THE TIMES,
26th AUGUST 2003
A DANCE AROUND AUTHORITY
As the Egyptian Government cancels work permits for foreign belly dancers,
two English performers tell CAROL MIDGLEY about making a real career of this
ancient folk dance in its country of origin.
YASMINA, whose real name is Francesca Sullivan, has been performing as a belly
dancer for nearly twenty years. She comes from Beaconsfield, Bucks, but has
lived in Cairo since 1995, having married Safaa, a local singer. The couple
have a son, Azzedine, one.
You have to be able to understand how the system works to be able to earn a
living as a belly dancer in Egypt. Getting a permit to license you to dance
is a tightly monitored, laborious process. Your license must be renewed every
month, and it is compulsory to pay monthly subs to a performing arts trade union.
It’s hard work but the rewards are amazing. It’s so creative; nothing
feels quite like being up there on stage with your band playing behind you.
I started performing as a belly dancer at 24. I’d been a photography student
and I learnt to dance to earn extra money. I love its expressiveness. At first
I worked in nightclubs in London but then I decided I wanted to experience dancing
in the Middle East.
In 1989 I went to Morocco, and then worked in Syria and Jordan. Belly dancing
is not native to these countries, only to Egypt and the Lebanon, so it wasn’t
as strictly regulated.
I arrived in Egypt eight years ago and met my husband, and I have been there
ever since. Foreigners have been dancing in Egypt for many years. During the
1970’s and 1980’s the scene was very competitive and it was difficult
for foreigners to get work. But then, due to economic reasons, many clubs started
to close and the number of local dancers fell away.
Egyptian women love to dance but they do it primarily to earn a living. For
foreign women there is a great kudos in coming home and saying you have danced
professionally in the country of origin. A lot of women who come in to dance
from foreign countries such as Russia are prepared to ask a lot less money,
so it can’t be denied that the Egyptians have a point.
On the other hand foreign women bring a lot of money with them, and many of
them are well-educated. It is so expensive to set yourself up as a dancer: you
have to pay for the costumes, the orchestra, the choreographer. Costumes have
to be made individually for you and cost about 1,500 Egyptian pounds minimum
(£250 - £300). A good dancer would be expected to have maybe 20
costumes. There are three changes in a performance, and you can do several performances
in a day.
There are different levels of venue. Weddings are well-paid jobs, as are the
good hotels. Some girls work their way up dancing on Nile cruises, which can
vary in quality. Some of the cabarets can be insalubrious.
The fee can vary enormously (from £20 for a low-class venue to £500
for a wedding) and the dancer has to pay her band out of the fee, so she has
to decide how many musicians she can afford to use. The worry is that if you
don’t have many, it doesn’t look good.
When you first try to get a license you have to persuade the hotel or wherever
you are working to give you a contract to prove that you have a job. Then it
has to be approved by the Ministry of Labour, the morals police and the performing
arts unions. There are inspectors who can ask to see your accreditation at any
time.
If the Egyptian women do resent foreigners being there they don’t show
it. Egyptians are very polite and the audiences are very kind. If they don’t
like you they will smile and clap, but they won’t hire you again.
British audiences are much harder to dance for. They don’t understand
the music or see the depth of the performance. I don’t think you can make
a proper career of it in Britain.
To be good at it you have to have a feeling for music, a good sense of rhythm
and a willingness to express your emotions. You also have to have charisma and
sex appeal, but they don’t want you to be overtly sexual. In Egypt many
women dance well into their forties. The big stars earn huge money.
Western standards of beauty are starting to be appreciated more, largely because
of satellite television. Belly dancers are increasingly expected to be slim
rather than voluptuous. Egyptian women tend to be naturally well-endowed; in
fact a plastic surgeon I was speaking to there says that one of the biggest
demands in cosmetic surgery is for breast reduction.
I’ve never had hassle from men. You are up on stage and afterwards you
are up on stage and afterwards you leave backstage and you don’t have
much contact with the audience. Yet even though it’s part of the culture,
some people do regard belly dancers as women with loose reputations. They want
a good belly dancer at their wedding but they wouldn’t necessarily want
their son to marry one.
It’s a paradox: a dance that expresses female sexuality in a country that
we think of as being sexually repressed.