Dancers bared their bellies and spun their hips in the name of female empowerment Saturday night.
Columbia’s Belly Dance Troupe hosted the Second Annual Middle Eastern Dance Conference, featuring the belly dancing troupes of six Ivy League universities, in Lerner Party Space to celebrate a dance style with a resonant cultural history.
The performers used isolations of the hips and chest, as well as elements of their flamboyant costumes such as flowing scarves and tinkling jewelry, to highlight specific parts of their bodies. Performances ranged from a one-woman baton show to a group of women who rotated in a circle, yet all dances showed appreciation for the female form and created harmony between woman and rhythm.
Middle Eastern women have danced the “Raks Al Sharki” (dance of the east) for centuries as a celebration of womanhood during weddings and festivals. While the exact origins of belly dancing are unknown, historians agree the dance has often been practiced as a female bonding ritual and as a fertility dance to strengthen muscles needed for labor, rather than as a means to charm men. Performers did not introduce belly dancing to America until the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.
Saturday’s performance demonstrated the growing interest in belly dancing in the United States, especially on college campuses. Joanie Atkinson, BC '12, leader of CU Belly Dancing and organizer of this year’s conference, hopes to appeal to a broader audience for next year’s performance. “I want a bigger venue and to expand now that we feel more comfortable,” she said.
This year’s performance, which attracted a larger group of spectators than last year’s, boasted an audience composed mostly of Columbia affiliates. Atkinson hopes to “get more people involved from New York City” for the third annual conference by attracting the belly dancing troupes of other New York colleges as well as professional dancers.
Professional dancers performed during the latter half of the performance of this year’s conference, as did a beat boxing-guitar duo. They detracted from the overall show, as they were a confusing addition to a group of dances that supported intercollegiate female solidarity. The beat boxing-guitar act, both lengthy and irrelevant, interrupted the flow of the show and distracted the audience from the belly dance.
The conference was as colorful as the costumes the performers wore. The spirited performances reintroduced Columbia to a non-Western dance that rejoices in female unity. Next year, perhaps, organizers will emphasize the belly dance as performed by college students instead of allowing extraneous acts to detract from it.
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