Belly Dance Research Articles

Benefits of belly dance on quality of life, fatigue, and depressive symptoms in women with breast cancer – A pilot study of a non-randomised clinical trial

ObjectiveTo analyse the influence of belly dance on the quality of life, fatigue, and depressive symptoms in women with breast cancer. MethodsPilot study, with a design of non-randomised clinical trial study, analysing 19 women, with 8 allocated in the experimental group and 11 in the control group. The experimental group underwent 12 weeks of belly dance classes, with a frequency of twice a week and duration of 60 min for each lesson. Data collection was made through the use of questionnaires containing general information, quality of life (EORTC QLQ-BR23), fatigue (Piper Fatigue Scale) and depressive symptoms (BECK's Depression Inventory) applied on baseline and after intervention. ResultsThe experimental group presented significant improvements after the intervention, with an increase in scores of the functional scale (p = 0.002): body image (p = 0.037) and sexual function (p = 0.027); and a decrease in scores of the symptomatic scale (p = 0.001): systemic therapy side effects (p = 0.005) and arm symptoms (p = 0.001) of quality of life, as well the decrease of fatigue (p = 0.036) and depressive symptoms (p = 0.002). No significant differences were observed in clinical and demographic information at baseline between the experimental and control groups. Also, there was no significant difference on quality of life, fatigue, and depressive symptoms between the two groups. ConclusionBelly dance can be a viable form of physical activity for women with breast cancer. It was associated with benefits for quality of life, fatigue, and depressive symptoms. Even though there were significant pre–post treatment differences, there was no significance difference between the experimental and control group; and therefore, treatment could have been due to natural history.

Seeing the Belly Dance as a Feminist Possibility: Gaze, Gender and Public Space in İstanbul

This paper discusses the ancient form of belly dance as an example to speak more in depth about the public spaces of Istanbul, where the female body is constantly under surveillance by the male gaze. Over thousands of years, the ancient dance form of belly dance has been transformed from a collective women’s ritual to a form of entertainment that serves the male gaze. This paper looks for the possibilities tore-define belly dance as a feminist counter strategy to revive its essence. Framed by the Muted Group Theory, this paper also exemplifies various artworks and strategies produced by female artists and analyze them in the light of this theory. It also searches for redefining the belly dance as part of a feminist identity and asks whether these artistic strategies could be pathways in re-defining belly dance as a feminist practice.

Seeing the Belly Dance as a Feminist Possibility: Gaze, Gender and Public Space in İstanbul

This paper discusses the ancient form of belly dance as an example to speak more in depth about the public spaces of Istanbul, where the female body is constantly under surveillance by the male gaze. Over thousands of years, the ancient dance form of belly dance has been transformed from a collective women’s ritual to a form of entertainment that serves the male gaze. This paper looks for the possibilities tore-define belly dance as a feminist counter strategy to revive its essence. Framed by the Muted Group Theory, this paper also exemplifies various artworks and strategies produced by female artists and analyze them in the light of this theory. It also searches for redefining the belly dance as part of a feminist identity and asks whether these artistic strategies could be pathways in re-defining belly dance as a feminist practice.

„Nie tańczysz sama przed lustrem. Oni na ciebie patrzą!”. Taniec brzucha jako afektywna strategia uczestnictwa w kulturze w filmie „Czerwony jedwab”

“You’re not dancing alone in front of the mirror. They are looking at you!” Belly Dance as an Affective Strategy of Participation in Culture in Satin RougeThe article analyses the film portraits of women performing belly dancing Satin Rouge, 2002 Raja Amari. The film tells the story of awoman who after the death of her husband indulges in entertainment rather unsuitable for aGod-fearing Arab woman: belly dance in aTunis nightclub. The article focuses on dance as an affective strategy of participation in culture. Belly dance understood as aconscious work on one self and abody allows women to express their subjectivity and feel like an individual entity. Female dancing body has the power to affect — the ability to influence other bodies and to express oneself — and thus may create room for negotiation within the hegemonic discourse of men’s power over women in the Arab world.

Special aspects of social support: Qualitative analysis of oncologic rehabilitation through a belly dancing peer support group.

Tumour-related peer support groups (PSGs) show long-term development in quality of life and coping, and decrease distress in cancer care. To clarify channels of social support in oncologic rehabilitation by combined exercise and psychosocial therapy, individual semi-structured interviews were conducted after 1year additional belly dance rehabilitation in a closed PSG among 51 patients with malignant tumour diagnosis in Budapest, Hungary. Interview data were transcribed and analysed using qualitative content analysis (ATLAS.ti 6 Win). Results suggest that group experience provides emotional-, practical- and informational support. We could point out specific social effects of "role model" function and extend the coping model. The group dispose all the features of effective suggestion and may be effectively applied as additional therapy for patients with malignancies. The extended coping model and the introduction of "role model" function could be useful for PSGs' efficacy assessment.

Belly dancing as exercise: image-building of a foreign dance in Taiwan

AbstractBelly dancing originated in the Middle East as a form of folk dance but has widely transformed into a leisure dance activity in recent decades. Belly dance was introduced to Taiwan in 2002, marketed primarily as a ‘body slimming exercise’ with a sense of exoticism. According to previous studies, fitness, weight-loss and body-shaping are the main motivations for most female participants despite their wide range of age groups and social classes. While the former studies generally regard ‘the popularization of belly dance in Taiwan’ as a fad, this study aims to give a deeper interpretation of the phenomenon by exploring the social and cultural factors which have contributed to the localization of this dance. The paper employs methods of textual analysis, participant observation and in-depth interview. The data collected reveal that belly dance is primarily defined by Taiwanese women as an exercise rather than a folk dance or an art form. In addition, the study examines the importance of the roles pla...

Effect of belly dancing on urinary incontinence-related muscles and vaginal pressure in middle-aged women

[Purpose] This study examined the effect of belly dancing on the urinary incontinence-related muscles and vaginal pressure in middle-aged women to provide fundamental data for establishing an effective training program focusing on mitigating and preventing urinary incontinence. [Subjects and Methods] The subjects included 24 middle-aged women, who have been diagnosed with urinary incontinence. The subjects were randomly divided into two groups, viz. the experimental group (N=12) and control group (N=12). The experimental group underwent a belly dancing program focusing on pelvis moves. [Results] In the experimental group, the urinary incontinence-related muscle strength and vaginal pressure were increased, while the control group showed no significant change. [Conclusion] Belly dancing focusing on pelvis moves had a positive effect on the urinary incontinence-related muscle strength and vaginal pressure, suggesting that a recreational dance program focusing on pelvic exercise can be used to prevent and relieve the symptoms of urinary incontinence as a non-surgical treatment.

Global Frequency: Something Old, Something New

global frequency Something Old, Something New by Rob Vollmar Beats Antique Shadowbox Antique American composer Henry Cowell traveled to a variety of countries in the 1950s on behalf of the State Department, building bridges between cultures considered “valuable ” to the influence of American soft power. One anecdote regarding these travels finds Cowell in Iran, lionizing Persian traditional music and, eventually, composing a few pieces (including the stunning “Homage to Iran”) in response to all he discovered. His Iranian handlers, musical academics and statesmen alike, were particularly impressed with his compositions because they went beyond recycling existing melodies and songs and spoke to what was unique about their musical traditions while incorporating very modern compositional techniques specific to his own. The San Francisco–based electronic dance music (edm) ensemble Beats Antique has been delivering a similarly hybridized style of music for the masses since 2007. The group is a three-member collective made up of principal melodist David Satori; a percussionist, Tommy Cappel; and dancer Zoe Jakes. The band was originally formed back in 2007 as a vehicle for Jakes, who is well known for her hybridization of a panoply of dance traditions including jazz, ballet, and belly dancing, among many others. The band’s latest release, Shadowbox (Antique, 2016), is rich with non-Western melodies, instrumentation, and musical collaborations that burnish its reputation as a unique voice in the often hivelike EDM scene. The opening track, “Three Sisters,” features early Russian music conservationist Tatyana Kalmykova singing and playing gudok (a three-stringed violin) over Cappel ’s imposing drums. The band quickly shifts gears for the second track, “Killer Bee,” juxtaposing the reggae-inflected rapping and singing of guest contributor Lafa Taylor over a raspy baritone sax riff, adorned with elements of klezmer. Another highlight includes “Vesper Star,” a drowsy duet between Satori on violin (one of his principal instruments) with sarod player Alam Khan. Cappel’s percussion once again shines as he evokes the tabla that might normally accompany in the Indian classical tradition without abandoning the core values of his own electronic dance tradition. As jarring as the layering of style and tradition can be within any given track, Beats Antique’s real genius is in the limitations that it places on the compositions. Harmonic complexity is sacrificed for richness of melody and purity of groove. Though some songs feature words, they contribute to the auditory experience without dominating the song’s meaning. Moreover, the songs on any given Beats Antique record, including Shadowbox , only exist in their full form as experienced during live performance accompanied by Jakes’s dance. This leaves those intrigued by the band’s unique musical approach and impeccable performances (something not typically associated with EDM) with the most important layer of meaning yet to explore as the record concludes . Considered in its totality, Shadowbox is, as the band’s name suggests, a highly improbable but successful marriage of the most contemporary musical technology and compositional approaches with the primacy of some of the world’s oldest musical traditions delivered with authenticity. Its composers are worthy inheritors of Cowell’s mantle as world-music explorers of integrity and innovators in their own right. Rob Vollmar is WLT’s book review editor. Notebook 8 WLT JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2017 ...

Muslim Cool: Race, Religion, and Hip Hop in the United States by Su'ad Abdul Khabeer: Affect as a Critical Optic

Reviewed by: Muslim Cool: Race, Religion, and Hip Hop in the United States by Su'ad Abdul Khabeer Alexander Cho (bio) Muslim Cool: Race, Religion, and Hip Hop in the United States by Su'ad Abdul Khabeer. New York University Press. 2016. $89.00 hardcover; $30.00 paperback; $20.39 e-book. 288 pages. Halfway through anthropologist Su'ad Abdul Khabeer's Muslim Cool, the author tells a first-person story of going to a "girl party" in a Chicago suburb. This is a house party exclusively for Muslim women and girls at which they can "let their hair out (or down), literally and figuratively, in an all-female environment," socialize, and dance.1 As she and her friend get into the groove and belly dance, she slowly realizes that their hostess, a Palestinian Muslim immigrant mother, and the other girls, all Palestinian American Muslims, have stopped dancing and are simply gazing at her and her friend, fascinated by "the 'spectacle' of the two dancing (Black) girls."2 Khabeer, troubled by this sudden atmospheric shift in what is supposed to be a space of equality, quickly exits the dance floor. This gaze of difference informs one of the core projects of Muslim Cool: to interrogate the alterity of Black Islam within the "ethnoreligious hegemony" of contemporary US Muslim identity.3 However, this is only one part of Khabeer's thesis on the exchange and interplay of race, religion, and culture. Her companion observations are, not coincidentally, as follows: Black hip-hop music and culture function as vehicles for young Muslims to realize and own their religious identity; hip-hop music and culture itself came of age vis-à-vis a relationship to Black Islam; and a current stylistic amalgamation of Blackness and Islam, which she calls "Muslim Cool," is the result of this loop, fed back upon itself, a living, breathing instance of agentic resistance to hegemonic pressures via a cultivated style.4 Her project is less to surgically isolate ownership of any particular cultural form and more to map a [End Page 182] complex cultural landscape of power and exchange, following paths and hints where they may lead in fine ethnographic detail. Khabeer's fieldwork is based on multiple years as an observer, organizer, advocate, and activist at Chicago's Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN). As a reflexive anthropologist, Khabeer radically locates herself—Black, Latina, and Muslim—in her observations. She's also a self-proclaimed "hip-hop head," and many of her sites of inquiry involve the Chicago hip-hop scene. Chapters are organized as follows: an introduction to the flows of the argument behind "Muslim Cool"; specific attention to raced and religious musical practices surrounding hip-hop; attention to the radical potential of personal dress for both Black Muslim women (the "'hoodjab") and men (the "Muslim dandy"); and a chapter on the United States' exporting of Muslim Cool as neoliberal state apparatus abroad. The book concludes with an appended discussion of the place of Muslim Cool in the context of #BlackLivesMatter, which she regards as a project cut from the selfsame cloth. She writes: "Muslim Cool is a way of being Muslim that draws on Blackness to contest two overlapping systems of racial norms: the hegemonic ethnoreligious norms of Arab and South Asian US American Muslim communities on the one hand, and White American normativity on the other."5 The work is sound and compelling. Media studies folks—or anyone else interested in the interplay of race, power, and popular culture—will especially find chapter 1, "The Loop of Muslim Cool: Black Islam, Hip Hop, and Knowledge of Self," to be a master class in ethnography, media consumption and production practices, and identity making, all the while hewing tightly to a situatedness in terms of structural oppression and historical context. To call this simply a hip-hop "audience" or "reception" study would be to diminish its heft and scope. It is, rather, a formidable rumination on the evolution and meaning of a cultural form in a specific ethnoreligious context. Thankfully, Khabeer explodes any simple critical application of "appropriation"—that increasingly useless blunt instrument—and instead elegantly charts what she calls the loop of cultural relationships from Islam...

Global Frequency: Something Old, Something New

global frequency Something Old, Something New by Rob Vollmar Beats Antique Shadowbox Antique American composer Henry Cowell traveled to a variety of countries in the 1950s on behalf of the State Department, building bridges between cultures considered “valuable ” to the influence of American soft power. One anecdote regarding these travels finds Cowell in Iran, lionizing Persian traditional music and, eventually, composing a few pieces (including the stunning “Homage to Iran”) in response to all he discovered. His Iranian handlers, musical academics and statesmen alike, were particularly impressed with his compositions because they went beyond recycling existing melodies and songs and spoke to what was unique about their musical traditions while incorporating very modern compositional techniques specific to his own. The San Francisco–based electronic dance music (edm) ensemble Beats Antique has been delivering a similarly hybridized style of music for the masses since 2007. The group is a three-member collective made up of principal melodist David Satori; a percussionist, Tommy Cappel; and dancer Zoe Jakes. The band was originally formed back in 2007 as a vehicle for Jakes, who is well known for her hybridization of a panoply of dance traditions including jazz, ballet, and belly dancing, among many others. The band’s latest release, Shadowbox (Antique, 2016), is rich with non-Western melodies, instrumentation, and musical collaborations that burnish its reputation as a unique voice in the often hivelike EDM scene. The opening track, “Three Sisters,” features early Russian music conservationist Tatyana Kalmykova singing and playing gudok (a three-stringed violin) over Cappel ’s imposing drums. The band quickly shifts gears for the second track, “Killer Bee,” juxtaposing the reggae-inflected rapping and singing of guest contributor Lafa Taylor over a raspy baritone sax riff, adorned with elements of klezmer. Another highlight includes “Vesper Star,” a drowsy duet between Satori on violin (one of his principal instruments) with sarod player Alam Khan. Cappel’s percussion once again shines as he evokes the tabla that might normally accompany in the Indian classical tradition without abandoning the core values of his own electronic dance tradition. As jarring as the layering of style and tradition can be within any given track, Beats Antique’s real genius is in the limitations that it places on the compositions. Harmonic complexity is sacrificed for richness of melody and purity of groove. Though some songs feature words, they contribute to the auditory experience without dominating the song’s meaning. Moreover, the songs on any given Beats Antique record, including Shadowbox , only exist in their full form as experienced during live performance accompanied by Jakes’s dance. This leaves those intrigued by the band’s unique musical approach and impeccable performances (something not typically associated with EDM) with the most important layer of meaning yet to explore as the record concludes . Considered in its totality, Shadowbox is, as the band’s name suggests, a highly improbable but successful marriage of the most contemporary musical technology and compositional approaches with the primacy of some of the world’s oldest musical traditions delivered with authenticity. Its composers are worthy inheritors of Cowell’s mantle as world-music explorers of integrity and innovators in their own right. Rob Vollmar is WLT’s book review editor. Notebook 8 WLT JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2017 ...

Segmental specificity in belly dance mimics primal trunk locomotor patterns.

Belly dance was used to investigate control of rhythmic undulating trunk movements in humans. Activation patterns in lumbar erector spinae muscles were recorded using surface electromyography at four segmental levels spanning T10 to L4. Muscle activation patterns for movement tempos of 2 Hz, 3 Hz, and as fast as possible (up to 6 Hz) were compared to test the hypothesis that frequency modulates muscle timing, causing pattern changes analogous to gait transitions. Groups of trained and untrained female subjects were compared to test the hypothesis that experience modifies muscle coordination patterns and the capacity for selective motion of spinal segments. Three distinct coordination patterns were observed. An ipsilateral simultaneous pattern (S) and a diagonal synergy (D) dominated at lower frequencies. The S pattern was selected most often by novices and resembled the standing wave of activation underlying the alternating lateral trunk bending in salamander trotting. At 2 Hz, most trained subjects selected the D pattern, suggesting a greater capacity for segmental specificity compared with untrained subjects. At 3-4 Hz, there emerged an asynchronous pattern (A) analogous to the rostral-caudal traveling wave in salamander and lamprey swimming. The neural networks and mechanisms identified in primitive vertebrates, such as chains of coupled oscillators and segmental crossed inhibitory connections, could explain the patterns observed in this study in humans. Training allows modification of these patterns, possibly through improved capacity for selectively exciting or inhibiting segmental pattern generators.NEW & NOTEWORTHY Belly dance provides a novel approach for studying spinal cord neural circuits. New evidence suggests that primitive locomotor circuits may be conserved in humans. Erector spinae activation patterns during the hip shimmy at different tempos are similar to those observed in salamander walking and swimming. As movement frequency increases, a sequential pattern similar to lamprey swimming emerges, suggesting that primal involuntary control mechanisms dominate in fast lateral rhythmic spine undulations even in humans.

Et rom hvor kroppen kan tre fram gjennom ulike uttrykk. Refleksjoner etter en pilotstudie om overvekt, kvinner og magedans

A space where the body can emerge through various expressions. Reflections around a pilot study on overweight, women and belly dancingThis article is based on the implementation of, and reflections on the experiences from a pilot study in belly dancing for obese women, as well as interviews with participants in connection with the course. The study had a qualitative approach. The movements in belly dance invite into a concentration towards the body along with others. This started processes on several levels. Acknowledgment of vulnerability seemed to be a strength, and an important basis for the women’s development. Academic communities internationally call for new approaches and methods in relation to obesity. It is natural to look at the body and movement in relation to health. If we however are going to create a space where the body can emerge through different expressions, is it then necessary to focus on health? Can the term health block a new insight? Maybe we also should concentrate more on attention to the body and its expressions?

The Effect of Zumba Fitness on Some Anthropometric Measurements and Flow State for the Female Students of University of Jazan

Exercise no longer has the traditional form which most of the students find it difficult to perform and repel it, as many modern techniques of physical fitness exercise have been introduced to the traditional methods, and merged with several international dances, and this results in spreading in the Arab world recently what is known by Zumba fitness, which received an overwhelming response, in addition to the presence of fun and vitality. Zumba fitness is a Colombian fitness program, created by Beto Perez in the nineties; it depends on integration of a different group of Latin dance such as: Samba, Salsa, Reggaeton, Cumbia, Merengue and Belly Dance along with aerobic exercises associated easy Latin tunes. Zumba fitness can help burning between 400:800 calories in just an hour hour, this type of exercise depends on a light warm-up by a type of quiet music, and then begin to gradually increase the speed of movements.

Free Speech Faces Hostile Environment: An Aggressive Hunt for Sex Harassment Leaves Plenty of Wreckage

Take the case of James Maas, who has been teaching at Cornell University for more than 30 years and whose Psychology 101 is perhaps the largest undergraduate course in the country (attracting about 1,000 students every semester). He was won numerous teaching awards. In 1994, Mr. Maas was called before Cornell's Professional Ethics Committee to defend himself against charges of sexual harassment. The allegations centered around his overly friendly and affectionate behavior - which, it turns out, were hugs and occasional social kisses, most often in front of class or family.The most notable example of a professor who stood his ground against sexual-harassment charges is J. Donald Silva, a tenured member of the English faculty at the University of New Hampshire. A student in his technical writing course had asked for an example of a working definition. Mr. Silva offered a word-picture that he had used many times before. Belly dancing, he said, is like a plate of Jell-O with a vibrator underneath. Within days the professor stood accused of sexual harassment. Shortly thereafter he was suspended from his job, ordered to pay the university $2,000 for a replacement teacher, and directed to undergo psychological counseling with a university-approved therapist.The current PC climate has also served to chill campus civility and chivalry. There once was a time when hugging and kissing - the polite embrace or peck-on-the-cheek - was as much a matter of civility as the tip of a gentleman's hat. Now any such behavior, especially when it happens on campus, could well stir up litigious visions of a hostile environment, if not outright charges of sexual harassment.

Resistance and reinvention: Representations of the belly dancing body in Raja Amari’s Satin rouge/Red Satin (2002)

Abstract During the French colonial era, belly dancers were defined in terms of their somatic alterity and their bodies were constructed as sites of degradation, lasciviousness, exoticisation and eroticisation. Though belly dancers remain key signifiers of eastern exoticism in both eastern and western societies today, a number of feminist critics and practitioners have (re)claimed the belly dancing body as a space of agency and empowerment (Keft-Kennedy 2005; Moe 2008). This paper argues that Raja Amari’s film, Satin rouge/Red Satin (2002b), contributes to such debates through its unusual focus on a Tunisian housewife and mother’s (sexual) liberation through belly dancing and her body. Through close analyses of key sequences in the film, I argue that Amari (re)conceptualises the belly dancing body as the primary means by which her protagonist is able to resist the restrictive roles of mother, housewife and widow imposed upon her by dominant Tunisian society. Reading the film alongside Reason and Reynolds’ (2012) work on ‘kinesthetic empathy’, I illustrate how Amari draws the spectator into an empathic kinesthetic relationship with her heroine that undermines the distance necessary for visual objectification and opens up new, more ethical ways of representing the belly dancing body. This paper concludes that Amari’s film resists dominant orientalist images of Maghrebi femininity and reinvents the belly dancing body as a symbol of (female) agency and power.

Belly dance and its links to body psychotherapy

This paper describes the therapeutic use of belly dance therapy (BDT) for women, context and process, on its own and in relation to body psychotherapy and the Chakra system. It gives a brief history of belly dance, references the author’s personal journey and describes a case study. It illustrates how BDT can empower women to serve themselves in their pleasure and pain by awakening the dissociated, traumatised parts of the body and non-verbal body memories through sensing and feeling the body and verbally articulating this.

Fantasies of Exposure: Belly Dancing, the Veil, and the Drag of History

Fantasies of Exposure: Belly Dancing, the Veil, and the Drag of History

Rolling and Trembling of the Abdomen: Movement as a Subaltern Subject in Colonial Egypt

Accordingly to Shay and Sellers-Young (2005) “the term “belly dance” was adopted by natives and non-natives to denote all solo dance forms from Morocco to Uzbekistan that engage the hips, torso, arms and hands in undulations, shimmies, circles and spirals.” Dance historian Curt Sachs depicted the dance as “the swinging of therectus abdominis” (Sachs 1963). This movement has been performed by many oriental dancers in the past century and has become part of the routine of oriental dancers worldwide. This movement has even named the dance “belly dance,” and become one of the most representative elements of contemporary Egyptian culture.This paper will be organized as follows: firstly, I am going to explain succinctly how I use the term “subaltern” in relation to dance and colonialism. Secondly, I am going to present the main scenarios, actors, and factors in which the rolling and trembling of the abdomen was danced, watched, desired and hated at the end of the nineteenth century, provoking strong love/hate reactions among thefin de sieclepublic. The discourse intermingles both dance and feminist analysis observing how movement constituted a metaphor of the unequal power relations between the metropolis and the colony within the particular historical context of British colonialism in Egypt.

Between Orientalism and Westernization: Belly Dance as a Transnational American Studies Case

In the last decade, American women’s rising interest in belly dance has drawn the critical attention of American studies scholars. Americanists have traced the transnational development of the dance complex and skilfully critiqued the imperialist politics that are manifest in Western belly dance practice alongside the rhetoric of feminist liberation. With its apparently feminine, mysterious, and exotic qualities, belly dance seems to make a casebook study for Orientalism. Therefore, scholars have tended to view belly dance through this scholarly frame. Yet, if considering only US contexts, utilizing only English-language resources, and only wielding the Western theoretical cannon, even transnational American studies scholarship risks replicating the Orientalist knowledge practices it identifies and condemns in Western women’s belly dance practice and commentary. This essay argues that, despite the conspicuousness of its impact, Orientalism has not been the only civilizational logic operating in the transnational construction of belly dance. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the dance and its meanings were modified also by the East’s perceptions of the West and official attempts to counter the exotic through Westernization. Utilizing Turkish and English sources and participant observation in the United States and Turkey, I compare the contemporary American meanings of the dance complex to its uses in Turkey. I foreground the predominant role played by the male belly, marginalized in American studies of the dance complex, and show how the complex local category of Westernization operates in an uneasy dialectic with Orientalism. This research suggests that the transnational, with its attention to the movement of people, products, and ideas across nation-state borders, must be balanced with the comparative, with attention to cultural formations that do not translate easily across cultures.

Shake It Out! Belly Dance in Physical Education

Belly dance is a folk dance with a history that can be traced back to the beginnings of civilization. It is a form of expression and movement that has been used for hundreds of years in religious ceremonies, birthing rituals, and social and familial gatherings in the Middle East. Students of belly dance can increase their muscular strength and endurance through the muscle isolations and contractions that are characteristic of this dance form. They can also learn rhythm and movement patterns, respect for self and others in dance and performance settings, and can discover a new form of self-expression and creativity. Therefore, belly dance could be a welcome addition to the physical education curriculum. The purpose of this article is to share the fundamentals of a beginner-level belly dance unit for inclusion in a recreation, dance or physical education setting.