Belly Dance, Pilgrimage, and Identity

Includes bibliographical references (pages 149-164) and index.

Belly dance : transmission in popular culture -- Egypt : place of pilgrimage, place of home -- Dancing the goddess in popular culture : resistance, spirituality and empowerment -- San Francisco and American tribal style -- Fusion, dark fusion and Raqs Gothique -- Belly dance, gender and identity -- Belly dance and the stage : nationality, ethnicity, identity.

This book examines the globalization of belly dance and the distinct dancing communities that have evolved from it. The history of belly dance has taken place within the global flow of sojourners, immigrants, entrepreneurs, and tourists from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century. In some cases, the dance is transferred to new communities within the gender normative structure of its original location in North Africa and the Middle East. Belly dance also has become part of popular culture's Orientalist infused discourse. The consequence of this discourse has been a global revision of the solo dances of North Africa and the Middle East into new genres that are still part of the larger belly dance community but are distinct in form and meaning from the dance as practiced within communities in North Africa and the Middle East.