Master’s Thesis in Cultural and Social Anthropology
Telling Stories of Strength: This is Belly Dance!
Supervisor: Dr. Y. M. van Ede Student: Idil Kadioglu Second Readers: Student Number: 11137312 Dr. A.T. Starting [email protected] Dr. C. H. Harris
Amsterdam, 24th of January 2017 ABSTRACT
How are the expressions in the choreographies of Turkish-German professional belly dancers? Belly dance has not been a very familiar topic scholars engaged themselves with (Shay & Wood 1976: 18). This research attempts to address the gap in this field through the experiences of ethnically Turkish professional belly dancers in Berlin. Several theories will be used, such as the three capitals by Bourdieu, the notion of hegemony by Gramsci, the concepts of performativity and subversiveness by Butler. I also found it relevant to use the Aristotelian term “Catharsis”, despite the fact that this concept is usually applied to works of literature or drama. Connected to catharsis, I am discussing the centrality of the sense of kinaesthesia for my interlocutors. The profession belly dancers with Turkish background in Berlin are emotionally distant to their Turkish ethnicity, but are open to draw from it in shaping their dance career. They have first experienced belly dancing in the Turkish community as children, and have obtained an embodied capital. The kinaesthetic pleasure they drive from it occupied more and more place in their lives as they faced limited possibilities in the system for socio economic fullfillment. Building on top of their embodied capital, they obtained an institutionalized capital to operate in the global belly dance market. They face the pressures of operating within this market through hegemonic notions of body image, and heteronormative notions, and resist these through building boundaries and preserving their own sensoria. In their choreographies, their own gender identities and ideas of attractiveness and sexuality is reflected.
Keywords: sensory, belly dance, Turkish, Berlin, drag performance, body image, subversion.