Belly dancing

[JessinAvalon]

I don't want to start a raging debate about this but I am hoping that some on here may be able to settle a difference in opinion between me and a friend.

She thinks (after seeing a belly dancer perform at a feminist arts event in Bristol) that it's anything but feminist and thinks it's not that different to lapdancing (titillating, revealing costumes etc).

I don't see it like that. I do Bollywood dancing (which is very hard!) and have come across belly dancers through my dancing but they were all older, larger ladies (am I allowed to say that?!) and, to me, the belly dancers I saw were celebrating their form, celebrating the dance and generally having fun.

Admittedly though I don't know much about it. Does anyone have any views/experience/knowledge that would help the debate?

i love doing bellydancing classes even though im not very good i think bellydancing is an art and a great workout.

belly dancing is something that is done all over the middle east by women more often than not in womens company

young girls from the age they can walk will tie a scarf around their hips and shake them, men do a similar dance.it is sensual, the words to many of the songs are full of innuendos. music and dance in many countries plays a much bigger part of life than it does here in our culture and we often get a bit uptight over what we see as being over sexual dance

of course this very sensual dance has been exploited and used in clubs where men go to be entertained but that is not the roots of the dance it is not the same as lap dancing. putting on a performance that is sensual is not the same as a man picking you out because he like the look of you and wants you to spread you legs in front of him for his own pleasure dance

Have just noticed the phrase "using a biscuit on me" to denote an aggressive action.

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I love a lot of the posts here. I've always wanted to learn bellydancing but haven't (yet). If I may pursue some strands of this thread in a wider sense: I still don't really understand why many feminists object to sensual dances on the grounds that men find them sexy.

All dancing is supposed to be sensual. It makes you aware of the workings of your body, in ways you don't normally notice. It involves moving rhythmically. Sensuality describes the dancer's experience; sexy describes the experience of some onlookers. Dunno about you, but I find Flamenco virtuoso extremely sexy when dancing. I picked the clip because [a] he keeps his clothes on - unusually - and [b] you can see how much he's enjoying it.

The fact that I love to watch him enjoying his body, and find it sexy, doesn't make me lecherous; doesn't make Flamenco pornographic; doesn't devalue the dance or the dancer. I feel the same way about other forms of dance. Even pole-dancing, when the dancer's working her body (dancing gymnastically) instead of just splaying her legs around the pole.

This keeps cropping up on here. I just don't get it. Disapproval of a dance itself because of how some people interpret it, or how some people sell it, smacks of prudery. Like the 19th-century killjoys who banned the waltz from public ballrooms as too rude! Dance is for the dancers and, if they're any good, the rest of us watch them with pleasure.

I used to be a very good Lambada dancer (too unfit now.) Lambada grew out of Brazilian peasant dances, but was itself a commercial invention. It's very wriggly. It gave me an awareness of core muscles I never knew I had, is huge fun to do, and mimics sex when danced by couples ... except it doesn't. It's not sex, it's a dance. In all the years I Lambada-ed, I was never once 'misunderstood' by a fellow dancer. But English and German men misread it all the time. This tends to confirm my view that interpreting dance moves as sexual invitation is an error of Germanic prurience, rather than reason.

I've gone a bit rambly here - sorry for splurging on such an excellent thread! I really would like to know more, though, about why so many feminists appear to look down on certain forms of dance but not others.