What are the concerns of dancing among the ruins of earlier civilizations?Here, I propose a dance performance of Oriental Dance in the British Museum, one of the institutions that was instrumental in defining what “oriental” is. The aim of the performance is to reflect on the intertwining of the history of the dance, the history of the institution and the problematics regarding exotification and commodification of a dance form that, as it will be discussed in the next lines, was developed through complex colonial interactions. About the performanceMy performance is part of a bigger project that is explained in our main page . The technicalities of it are detailed in our execution plan and budget. This specific piece is envisioned to begin in the hall on the ground floor of the British Museum, in the grandiose famous atrium, in between the restaurant and the souvenir shop, where the symbols of “man heritage” receive their ultimate commodification as capitalistic products of consumption. The execution will develop as follows: I am waiting for Subhashini Goda who, after finishing her Bharatanatyam performance at the South Asian room invites the public to follow her to the atrium through gestures. The theatrical meeting between the two dancers will be performed demonstrating surprise and curiosity, strangeness and engagement. “Alif Laila”, the theme song of an eponymous Indian TV show from the 90’s called “Arabian Nights” starts to sound in the speakers positioned next to the souvenir shop. We start to interact to the song, playing with and critiquing the essentialism displayed here, that places all “oriental dancers” under a unique, homogenising classification. We discuss differences, self-exoticism and essentialization between those cultures being staged through our bodies, our costumes and our choreography. When the theme song finishes, and Subhashini sits down in the restaurant to have a coffee, a beat starts playing in the corridor nearby. An Arab Orchestra (composed by oud, nay flute, qanun, violin, tabla and daff players) will start playing “Alf Leyla wa Leyla” by Umm Kulthum, in the entrance of the session for Egyptian sculpture, in front of the Rosetta Stone. I follow the music, and start to dance, interacting with the band. The performance – musicians and dancer – will travel along the corridor with stone figures, statues and sarcophagus of pharaohs, engaging the audience in a kind of dancing procession in between the material remains of Ancient Egypt. Visual contact, interaction with spectators and with the music through gaze and body posture is an important feature of the dance being performed, therefore, it will help to signalize the path through this corridor. The performance ends in the entrance of the African session, where a Masaai performance is about to start. Who is the audience to be addressed? Such performance is part of a bigger project (explained here). Ideally, it will be part of a calendar that would include lectures, discussions, workshops and debates during an entire month. It aims a broad participation of the communities concerned, researchers, academics and heritage professionals to ‘subvert rhetorics of display’ (Lopez y Royo, 2002: 5) and make the colonial collections accessible through critical reflection on its history. All the activities should be of open access to the public, free of charge, as the entrance to the museum. Regarding this specific performance, it is envisioned to happen three times a week during a month. On Thursday and Saturday afternoons, the public addressed would be the regular transients, when the museum is full of visitors and tourists from all over the world. The intention is that the presentations will ‘unsettle’ the normal functioning of the museum, inviting the public to pay attention to the problematic history being displayed on its corridors. On Tuesday and Friday mornings, however, the intention is to work with school students, in a partnership with the educational sector of the museum, that, as posited by Lopez y Royo (2002:8), “should be appreciated as (…) a crucial tool for interpretation”. In this sense, the team of the project would be working along with the museum staff to develop appropriated activities along with the performance to appropriately address different age ranges. What is the concept behind the performance?Edward Said, founder of post-colonial theory, is one of the main references. In his seminal book “Orientalism”, he defined it as a discourse, a discipline and a way to rule “by which European culture was able to manage - and even produce - the Orient politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically, and imaginatively during the post-Enlightenment period.” (Said, 1978:11). Museums played an important role in this process. As did representations of dance. In the 19th century, travel reports were published and circulated throughout Europe (Youngs, 2006). Colonial expeditions and private travelling ended in publications on the “exotic” regions that were being conquered. Describing the “inhospitable” landscapes of the Sahara Desert and the African Savannah, the “primitive” customs of black and Berber tribes, the “picturesque” garments of Turkish and Indian women, such publications sparked the imagination of the European public (Mernissi, 2001; Alloula, 1986). Among the elements of the “oriental experience” was “oriental dance” (Assunção, 2018). And what has the British Museum to do with that?The British Museum has a global reputation as the primary model of traditional museological practices. Its incredibly large and rich collection has great potentialities in presenting to an international and multicultural public an also international and global history. However, it must be acknowledged that the history of the British Museum is also the history of the British Empire. As put by Anne McClintock “To meet the "scientific" standards set by the natural historians and empiricists of the eighteenth century, a visual paradigm was needed to display evolutionary progress as a measurable spectacle” (1995:37). In this sense, museums, such as the British, played the role of producing the image of a universal global history, that could put order in time and make it accessible at a glance and from and from a point of privileged invisibility. Egyptian ancient history plays an important role in the British Museum, as it has “the world's largest and most comprehensive collection of Egyptian antiquities outside the Egyptian Museum in Cairo”[4]. This collection started along with the British Museum foundation in 1759, when it received 160 Egyptian objects from Sir Hans Sloane. The artefacts were pilled up mostly during the 19th century, while the British colonial domination happened over Egypt, by the same time the representations of "oriental dance" and "oriental dancers" were being composed. What is meant by “Oriental Dance”?The names given to a practice generally known as “belly dance” are manifold in the transnational communities of dancers. In the English language alone, the names ‘oriental dance’, ‘eastern dance’, ‘baladi dance’, are all used, sometimes as synonyms, and sometimes not. The narratives about the history of Belly Dance are also multiple. Many practitioners claim an ‘origin myth’ that says it “arose in Ancient Egypt, in rituals, religious cults, where women danced in reverence to goddesses. With wavy movements and beatings of the hips, women revered fertility, celebrated life.”[1] Academic historiographic and ethnographic discourse, however, points out to a less sacred and more violent history. The ghawazee and awalem dancers (ghazya and almeh in the singular) are remembered by historians and anthropologists as the first to be seen dancing with their hips and torso by Europeans during the colonial invasion of Egypt. (Nieuwkerk, 1995; Fraser, 2014). Narratives about them appeared in travel literature and orientalist paintings throughout the long nineteenth century (Paschoal, 2019). The two images bellow are examples of that: The Ghawazee, in the beginning of the 19th century, depicted by Edward Willian Lane. Illustration on the chapter “Public Dancers” (LANE, 1836:95). La danse de l’almée or ‘The Dance of the Almeh’ by Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1863, France. Available at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jean-L%C3%A9on_G%C3%A9r%C3%B4me_011.jpg (Accessed : 15 April 2020) The painting “Dance of the Almeh”, 1863 by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904) is in the collection of the British Museum as a printed newspaper copy[2]. However the original painting is housed at Dayton Art institute, in Ohio, United States. Their description of the image makes evident the problematics which will be addressed: “The title of this painting refers to the Arabic word analeim, meaning learned woman, which originally applied to professional female improvisers of songs and poems. By 1850, the term meant virtually any woman dancer [here I should add: because of European representations], many of whom were also prostitutes [because of European desires] (…). European travellers came to think of these dances as a required part of their experience of the Orient.”[3] The awalem and ghawazee dances were exported to Europe and the United States through the Universal Expositions, world fairs which included ‘exhibits’ from a significant number of countries, and whose events were a striking aspect example of the transformation of imperial enterprise into mercantile spectacle. They consisted of open exhibitions with the aim of showing the general public the technical and scientific advances of the great industrial powers, using as a counterpoint the ‘exotic’, ‘wild’ and ‘primitive’ lands that were under imperialist rule (McClintock, 1995:56). Dance appeared as an object of curiosity and desire, as it the imaginary about the “oriental dancer” had already been popularized by travel literature, and orientalist art. At the Universal Exhibition in Paris, 1889, for example, the attraction “Concert Égyptien”, with Egyptian musicians and dancers dancing the “danse du ventre” was one of the most disputed attractions. The following image, apparently published with comic intent, appears with the caption, “Egyptian Concert: This is the real one, the only belly dance!”: Georges Coutan, La rue du Caire, «Concert égyptien, c’est ici la vraie, l’unique danse du ventre!», dans L’Exposition pour rire. Revue Comique. Source: Lirarie Petite Egypte. Available at: http://www.petite-egypte.fr/portfolio/la-danse-aux-expositions-2/ (Accessed: 20 June 2019) Questioning otherness and identityThe representation of otherness through ancient objects and images of exotic dancers were part of the constitution of British identity[5]. The aim of my performance is to challenge those images bringing a symbol of Egyptian culture and identity to the space that, traditionally, controlled, defined and exotified it. The song chosen for the performance is Alf Leyla w Leyla by Umm Kulthum (1898-1975), an icon of Egyptian culture. The singer, that reached an enormous success already in the first half of the 20th century, is still considered as “The Voice of Egypt”[6]. It is possible to see photographs of her and her songs playing out loud on coffee shops and other commercial establishments in Cairo and other Egyptian cities and villages. I believe that it is important to highlight that Umm Kulthum had also a political agenda and a close relationship with Gamal Abdel Nasser, leader of the 1952 revolution that overthrew the monarchy controlled by the British, becoming the president from 1956 to 1970. She shared his ideas regarding the development of a national culture as part of a political project of construction of Egyptian identity and heritage based on nationalist and populist ideas. Although those ways of instrumentalization of heritage for National-States purposes can be rightfully criticized, she stills holds the weight of being an important icon of Egyptian culture, moving crowds into the tarab, an ecstasy and enchantment that merges music with emotional transformation (Bordelon, 2013:33). “Azama aala azama aala azama aala azama” shouts someone in the public, during her performance of Alf Leyla w Leyla in 1969 [7]. This is a little bit of “greatness” of Egyptian heritage that will ‘invade’ the corridors of the British Museum through dance. DisclaimerThis project is a piece of the final assessment for the course "The Performance of Heritage: Dance in Museums Galleries and Historic Sites", that took place in the University of Roehampton, in London, Spring of 2020, as part of Choreomundus - International master in Dance Knowledge, Practice, and Heritage. I believe it is important to acknowledge that it was developed by a researcher, critically self-aware of my position as a non-Egyptian proposing to “depict” Egyptian culture. As a white-female-abled-Brazilian body coming from a middle-class privileged background, my aim is not to represent a whole culture, which is plural and complex, but to discuss, through performance, what I have learned about it in historical and anthropological research and community engagement. It is a big challenge to question the imperial and colonial narratives withing the space of a big institution such as the British Museum. Nevertheless, as a historian much interested in material and intangible heritage, in the relationship between museums and education and in decolonial studies, I believe that this is an imperative process for the development of a multicultural and inclusive society. If this project come to be concretized in the future, it would be carried with the partnership of broader cultural institutions based on Egypt and the UK to develop further engagement, discussions, lectures and performances with the interested communities. Possible Egyptian institutions to develop a partnership would be the Makan, Egyptian Center for Culture and Arts[8] and the El Mastaba, Center For Egyptian Folk Music[9]. In the UK, the references would be the Egyptian Bureau for Cultural and Educational Affairs in the United Kingdom and Ireland[10] and the London Middle East Institute, SOAS, University of London[11]. 1] Text available in the website of Education Office of Paraná State, Brazil. It is the first result when one research “history of belly dance” in Portuguese language in Google. Translation made by me. Available at: http://www.educacaofisica.seed.pr.gov.br/modules/conteudo/conteudo.php?conteudo=65 (Accessed 15 April 2020). [2] Available in the website of the British Museum: ttps://research.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?assetId=1357498001&objectId=3356699&partId=1 (Accessed : 15 April 2020) [3] Available in the website of the Dayton Art institute: http://www.daytonartinstitute.org/art/collection-highlights/european/jean-l%C3%A9-g%C3%A9r%C3%B4me (Accessed : 15 April 2020) [4]Information on the Wikipedia article about the Department of Egypt and Sudan of the British Museum. Available at : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Museum_Department_of_Ancient_Egypt_and_Sudan#endnote_Hnone (Accessed 18 April 2020). [5] "Thanks to this recent scholarship we now know a great deal about the ways in which representations of the imperial world and its peoples circulated in the metropole, about the place of written and visual texts in producing and disseminating racial thinking, about the significance of museums and exhibitions in representing peoples of the empire to the metropolitan public, and about the place of empire in the construction of English/British identity." (Hall and Rose, 2006:15). [6] Documentary “Umm Kulthum, A Voice Like Egypt” (1996) available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwk0lDjUQFw [7] “Greatness over greatness over greatness over greatness” as translated by Fadi Giha. The shouting can be listened at the 9min and 25sec of the recording of her concert, available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul4z6sLnXYY&t=564s (Accessed 20 April 2020). [8] https://egyptmusic.org/ [9] https://www.el-mastaba.org/ [10] https://new.egyculture.org.uk/web/ [11] https://www.soas.ac.uk/lmei/ Bibliography
Alloula, Malek (1986). The Colonial Harem. London; /Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Assunção, Naiara Müssnich Gomes de (2018). Entre Ghawazee, Awalim e Khawals: viajantes inglesas da Era Vitoriana e a “Dança do Ventre” [In between Ghawazee, Awalim and Khawals: Female travellers of the Victorian Era and “Belly Dance”]. Masters Dissertation. Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul. Available at: https://lume.ufrgs.br/handle/10183/182762 (Accessed: 13 April 2020). Bordelon, Candace (2013). Finding the “Felling”: Oriental Dance, Musiqa al-Gadid, and Tarab. In: In: McDonald, Caitlin E. Sellers-Young, Barbara (Ed.) (2013). Belly Dance Around the World: New Communities, Performance and Identity. North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc. Publishers. Danielson, Virginia (1997). The Voice of Egypt: Umm Kulthum, Arabic Song, and Egyptian Society in the Twentieth Century. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Duthie, Emily (2011). The British Museum: An Imperial Museum in a Post-Imperial World. Public History Review Vol 18 (12–25). Fraser, Kathleen W. (2014). Before They Were Belly Dancers: European Accounts of Female Entertainers in Egypt, 1760-1870. Jefferson, United States: Publisher McFarland & Co Inc. Hall, Catherine, and Rose, Sonya (2006). Introduction: Being at home with the Empire. In C. Hall & S. Rose (Eds.), in Home with the Empire: Metropolitan Culture and the Imperial World (pp. 1-31). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lane, Edward Willian (1836). An account of the manners and customs of the modern Egyptians. 3rd ed. London: Ward, Lock & Co., 1890. Lopez y Royo, Alessandra (2002). South Asian dances in museums: culture, education and patronage in the diaspora. [Paper Originally Presented and Published in Conference Proceeding: Dance in South Asia: New Approaches, Politics and Aesthetics Swarthmore College, March 2nd, 2002]. McClintock, Anne (1995). Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. London: Routledge. Mernissi, Fatema (2001). Scheherazade Goes West: Different Cultures, Different Harems. New York: Washington Square Press. Nieuwkerk, Karin van (1995). "A trade like any other": Female Singers and Dancers in Egypt. Austin: University Of Texas Press. Paschoal, Nina Ingrid Caputo (2019). Ventre colonizado: representações da mulher árabe e suas danças na pintura orientalista do século XIX. Master dissertation. Universidade Católica de São Paulo. Available at: https://tede2.pucsp.br/handle/handle/22130 (Accessed: 18 April 2020). Said, Edward W (1978). Orientalism. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd. Youngs, Tim. (Ed.). (2006). Travel Writing in the Nineteenth Century: Filling the Blank Spaces. London; New York; Delhi: Anthem Press. Available at: www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1gxpbpw (Accessed: 6 May 2020)
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AuthorNaiara Müssnich Rotta Gomes de Assunção is a Historian, Anthropologist and Dancer from Brazil, interested in Egyptian history and culture. Carries academic research about the history of "Oriental Dance" and the impact of translationalisation and commodification on the "Belly Dance" market in Egypt. Archives |