I thought Yasmina’s article had a lot of sound, clear reasoning on the first two questions regarding teaching methods and starting troupes.  I am puzzled, however, at her logic behind why she thinks men should belly dance, i.e., on the one hand she writes that she was advised to belly dance because “women need spiritual recognition”, but then she feels men should bellydance to “balance the Yin -Yang” or male-female roles.  In my view, this is an excellent example of using conflicting theories to make an opinion “work”.   

To be clear, the style of belly dance Yasmina is referring to is “Raks Sharki”  traditionally (from about 1930 or so) a very  feminine dance role in Egypt.  We are not talking about men doing folkloric styles, which is traditional in the Middle East, except for the period hundreds of years ago when men dressed as women, even veiled their faces, to dance as females because women were not allowed to dance in public at all.   That cultural history is important and relevant.  When you take into consideration that the West, with it’s belief in freedom of personal expression, what you have here is a Western culture superimposed over the Middle Eastern culture, which as we all know, feels very differently about this issue.

 And with all due respect, I don’t follow Yasmina’s analogy about men taking traditionally “female dominated jobs”, well, there are laws about equal rights in employment and housing but we are talking about a cultural art form here, and that means the culture deserves recognition.

 I just want to point out that, after all, “bellydance” as we call it did not originate in the West so let’s be very careful when we talk about  “balancing” out male-female roles.  Personally, I feel inspired by Tito both as a teacher and performer of Raks Sharqi, not only for his obvious dance skill and charisma onstage, but his costuming is more traditionally male-style gelabaya and hip sash.  What impresses me the most is that Tito’s overall  presentation both as teacher and performer comes across as focussed  within the Middle Eastern cultural context.  
Yours in dance, 

Nisima

Pacifica, CA
[posted for Nisima by Editor]