![\"Coin](\"http:\/\/www.gildedserpent.com\/art48\/graphics48\/coinbra2.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Part I: The Mythic History<\/p>\n
If you spend any time online reading about belly dance (and if you\u2019re reading this, you obviously do), you have probably encountered the \u201cdancing for dowries\u201d explanation of the coin-covered belly dance bra and belt.\u00a0 Coin bras and belts, popular in belly dance costuming since the 1970\u2019s, offer a mysterious, evocative alternative to the glittering beadwork that more obviously reflects mainstream glamour.\u00a0 We have all seen the photographs from the 19th and early 20th centuries showing women \u2013 dancers \u2013 draped in coin jewelry, and obviously their jewelry inspired the use of coins in modern belly dance costuming.\u00a0 So it\u2019s natural to want to know the customs behind the fashion. \u00a0This article is about the ways we have constructed imaginative histories to explain this aspect of belly dance.\u00a0 The ways we interpret wearing money \u2013 the juxtaposition of earning power, sex, adornment, and belly dance \u2013 say a lot about the way we see belly dance and ourselves.<\/p>\n
Dancing for Dowries: The Mythos<\/p>\n
The basic story is this:\u00a0 We wear coin costumes because sometime in the past, young, marriageable women would dance for the coins that were thrown to them, which they would then sew onto their hip scarves, saving them for a dowry.\u00a0 When a girl had earned enough, she could give up dancing and return home to a proper and happy marriage, after which she would no longer dance in public.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
In classical Greece, a woman from a poor family tied a sash around her hips and went to dance for her dowry in the marketplace. Spectators threw small gold coins at her, money which she then sewed into her bodice and hip-belt as decoration, since she had no where else quite as safe to keep them<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Me\u2019ira has written many effective and accurate commentaries on belly dance, but this is not one of them.\u00a0 There is no evidence from ancient Greece of women dancing for their dowries.<\/p>\n All the same, this account has been repeated on any number of sites, incidentally without either attribution to the modern author or references to the primary sources (that is, sources from the original culture, here ancient Greece).\u00a0 Another version of the story, repeated by a reporter in the mainstream press from an interview with the belly dance teacher Elena Griffin<\/span>, shifts the emphasis to the Arab world and adds detail:<\/p>\n Young women would sew their dowry onto their clothes to let men know how much money they had \u2026 As they followed the caravans, men could hear the coins jingling from far away, they would know a woman of marriageable age was in the next caravan. They could see the girl\u2019s dowry on her clothes and know whether he could afford to marry her.\u00a0 (Meserve 2009)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Other variations shift the location to North Africa, and some specifically name the Ouled Nail tribe as the group practicing this \u201cdancing for dowries,\u201d a variation I will discuss later.<\/p>\n Mythic Histories<\/p>\n The \u201cdancing for dowries\u201d stories I quoted above are not supported by any evidence, which makes them \u201cmythic histories,\u201d or myths masquerading as historical accounts.\u00a0 (I will sometimes also use the term \u201cmythos\u201d or \u201cmyth,\u201d to describe them).\u00a0 <\/p>\n Lacking evidence, why do we tell stories like this?\u00a0 To fill a gap in our knowledge that is difficult to research?\u00a0 Maybe.\u00a0 But even when facts are thick on the ground, history can be told in many different ways, slanted to reflect one perspective or another, or to explain different things.\u00a0 And history\u2013based explanations of modern practices often have an element of fiction \u2013 or perhaps myth is a better word.\u00a0 In fact, one of the purposes of all<\/i> mythology, from ancient Greece to modern America, is to explain the present through reference to the heroic events of the past. <\/p>\n In our community, where so much knowledge is transmitted orally or on the Internet \u2013 and this applies especially to Internet \u201chistory\u201d \u2013 there is no prerequisite that \u201chistories\u201d of belly dance contain any facts at all, and many belly dance histories are entirely fabricated.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n Well then, why has this particular<\/i> story \u2013 \u201cdancing for dowries\u201d \u2013 persisted so long and in so many different forms?\u00a0 A contributing factor is the misreading of the practices of the Ouled Nail, but there are other, more internal reasons for its popularity.<\/p>\n Mythic histories do not come into being unless they satisfy a deep need in a culture (or a sub-culture like ours).\u00a0 When a mythic history is told and retold in a context like the belly dance community, you have to assume that there are strong underlying reasons for its popularity.\u00a0 It must be satisfying some vision of the dance that dancers have, or satisfactorily answering internal questions about the meaning and value of our dance or ourselves as dancers.\u00a0<\/p>\n Sigmund Freud<\/span> commented that \u201cmyths were public, collective dreams\u201d (Scarborough 24) and whatever you think about his ideas on penis envy, he had a point about myth.\u00a0 This means that just as dreams might reveal your underlying neuroses, mythic histories can be a chisel-point we can use to get to the heart of some underlying assumptions about our dance and ourselves \u2013helpful or harmful \u2013 that do not always come out in our conscious minds.\u00a0 <\/p>\n What underlying feelings, beliefs, anxieties, or hopes do our mythic histories reveal about our relationship to belly dance in the present world?\u00a0 In this case, the \u201cdancing for dowries\u201d mythos contains a tangle of conflicting issues about independence, status, money, and the value of belly dance.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s look at some elements of the story in turn.<\/p>\n \u201cDancing for Dowries\u201d Unpacked<\/p>\n Why is the story set in ancient Greece?<\/i>\u00a0<\/strong> Greece is a part of the \u201cbelly dance world\u201d in the West, since Greek restaurants hire belly dancers, Greek tchiftetelli has many moves in common with social forms of belly dance, and so on.\u00a0 At the same time, Greece has the reputation of being the founder of Western democracy, science, and philosophy \u2013 the key elements of civilization.\u00a0 When belly dance is placed back in ancient Greece, the dance is somehow legitimized.\u00a0 No [we can claim], this isn\u2019t the dance of the harem slave<\/a> \u2013 free women were doing it in Greece millennia ago!\u00a0 <\/p>\n Putting the story into ancient Greece is a way of legitimizing our dance by associating it with the \u201cclassical\u201d and \u201cpure.\u201d\u00a0 Too bad there\u2019s no evidence.\u00a0 But another \u201ctoo bad\u201d is that we feel the need to look beyond the dance itself to find associations that give it legitimacy in the popular consciousness of the West.\u00a0 In giving in to this desire, we may be undermining the real claims to legitimacy belly dance has in its own right.<\/p>\n Why is the dancer portrayed as a \u201cpoor girl\u201d?<\/i>\u00a0<\/span> If we are mythologizing our dance, why not portray ancient belly dancers as aristocrats and queens whose coined necklaces reflect their wealth and status?\u00a0But even if you stick to the \u201cdancing for dowries\u201d scenario, why insist on low<\/i> status for the dancer?\u00a0 Ordinary \u201cmiddle class\u201d women rather than the poor could also reasonably be portrayed as dancing for dowries.\u00a0 <\/p>\n But poverty means you have a good reason to concede to outside necessities.\u00a0The dancing girl couldn\u2019t help dancing \u2013 she had<\/i> to.\u00a0 <\/p>\n The use of this poverty excuse reflects the ambivalent attitude the largely middle-class belly dancer has toward professional performance.\u00a0 On the one hand, belly dance is art, and performance is the epitome of its expression.\u00a0 On the other hand, everyone \u201cknows\u201d that belly dancers provide a sexy come-on an tease to their male audience members \u2013 don\u2019t they?\u00a0 Encountering this persistent expectation gives belly dancers in the West a defensive attitude.\u00a0 The idea of \u201cnecessity through poverty\u201d in the mythical dowry-dancers is a hedge against the blame that can accrue to the dancer for performing this sexy dance just because she wants<\/i> to.\u00a0 If she had<\/i> to, it might not be so bad.\u00a0 Economic necessity, by the way, was the reason given by many lower-echelon dancers in Cairo as to why they were dancing professionally in Karin van Nieuwkerk<\/span>\u2019s 1980\u2019s interviews (van Nieuwkerk 1995).<\/p>\n Belly dance is an expensive hobby, and most of the women dancing in public venues such as restaurants just plow their earnings back into their dance habits.\u00a0 The money one earns from gigging is very welcome.\u00a0 It may even justify the value of the hobby\/profession to dubious family members.\u00a0 But undercutting<\/a> and other related economic practices reflect the kind of desperation that only poverty can explain \u2013 whether that poverty is monetary or another sort.\u00a0<\/p>\n Unfortunately, it is the desire to perform at any cost \u2013 or for any price \u2013 that aligns the modern belly dancer with the \u201cpoor girl\u201d in the \u201cdancing for dowries\u201d scenario.\u00a0 The acceptance of this artificial \u201cpoverty mentality\u201d undermines professionalism in belly dance, and the \u201cpoor girl\u201d of the \u201cdancing for dowries\u201d story reflects this unpleasant dynamic.\u00a0 <\/p>\n Why do they throw her money?<\/i>\u00a0<\/span> \u00a0There is a long tradition in the Middle East that persists into the present day, of tipping belly dancers by putting money on the body or (less commonly) in the costume.\u00a0 Several 18th – 19th century travelers\u2019 descriptions describe audience members tipping dancers by pressing small gold coins to their foreheads or elsewhere on their bodies.\u00a0 This is not quite the same as throwing.\u00a0 To be fair, the idea of throwing money to performers has a tradition in the West as well, though it is usually not really throwing but dropping coins (or bills) into a receptacle that either sits in plain sight or is passed around during or after the show.\u00a0 <\/p>\n Why does she go <\/i>alone to the market place?<\/i>\u00a0<\/span> The market place stands for an impersonal world where buying and selling is the order of the day.\u00a0 In this mythic history, there is no real context<\/i> for the dancer, except that she is unmarried.\u00a0 Does she leave her father\u2019s home every day to go to the market place?\u00a0 Does she live on her own, away from home, while she earns her dowry?\u00a0 Does she live with other dancers \u2013 or dance with them?\u00a0 Any given town would presumably have a number of dancing poor girls, so did they dance together? Did each stake out a spot?\u00a0 <\/p>\n The vagueness of the scenario allows us to read into this pseudo-historical account the \u201csingle life\u201d that most adult women experience, for at least a few years, in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.\u00a0 This dancer is a single girl!\u00a0 She can overturn the standards of propriety that would apply to women that were either married or too young \u2013 she can dance professionally now, which would be frowned on at any other time in her life.\u00a0 This ability to fly in the face of propriety, and to do it on one\u2019s own and in the commercial, money-driven world, resonates with the freedom of living single away from home that has been a (usually exciting) facet of contemporary women\u2019s lives.\u00a0 <\/p>\n The dowry-earner\u2019s temporary overthrowing of the bonds of propriety takes its context in part from the very modern experience of freedom our times allow us as single women.\u00a0 <\/p>\n On the other hand, this alone-ness slides the story past two central issues in the belly dance world: both the sisterhood one ideally feels with one\u2019s fellow dancers, and the bitchiness that can result from jealousy, competition for jobs and students, and so on \u2013 which surely puts it in the realm of fantasy!<\/p>\n Why is she dancing <\/i>for her dowry?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span> That\u2019s the crux of the matter.\u00a0 The answer rests on the nature of the dowry.<\/p>\n Dowry is a complicated animal, and not all cultures treat it the same.\u00a0 In ancient Greece, the homeland of this mythic history, a dowry was a sum of money, goods or land allotted to a woman by her father upon her marriage.\u00a0 It was managed by her husband, but was meant to benefit and support her and her children, and if he divorced her for a reason other than adultery, he had to give her dowry back to her \u2013 or rather, to her male guardian.\u00a0 So in ancient Greek terms, and to a lesser extent in the Western world for whom the values of ancient Greece have trickled down, \u201cdancing for dowries\u201d makes sense.<\/p>\n On the other hand, in the Arab world, it doesn\u2019t.\u00a0 Dowries in the Arab world (called mahr<\/i>) are typically not given by the bride\u2019s father to the bride (and by extension to her husband).\u00a0 It goes the other way \u2013 the husband-to-be gives a sum of money to the father of his future bride.\u00a0 The money is typically understood to be for her benefit and protection, and may go to things like purchasing a home, household goods, or clothing and jewelry for the new bride.\u00a0 Like ancient Greek dowry, the Arabic mahr<\/i> is meant to protect the bride financially, as well as in less tangible ways, since it establishes a solid bond of obligation between the husband and the bride\u2019s family (see Barakat 1993: 110-111; Rashad et al. 2005). <\/p>\n In any case, the facts of Arabic dowry practice means that \u201cdancing for dowries\u201d does not make sense in the Arab world.\u00a0 The girl\u2019s family, let alone the girl herself, were not expected to provide her with her dowry \u2013 that was the job of the husband to be.\u00a0 (So maybe he<\/i> should be out dancing for it!)\u00a0 <\/p>\n So the real question is, why is dancing for dowries, unlikely given Arab customs, so appealing to modern belly dancers as an explanation of not only the coin bra and belt, but the logistics behind women\u2019s professional dancing?\u00a0 One of the things about dowries that jumps out at the modern feminist is that they put a price on a woman \u2013 there is an element of \u201cbuying and selling\u201d involved in negotiating a marriage that seems to reduce the woman to the value of the services and goods she is worth.\u00a0 This (in scholarly circles) is sometimes described as \u201creifying\u201d a woman (from the Latin res<\/i>, \u201cthing\u201d), literally \u201cmaking her into a thing\u201d whose value can be measured in concrete terms.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n In the \u201cdancing for dowries\u201d story, the woman is in the interesting position of reifying herself: accepting and acquiescing to the idea of her material value, and doing her best to conform to the sort of value society has set for her.\u00a0 Presumably the dancing brides know what the going rate is, since when they have it they stop.\u00a0 <\/p>\n The idea of reifying women can, in our minds, easily blend into the more acceptable (to us) idea of offering service for money (which is what belly dancers do when they dance for pay).\u00a0 But dancing for dowries is not only about the service-for-pay exchange that the dancer is doing to get her money, but also the \u201cwomen as thing\u201d reading that (in the Western world, anyway) the concept of dowry implies.<\/p>\n This reification shows up in variation that shows of men following the caravans, so that when \u201cmen could hear the coins jingling from far away, they would know a woman of marriageable age was in the next caravan. They could see the girl\u2019s dowry on her clothes and know whether he could afford to marry her.\u201d<\/p>\n The marriageable girl is clearly evaluated according to her monetary value, and marriage is portrayed as essentially an economic exchange.\u00a0 But who exactly has the financial power?\u00a0 Could a poor man go after a woman with lots of bling?\u00a0 Or did her jingling dowry mark the woman off for only men of equal wealth?\u00a0 Or maybe \u2013 in a reversal of patriarchal valuing of feminine beauty \u2013 for only the studliest?<\/p>\n Despite its socio-economic confusion, the image of the caravan with its jingling potential brides, and the excitement of the men as they hear their approach, manages to capture the excitement at the advent of the nightclub belly dancer, in the whirl of sound and rhythm that marks her entrance (and in anticipation of the bills that will bristle from her costume before the night is done).\u00a0 The other elements of this story \u2013 who is active, who passive, who is financially in control, etc. \u2013 are muddled, as is perhaps appropriate for an art whose financial and sexual issues are so deeply contested.<\/p>\n Happily Ever After?<\/p>\n One common variations appears on several sites, for example: \u00a0\u201cMost well respected women saved their payments until they had enough to buy a dowry, never to dance again after marriage\u201d (Belly Dance Divas n.d.).\u00a0 Women who dance for money are defined as \u201crespected,\u201d a position modern Western dancers want to claim, despite the poor reputation of belly dancers.\u00a0 The dowry-dancers are also thrifty, a conventional Puritan value that is incorporated into the mythos.\u00a0 This model of \u201cdancing for dowries\u201d uses the historical metaphor to affirm that belly dance, at least under certain circumstances, is a respectable thing to do.<\/p>\n But isn\u2019t it interesting that the \u201chappily ever after\u201d of this story means \u201cnever to dance again\u201d?\u00a0 Belly dance is therefore defined as a temporary thing, something to be laid aside once its (economic) usefulness has passed.\u00a0 This is directly counter to the mainstream discourse of belly dance, which emphasizes that belly dance never needs to be abandoned, and that it is always an appropriate pastime, that older women gain more emotional maturity and power to compensate for their loss of youthful energy, and so on.\u00a0 <\/p>\n Women\u2019s right to keep belly dancing, and the consciousness that sometimes a woman\u2019s decision to continue dancing will cause dissent in her immediate family, are central issues in the belly dance world.\u00a0 Stories of dancers forced by their husbands to give up their dancing constantly circulate, giving voice to the recreational belly dancer\u2019s legitimate fear that outside forces may conspire to stop her.\u00a0 Such stories emphasize the repression of women, and belly dance serves as both a symbol of a woman\u2019s right to self-expression and a means by which she can claim that right. \u00a0<\/p>\n On the other hand, realistically speaking, most of the women who study belly dance do it for a while, learn and incorporate its lessons (to whatever extent), and then lay it aside.\u00a0 The \u201cnever to dance again\u201d of this mythos may reflect this reality.\u00a0 The mythos may also reflect the discomfort that exists on a deep level with many women in our world, that says that something as sensuous as belly dance is not appropriate for the old (or even the married), or that something as fulfilling and self-centered as belly dance is only appropriate \u2013 or perhaps only possible \u2013 in a life that is free of demanding husbands and children with multiple after-school activities.\u00a0 Few recreational belly dancers are free of those things, ironically \u2013 so the idea of \u201cbelly dance abandoned\u201d may have a bittersweet resonance for women who are obliged to put their own desires for dancing on the back burner, to attend to the needs \u2013 or selfish demands \u2013 of their families.\u00a0 <\/p>\n The subtexts of the \u201cdancing for dowries\u201d mythos give us a lot to think about.\u00a0 These same issues impact the ways in which we tell the story of the Nailiyat<\/span>, professional dancers of Algeria whose practices probably inspired the idea of dancing for dowries in the first place, and whose coined jewelry probably did inspire the coined belly dance bra and belt.<\/p>\n Part II: The Nailiyat<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n Works Cited<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.gildedserpent.com\/art48\/graphics48\/coinbeltdancer.jpg\")
<\/span>The story has many manifestations.\u00a0 On one of the older sites devoted to belly dance, bdancer.com, Me\u2019ira offers this version of the story:<\/p>\n\n
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![\"poor](\"http:\/\/www.gildedserpent.com\/art48\/graphics48\/poorrichgirl.jpg\")
There is another dimension to poverty, though, which anyone who has performed professionally has encountered.\u00a0 The dancer may be middle class and well established in her comfortable home and day job with benefits, but when she takes a dance job, she suddenly becomes poor.\u00a0 Desperately poor.\u00a0 She will dance for ridiculously low sums of money<\/a>, as if she needed the gig to put food on her table or buy her kids shoes.\u00a0 She will accept money thrust into her costume<\/a> whether she likes it or not, and take on the burdensome duty of trying to instruct her audience (smiling the whole time) as to where their dollars \u2013 and their fingers \u2013 can go.\u00a0 <\/p>\n![\"coins\"](\"http:\/\/www.gildedserpent.com\/art48\/graphics48\/coins.jpg\")
<\/strong><\/i><\/span>Perhaps the coin-tossing is modeled on the generally enjoyable modern practice of customers showering bills on the dancer.\u00a0 Of course, being pelted with coins would be less pleasant!\u00a0 But a subtext of the coin-tossing scenario is \u2013 in the absence of waiters, helpful friends, or spouses \u2013 who picks up the coins from the dirt?\u00a0 The dancing girl, of course.\u00a0 That\u2019s a little more \tsolitary necessity than the average belly dancer wants, and it is diminishing to the dancer.\u00a0 But it is implicit in the story.\u00a0 Which brings us to the next question.<\/p>\n![\"Rich](\"http:\/\/www.gildedserpent.com\/art48\/graphics48\/richgirl.jpg\")
Why does she wear her coins?<\/i><\/strong> The mythic history comments that there is\u00a0 no safer place to keep them than to wear them on her own person as jewelry.\u00a0 This (for a change) is accurate to practices in several historical Middle Eastern cultures.\u00a0 It also provides an interesting and inspiring model for modern women.\u00a0 We are trained to display our beauty in a limited and conventional way.\u00a0 Things like designer labels are subtle by comparison to a necklace or belt of clattering gold coins.\u00a0 This kind of display of one\u2019s own value \u2013 even if that value rests on patriarchal assessments of women\u2019s worth \u2013 is inspiringly non-conformist in today\u2019s day and age.\u00a0 It fits in well with the experience of belly dancing as uninhibiting and as celebrating individual expression and beauty \u2013 at least, if you consider how wearing such adornment might make you stand out among your modern peers.\u00a0 The metallically-adorned dancing girls were presumably conforming to the standards of their [fictitious] cultures.<\/p>\n![\"mahr\"](\"http:\/\/www.gildedserpent.com\/art48\/graphics48\/mahr.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Berber](\"http:\/\/www.gildedserpent.com\/art48\/graphics48\/berber.jpg\")
<\/p>\nBarakat, Halim. 1993. The Arab World: Society, Culture, and State<\/i>. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.<\/h6>\n
Belly Dance Divas.\u00a0n. d.\u00a0 About Belly Dance.\u00a0 http:\/\/www.bellydancedivas.co.za\/AboutBellyDance.html<\/a>.\u00a0Accessed June 9 2009.<\/h6>\n
Deloncle, Pierre.\u00a01927.\u00a0 La Caravan Aux Eperons Verts<\/i>.\u00a0 Paris: Librarie Plon.<\/h6>\n
Dinet, Etienne, and Sliman Ben Ibrahim. \u00a01926. \u00a0Khadra<\/i>.\u00a0 Paris: H. Piazza.<\/h6>\n
Fromentin, Eugene.\u00a01857 [1981].\u00a0 Un Et\u00e9 dans le Sahara<\/i>.\u00a0 Ed. Anne-Marie Christin.\u00a0 Paris:Le Sycomore.<\/h6>\n
Gautier, Th\u00e9ophile.\u00a01865 [1978].\u00a0 Loin de Paris<\/i>.\u00a0 Ed. G. Charpentier.\u00a0 In Th\u00e9ophile Gautier, Ouvres Completes<\/i>, vol. 9.\u00a0 Geneva: Slatkine Reprints.<\/h6>\n
Herodotus.\u00a0 n. d.\u00a0 History<\/i>.\u00a0(Public domain.)<\/h6>\n
Hichens, Robert.\u00a01904.\u00a0 The Garden of Allah<\/i>.\u00a0 New York: Grosset and Dunlap.<\/h6>\n
Lazreg, Marnia.\u00a01994.\u00a0 The Eloquence of Silence: Algerian Women in Question<\/i>.\u00a0 New York: Routledge.<\/h6>\n
Me\u2019ira.\u00a0 n.d. The World\u2019s Oldest\tDance.\u00a0 http:\/\/www.bdancer.com\/history\/BDhist1.html<\/a>.\u00a0Accessed June 14 2009.<\/h6>\n
Meserve, Casey.\u00a02009.\u00a0 Dancing For Themselves.\u00a0 Kingston<\/i> Reporter<\/i>.\u00a0 Feb 20.<\/h6>\n
Michelle.\u00a0 n. d.\u00a0Collecting Your Dowry.\u00a0 http:\/\/www.farfesha.com\/pages\/dowery.html<\/a>.\u00a0Accessed June 1, 2009.<\/h6>\n
Morgan, Lawrence.\u00a0 1956 [2001].\u00a0 Flute of Sand<\/i>. Bristol, UK: Cinnabar.
van Nieuwkerk, Karin.\u00a0 1995.\u00a0 A Trade Like Any Other<\/i>.\u00a0 Austin, Texas:University of Texas Press.<\/h6>\nRashad, Hoda, Magued Osman, and Farzaneh Roudi-Farhini.\u00a0 2005.\u00a0 Marriage in the Arab World.<\/i>\u00a0 Population Reference Bureau.\u00a0
\nAccessed June 15, 2009.<\/h6>\nScarborough, Milton.\u00a0 1994.\u00a0 Myth and Modernity<\/i>.\u00a0 Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. <\/h6>\n
![\"Click](\"http:\/\/www.gildedserpent.com\/art48\/graphics48\/crossclick.jpg\")
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