~~~~~~LITERATURE REVIEW~~~~~

                                            1999 “Grandmother’s Secrets: The Ancient Rituals and Healing Power of Belly Dance.”   New York: Interlink                                                                Books.  

          The beginning chapters are similar to those of vignettes of an autobiography.  It starts with an explanation and introduction to the author’s life as a young girl growing up in Baghdad, Iraq.  It did not address belly dance as the major subject right away but led into it with the last chapter of Part I describing her first public dance performance for her parents’ guests.  This was a type of initiation rite of passage into womanhood when she experienced her first period at the age of nine. I have been able to make extensive notes as the first half of the book is the author’s lived experience with belly dance and her grandmother’s teachings.

• Belly dance is an art that entails three factors: theory, practice, and the heart. Practice of dance being shaped by the individual woman’s personality, creativity, and intuition. It represents life itself.

• “Amid the jungle of confusing women’s images, belly dancing can help women in the search for their own identity, as women and as human beings. It can pave the way for a process of self-awareness that helps them acknowledge and defend their own needs and wishes, regardless of sexual determination and the allocation of roles.” (FORWARD, viii).

• Letters of the Arabic alphabet stem from the fluid movements of the body, especially the pelvis with the navel being the center and source of power (p.5).

• Belly dance is all about community and strengthening women’s bonds. Women help, gossip, give and receive advice amongst each other in large gatherings for this social aspect that lead to dancing more often than not.  Dancing little girls were welcomed as “…life had taken on a new rhythm” and would continue through them, recognizing that they were the future.  All accepted and enjoyed their beauty and laughed off weaknesses, “Each body shape was seen as a gift, an intended destiny,” (p.21).

• Reality slips away and becomes one with the music and dance. “Slowly, the audience disappeared…I heard my heartbeat give me the rhythm and I felt my body dissolve in movements much older than me.” “My dancing had carried me into a new world,” (p.24).

• “Major characteristic of all matriarchal cults was dancing…Dancing is the oldest and most elementary form of spiritual expression; it is magic in the form of a danced ritual,” (p.29).

• Dance found in myths associated with the secret knowledge women possess, and the turning of the seasons—death and rebirth, connection with cosmos, (p.31).

• “Women became the mortal representatives of the Great Mother Earth, and the movements of their dancing reflected this,” women have strong connection with pulse of life as bearers of life (p.30).

• Dance in myth: Ishtar saves her husband from underworld by dressing in her splendor and tying a girdle around her hips and using seven veils to enter and dance her way through. She is the goddess of love. Dance today transforms women into interpreters of past culture and faith. (p. 31)

• “These dances revolved around fertility and therefore the belly played a major part. The dances were used to strengthen sexual energy, to awaken joy, and to praise the mysteries of life.  The women danced their dance that corresponded to their body and expressed all the moods and feelings, al the longings, sufferings, and joys of being a woman.  Through their dance, they came into harmony with the universe…Dancing expressed the longing to stretch beyond one’s limitations and come closer to the divine…Their bodies gave them the opportunity to dissolve the self and come closer to the divine. The Arabic word for dance, raqs, also means “to make the heart quiver and shake.”… The strongest energy that can be formed in the body is sexual energy.  The movements that arouse that energy most intensely are the circling, bouncing, and vibrating motions of the hips and the pelvis, as well as the contractions of the belly—all part of belly dancing.” (p. 32-33)

• Dance has evolved with the times so what we see today as belly dancing has taken on a new meaning and different sense than what it once was used for…”[with] the development of primitive cultures into many layers, the new beliefs repressed the rituals that belonged to the old beliefs. This is how women’s belly dance died in many parts of the world…the sacred dancing rituals developed into an entertainment dance.” (p. 35)

• Oriental belly dancing left the women’s circle to be performed on theater stages in the 17^th and 18^th centuries.  The meaning and understanding of the depth was lost as it was interesting as a foreign and exotic entertainment. (p. 49)

• At the beginning of the 20^th century new life reform movements came out of Europe from the middle class and Eastern philosophies and arts acted as sources of inspiration. Belly dance was revitalized. (p. 49)

• “It is possible that women can liberate themselves of social pressures more through dancing than through any other form of art. This would mean that the question is about feminine physicality: It may be that dancing leads women to feel particularly acutely not only their body but also their social captivity and awkwardness.” Quote from the head of the Wuppertal ballet. “In their search for an inner identity and for a social definition, women artists, especially dancers, addressed the divide between the sexes. Gender had to be reconstructed in order to enable a new “humanization” of man and woman.” (p. 52)

• “The movements of belly dancing enable a woman to understand and experience a natural rhythm…she swings her limbs around the center of her body, around the navel of the world.” (p. 54)

• “Through dancing a human being can move beyond limits, into a world of great thoughts where the yearning for transformation lingers and where the majesty of the true self is recognized. Dancing is indeed the fastest way to unite with the divine…Dancing is the most direct way to become aware of your inner space and of the space outside your body. Dancing unfolds feeling, longings, and nostalgia as well as the mind’s powers of observation and thought…Dancing is the joy of life, of creation, an expression of the awakening soul that is reflected in the dancing experience and in the rhythmic movements…Through dancing, people discover the beauty and the strength that lie within; and through the natural ecstasy of dancing, they learn to surrender to a higher force that lets them guess at the unity and wholeness of life. Through their movements, they come to nestle in the movements of the universe.”  (p. 55)

• Intuition is a “feminine” quality and through dancing women can tap into this inner voice, expressing it. Dancing stimulates the unconscious and expands the personality by broadening the consciousness. A woman has dual roles and can express both through dance, releasing and taming the wilder self.  Patriarchal societies often rob women of her strength by putting her in stereotypical roles that are controlled. Women are put into one category even though she has aspects of both: witch/saint, virtuous/promiscuous, passionate/modest etc. (p. 56-57)

• “Belly dancing is dance form in which femininity and spirituality become one. This may be the reason why it is so taboo” A woman must accept and be aware of both sides of her spirit before she finds her inner strength. (p. 58)

• “Belly dancing is dance of isolation, in which the various parts and centers of the body are moved individually, independently from each other, yet end up forming a unity…a multidimensional body awareness” (p. 58)

• All energy is drawn from the belly-the core/trunk of the body, navel of the world. (p. 59)

• Dance quiets the mind and spirit, both in the dancer and audience. Intensive use of the core (abs, pelvis, ribcage) strengthens and vitalizes a woman’s sexual force. “This force of feminine sexuality is given expression through belly dancing and symbolized through the movements of the dance.  Belly dancing gives a woman the possibility to discover, learn about, and understand herself…it reveals her attitudes and feelings toward herself and her sexuality, toward men, children and other women. It gives her the possibility to communicate with the eternal woman in herself, to accept herself, and to learn to love. Dancing is an art of loving.” (p. 59)

• Dancing is often passed from mother to daughter (Eman and Gina). (p. 60)

• The dance is formed by the individual woman, her personality and particular technique, which makes it unique to the woman. (p. 60)

• Dancing puts the woman in the natural rhythm of the earth and teaches to overcome our fears and limitations, break down the barriers. (p. 61)

• Dances gives all sorts of opportunities to express yourself, “…to awaken all the archetypal figures that lay dormant in all women: mother earth, flirt, sensualist, artist, healer, imparter of knowledge…it does not matter whether a woman is young or old, fat or thin, socially integrated or marginal…it is not a competition…only a woman’s life experience and sensuality can lend it both meaning and a true depth. Expressing her personality through belly dancing, at times alone, at times with others, enables a woman to take a new look at her sometimes negative self-image, in a supportive and strengthening atmosphere. This uniting of earth and spirit, strength and grace, intensity and inner peace, sensuality and poetry, enables many a woman to reach inner freedom.” (p. 63)