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Middlesex Beat Article
THE GODDESS DANCING
BY STEVEN P. GALANTE
Three crones, anonymous in black veils, climb out of the
audience and onto the stage. Supporting one another, they shuffle forward…
gesticulate… cough… kvetch. This is belly dancing?
Indeed, yes. Before long, the hags are paddling through the air,
using broomsticks for oars and floating on the lightest, most purposeful of
footsteps. Their veils are gone, their bellies are naked, their hips are shifting—left and
right, left and right— in unison to the ululations and prattling drums of Algerian-born
recording artist Cheb i Sabbah.
The performers—who are far younger than the crones they play—are
the principals of The Goddess Dancing, an Arlington-based collaborative
of belly dancers who explode the stereotypes surrounding their ancient art. They
offer no fluttering eyelids, no come-hither glances, no salacious bumps and grinds.
Rather, the trio has, simultaneously and somewhat paradoxically, brought belly dancing
back to its ritualistic roots, and thrust it forward into the modern era. (WebGoddess'
emphasis!!)
Think of it as the fertility rites of Isis as interpreted by
Julian Beck’s Living Theater.
“Our style is American belly dancing,” says principal Cathy
Moore. “We make no claims to being ethnic, Turkish, Egyptian, or folkloric.”
Moore and the two other principals of The Goddess Dancing,
Anita-Cristina Calcaterra and Karen Uminski, have led the troupe’s choreography
for five years, though the group was founded even earlier, in 1989.
Their main purpose is to teach belly dancing—as a ritual art, a
means of female empowerment, and a sensuous pleasure, all in one. Annually, the
principals and their students perform for the public. They will dance this year’s
showcase, called
Circles & Cycles, at 8pm on
Saturday, June 25, at the Green Street Studios in Cambridge. “Crone Dance,” which is part of this year’s performance, is
typical of the troupe’s choreography. On a slender armature of narrative, the performers
spin an improvisational dance intended to entrance the audience while making a point
about the female experience.
As the crones dance, the clangorous music turns mild, even
wistful. Veils of vibrant color appear: cobalt blue, electric orange and
fluorescent green. The women are transformed into maidens, and their frenetic rhythms into
innocent undulations. Then, as the music accelerates, Moore, Calcaterra and Uminski
deliver a series of shimmies, sidesteps, shakes and other provocations that become
steadily more sultry. The maidens, as their innocence dissolves, enter motherhood.
The piece ends as the women return to their dotage. The music
slows. A bell tolls. The dancers hold hands, slump to the floor and burrow beneath
that final veil, the shroud.
“We’re exploring the stereotypes of old age,” Calcaterra says.
“Underneath the crone is a woman who has lived a long time, who is—who has
been—both maiden and mother.”
This focus on the female experience is central to both the
choreography and teaching method of The Goddess Dancing. Indeed, a late-70’s style
of feminism pervades their work—a feminism less concerned with political activism and
equal opportunity in the workplace, and more with liberating women from emotional
expectations based on gender.
“We gear it to be an affirmation for women living in this
culture,” Calcaterra says. “They don’t like their bodies. They compare themselves
with the magazine covers. We gear our dancing for the average American woman.”
That approach is decidedly different from belly dancing’s
historical roots in this country. Evidence suggests, for example, that a belly dancer was
providing at least two kinds of entertainment as far back as 1881 at a Tombstone,
Arizona, bordello. It was during the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, however, that belly
dancing seized the American imagination. An exhibition called The Streets of
Cairo was considered scandalous—and so intriguing that belly dancing spread rapidly
into popular culture. Soon after, for example, Thomas Edison made a silent film called
Fatima’s Coochee-Coochee Dance.
Belly dancers, both authentic and imitation, began appearing in traveling fairs, circuses, vaudeville reviews,
burlesque shows and nightclubs - where police vice squads often turned up as uninvited guests.
By the 1970s, Americans had grown less prudish. Belly dancing
experienced a small revival, though the primary connotation remained sexual.
Moore, for example, recently discovered a belly dancing video from that decade
titled How to Make Your Husband a Sultan.
“Belly dancing as an aphrodisiac,” Calcaterra cracks.
In fact, dancers say, there is scant evidence to support the
view that belly dancing played such a role in ancient times. More likely, they say, it
was a way for women to entertain themselves, and perhaps to prepare for childbirth.
And, they point out, the infamous “dance of the seven veils” that supposedly aroused
King Herod was entirely the invention of Oscar Wilde, whose 1891 play Salomé
took great liberties with a couple of fairly tame Biblical passages.
In the studio of The Goddess Dancing, women once again
dance for their own pleasure. Some dance for fitness, others for art. School
teachers, scientists, doctors, business people, housewives and others are taking up belly
dancing, Calcaterra says. “It’s all of the things you associate with it,” she says.
“Sensual. A pleasurable way to move your body. Mysterious. Empowering. And, yes—sexy.”
This article appeared
originally in
Middlesex Beat,
June 2005 issue.
Middlesex Beat is a free, independent arts & entertainment magazine
serving Middlesex county. Our thanks to the author and publisher for
permission to use the article here.
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