, the people knew that blood could mean death. The red liquid came to symbolize both life and death in a huge way for the people and stimulated the earliest ideolgies concerning the why of their existence. Thus we come to this.

Among the people there was a wondrous inexplicable mystery. Somehow the females of the tribe, all of them together were inextricably bound to the unfolding cycle of the great white pearl - The moon. Her changing face looming large seemed to call to the women and their bodies, seemed to ask for a blood gift. When it was black and silent, they would bleed together, flowing from the deepest dark and hidden place of their bodies, the blood would flow..... but how could this be - they aren't sick, aren't wounded, ....they don't die? The blood - it is running like a river from deep inside of her and yet she is tending the fire, gathering the roots, they are moving as one body, sitting on the straw, working the hide and yet they live and they live. And time and time again at each dark moon from the time of fullness budding on her chests she joins the bleeding at the dark time and she does not die? How is this - is she magic, is she the moon? And then more........sometimes a woman stops bleeding with the sisters and her belly becomes the moon. Waning ever so slightly month to month a crescent fullness, then more and more until it is full and round like the full moon shining her face, and there is life within! It moves. 9 moons pass and then the power of earthquakes and sea is within her. Unable to contain the rolling and rumbling she begins to move and sway her moon like belly. Rolling her hips like mountains and oceans she begins to circle and shake, undulating force moving through her torso from chest to belly, round and round, waving through her again and again. Turning left and right, spiraling around her ample thighs and huge moon belly, pushing, rolling, vibrating, vibrating, vibrating and then...... she gushes and shudders and brings forth another life! A new being, a child of the tribe. Still more.... breasts spill forth ambrosia, white milk, sweet and life giving river. She is like the Mother Earth herself giving life, feeding life, feeding us, creating life. SHE IS MAGIC, she must be omnipotent, she is Goddess! Different she is, because only she has these powers. She has the power of life and death and it is the moon and the snake and the EArth, they are she and she is them and now we see. Her blood makes her separate, gives her power, her blood and the moon. Life is Goddess our mother, watches over us and takes us as well.

And thus the magic ritual has begins, 9 moons pass and another has grown the moon in her belly as the sacred blood has ceased to pass. Now her dance is coming, rumbling from deep within, her large hips begin to roll and circle, the vibration undulating up and down! "Come my sisters! Come we know what we must do! Move our hips, shake and undulate, call forth the snake, the life within her. Help her bring it forth, come - dance your womb, ignite the fire and river and earth within, moving the breath and blood through bring this life through." And so they gather, circling Her, dancing the dance of life, with her, for her, for themselves, for the life of the entire clan. The dance must be done, must insure the success of life. "She" is called upon to protect, she must be the vessel through which the Divine Goddess guides us. "Shhhhhh, listen and watch her divine mystery is cloaking you."

Do you see now my sisters - where you come from? This belly dance it isn't "belly dance" it is sacred movement celebrated from the beginning of time, practiced by women for women. Because our foremothers bled and didn't die, because they could create life by themselves, because from their breast flowed nectar and because they were in power with the moon - they must be magic. It is easy to see how without the understanding of biology (yes the guys finally figured it out - had to do with animal husbandry, hmmmm that ram with the black ring around his eye and juniour as well.......), the concept of Goddess filled our forebears minds, hearts and spirits. Its easy to understand where the movements of belly dance come from. I have birthed twice and there is no doubt in my mind that the spiral snake and circles of eternity are in my womb and hips. We understand that dance comes from life. That it is an act of people self-reflecting, as well as communing with something larger than itself. After 9 years of teaching and dancing with hundreds of women, I hear again and again how the first time they saw belly dance, be it Cabaret, ATS, or Tribal Fusion, be it Turkish, Moroccan, or Beladi from Egypt, that a deep recognition took place. All women recognize Belly Dance in all its forms, they know it when they see it because its in our genetic makeup. It is their birthright.

I saw Cabaret the first time I ever saw Belly Dance, and that was at 32, after dancing already for 25 years. I knew that I would never wear that costume or those high heels and prance around titillating the audience in powder blue chiffon, but damn!, that pelvic, womb and torso thing was something and I knew it was mine! And I could recognize it regardless of the dance style. So what I'm wanting to re-member us to ladies is the bigger context. Yes I define belly dance as incorporating the undulating movements of the pelvis and hips, hip drops, hip lifts, pelvic rotations, figure 8's, combined with shimmies, rib cage rotations, body undulations and lots of isolations, and I think ululating has to be in there too for me to call it Belly Dance, and where the costume highlights the hips, womb, belly and torso. How much you cover of the rest is up to you and your style. How do we know its not Polynesian or Hula - well music, costume cues and hand and upper body movement and by assessing the other movements done with the ummies. I've never seen Hula or Polynesian use full body undulations or backbends, Turkish drops or shoulder shimmies.

Cabaret dance, which is what most are referring to here as the "belly dance" is one step in a long evolution and life of Womens Sacred and Original Dance and has, like Women and like the Goddess, traveled through a long long colorful life and torrid history, from being Divine, Divinatory and Sacred, to Maligned & Despised and Dirty and Evil, reduced to a dance of sexual invitation and titilation. I see the ATS style and Tribal Fusion style of Belly Dance as contemporary womens reclaiming of an ancient dance; there is so much feminism in the practices of the dancers I know here on the West Coast and in the US in the ATS and Tribal Fusion communities. And lately some of the titiallation has come back I think in the Tribal Fusion culture, but it still feels very different. Still feels like women dancing for women to me. I mean if you wanted someone to comment on, or love your dance, (and that is a another thread) - whats more important to you, that other women in the community get what you're doing, or the guys? Who is showing up and doing all this talk and defining and philosphisizing and practicing and undulating??? Us, women. We're doing this to find our voice, heal our wounds, commune together, be strong, empowered, and yes there is still in there the beauty and sexy thing, but I think we're really wanting to celebrate that we are CREATRIX, PROGENITRIX, GREEN SLITHERIN', ALIVE AND PULSIN, FECUND EARTH SAVIN', MIDWIFING BIRTH AND DEATH WITCHES KIND OF THING. We're embracing the dark, the lights, the multicoloured, multi gendered, multi sized, and definitely multi aged tapestry of it all and you can't stop poetry. This is what I feel is real about the Belly Dance experience for women and its the private and collective journey. In that journey Belly Dance is a movement for and about women and making sense of their contemporary lives. In that sense there is no restriction in defininition, that comes with professionalism and performance or creating a dance terminology and technical standards - all of which we are also doing now. But this is about the magic of something ancient and sacred that we've re-discovered and in this song Belly Dance is alive and thriving.

I've got women 20-60 straight, gay, pink to brown, all having their lives busted open by Belly Dance (Heavy Hips here in Santa Cruz). And I've got hip hop, ballet, jazz, yoga, folkloric Arabic, Turkish and N.African, Flamenco, W.African, Afro Cuban, Bharat Natyama and Odissi,and theatre all mixed up in that along with heavy doses of meditation, self reflection, mindfulness, green feminisim and buddhism, anti-capitalism, permaculture and joyful giving gratitude and prayer. Yes I can tell when a troupe is more hip hop than belly dance, more traditional ATS, more folkloric or more jazz, more theater or modern, or cabaret, but damn as long as you've got that bra (okay or sexy vest or choli) and awesome hip adornment going on, bringing yourself and all of us to the belly, womb, torso and center of the universe the YONI, I think it falls into the category of Belly Dance.

Just my current ideas. I know this is long, but whatza writin' sista ta do? I love you Sharon and have been trying to call you about something I want to talk about. Can you email me your number? heavyhipsdirector@yahoo.com

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