The Brazilian experience of belly dance in Egypt: Representations and paradoxes

Abstract

Currently, belly dance is practised worldwide, producing a global market of classes, workshops, festivals, competitions, and performances. In this sense, Egypt attracts amateur and professional dancers from all over the world that crave contact with the cultural birthplace of their practice, seeking knowledge “from the source”. However, in Egypt, even though professional belly dance shows are highly popular in commercial venues, parties and weddings, the belly dancer is an outcast in Egyptian society, mostly seen as a woman of low morals. Based on two months of fieldwork in Egypt and on the experience of a group of Brazilian belly dance practitioners during their cultural holidays in the country, this dissertation investigates the relations developed by Brazilian belly dance practitioners towards and within the Egyptian belly dance market. Contrasting the foreign idealisation of the “authentic Egyptian belly dance” as an “ancient, feminine and sacred practice” with local representations of the same dance as a “vulgar entertainment”, this research proposes an analysis of these contrasts through an intersectional approach. It discusses the intertwinement of the categories of class, race, gender and sexuality in the production of different approaches to, representations and styles of belly dancing in Brazil and in Egypt. Keywords: belly dance; Egypt; Brazil; orientalism; professional dance market.