The world's most respected oriental dance researcher Carolina Varga Dinicu saw the Chinese version of her great tome You Asked Aunt Rocky: Answers & Advice About Raqs Sharqi & Raqs Shaabi published in China recently.

With over 50 years of study and performance in the field, Dinicu presents an in-depth look at oriental dance in the book, while also fighting back against the sexism and racism that has bedeviled the art form. It has long been referred to as "belly dancing" in the West - a term that Dinicu and other practitioners reject as disparaging.

In her book, Dinicu breaks down dances, rhythms, customs and folklores while addressing major misconceptions. Her travels and field recordings give a comprehensive view of the vanishing arts of folk dance from across the Arab world. The "Aunty Rocky" of the title is the online handle she uses to answer questions online about oriental dance. Much of this material was used in the writing of the book. Raqs sharqi and raqs shaabi are Arabic terms for oriental dance.

The Global Times talked with Dinicu about her book as well as her wider oriental dance experience.

 

Carolina Varga Dinicu poses with her book about oriental dance titled You Asked Aunt Rocky: Answers & Advice About Raqs Sharqi & Raqs Shaabi in Shanghai. Photos: Courtesy of Shanghai ISIS Arts Training Center

GT: What prompted you to write the book?



CD: It started at a dance event in 1996, when a friend told me there were many questions, comments, stories, information and misinformation about Middle Eastern dances and cultures on the Internet. I went online and shared my answers, but when new members joined the discussion, they had many of the same questions. I'm a terrible typist, so I saved all my answers in a file so I could reuse them. Later, I garnered a mass of factual information based on my long-term research and experience. Dancers at seminars twisted my arm to put all the information I'd collected over half a century into book form.

It is by no means everything I learned over the years, nor anywhere near everything there is to know, but it collects more information together than any other source has done to date. My book gives information about raqs shaabi, which is correctly translated as "oriental dance" rather than "belly dance." The latter was the colonial misnomer that was given to it in the 1800s. But most people do not know this fact until somebody like me tells them.

GT: How did you first become involved with oriental dance?



CD: It started as a total accident. In 1960, I was rehearsing with a flamenco company at a studio run by a Greek priest in New York who became a friend. We were not paid for rehearsals so I had no money for food. The priest knew of a dance job at an Arabian club paying $125 a week. So I took the job for two weeks. They had really good musicians. I wanted to know more about that music because it was so beautiful. I fell totally in love with the music and rhythms and I just wanted to learn as much I could about the different kinds of oriental dance. I watched it all and sponged it up. There weren't schools. There weren't seminars. There wasn't anything like this back then. So it was on-the-job training.

Older musicians who came to the club had the cultural knowledge I sought. I made friends with them and they were happy to show me and teach me about the music.

Different people would tell me different stories about the origins of the music. I wanted to uncover the real story. So I started with traveling to different countries, trying to find myself what the truth, and I found all these people had been right. Those dances were all beautiful and a lot of fun.

GT: Why do you think the term "belly dance" is wrongly used to describe oriental dance? What are some of the misperceptions people have about oriental dance?

CD: In none of the languages of the countries to which this dance belongs is it called "belly" anything, and it is anatomically incorrect. Every muscle is used in this dance. To just take one muscle and use it to designate the whole dance is minimizing the skill, variety and complexity necessary.

During the Victorian era, Western colonizers were very hypocritical about what they said, how they talked, how they dressed and how they looked at other cultures. They treated the people in many oriental countries like dirt. They were racists and sexists. They were telling people how they were supposed to think. The colonizers brainwashed children to think their culture was wrong, their dances were wrong and their music was wrong.

When the colonizers saw people moving in the more natural way of oriental dance, they were shocked. They thought it was indecent. They thought it was pornographic. "Belly" was a dirty word for them. Actually it was just a different vocabulary of movement.

GT: What qualities make for a good oriental dancer?



CD: A good oriental dancer should be able to hear the music and reflect that music gracefully. It's like learning a language. First you learn the vocabulary, then you learn sentences and paragraphs, and then you start writing an essay and then a poem. With the different styles of poetry, you can use the same language to express yourself in so many different ways. It's the same with oriental dance. There are so many physical "words" that you can use to interpret the music. The ears are hearing the music and the eyes are seeing the movements in that music. It's a relaxed control from inside out.