LISTEN closely to the voices, with their tales of clandestine
peformances, their mixed emotions at what they have witnesssed, and you
find that belly-dancers have -- for centuries -- been seen as veiled
threats to propriety.
Watch closely as the two performers, with their gauzy costumes, send
veils quivering with their rapidly shimmying hips, and you see why both
western sensibilities and fundamental Islamic codes have been set on
edge by generations of dancing girls.
Arab dancing is an untrammelled celebration of female identity, female
sexuality -- and that, in some quarters, is forcefully kept under wraps.
For Wendy Buonaventura, the history of the dance is every bit as
deserving of our attention as the dance itself. And certainly, the
recorded extracts -- taken from various memoires, mostly male, mostly
western in origin -- point up the ambiguity in attitude that has made
belly dancers such objects of lust and loathing.
The pity is that the recording is itself so dull, so devoid of
atmosphere. While Buonaventura and her associate, Jacqueline Jamal,
offer dance that is sinuous-slow or dance that is hectic with rapid hip
movement, the commentary plods.
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