Wednesday, July 23, 2008

gothic bellydance


I've been meaning to investigate this phenom further ever since I saw a Goth Bellydance troupe from St. Louis perform at "Goth Night" at the now, alas, defunct Dart Room in Fayetteville. Check out this vid:


It all goes back to Theda Bara, no?



Here, for the perplexed, is a guide to gothic bellydance.

And--although I've not read it yet--a link, courtesy wayneandwax, to what I am sure is a great article by Sunaina Mair on bellydance orientalism ("arabface"). And check out wayneandwax's recent post on bellydance here.

(I hope, inshallah, to think about these things a bit more systematically in future.)

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

The link to Sunaina's article is broken.

Ted Swedenburg said...

thanks for telling me! it's now fixed.

Anonymous said...

fascinating video!

interestingly, given the conflation of south asian and arab signifiers that i discuss in my own post, it's worth noting that the track propelling the "raks gothique" embedded here is from enduser's _bollywood breaks_ project

Anonymous said...

yeha,, i love gothic bellydance ,, there are something bellydance whit metal music too... and the video that you posted,,was really nice,,,,,,,, ;)

Anonymous said...

Gothic bellydance is amazing. The best music for it mixed with rock and metal (like Nahi says) is Bellymetal by Khepri.

You should totally check it out!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4f3v5zMTSY

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