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This Is Belly Dance!

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This Is Belly Dance! 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. !1 INTRODUCTION: The Dive Düm-teke-düm-teke-düm-teke-düm-tek! Listen to the powerful sound of the drum beats. As you listen, you can start to feel something happening, something awakening within your body. You react immediately with your head, shaking it up and down, where you feel the response to the beat of the drums. Then, drop by drop, but also with something much stronger than the drops, it enters your chest, ribcage and lungs, by going down your neck. As it passes your ribcage and starts to enter your belly, your feet have already started moving and are also directing, responding, dancing to the beat. The music rises, from your ankles up, and suddenly, they meet under your belly button, merge into a single swirl, the backs of your knees, your hips, your wing bones, they are all vibrating and active. Your feel excited, fully alive and overwhelmed by something bigger and untouchable yet so innate and physical. You start to move, first again your feet, taking a couple of steps forth and back. Then…. Your belly takes over as it forever knew what to do… You move your belly to the beat of the drums, as if you have discovered the drum of your own very body. You give in to the music, your arms and hands declaring their freedom from you, finding their own way in the space while making rolls and small circles. The beats turn into full music and you do let yourself go to the melody. xxx My main motivation for conducting this research has been a desire to find out about the experience of the professional Turkish belly dancers in Berlin. How is the belly dance experience of the Turkish professional dancers in Berlin? Perhaps it was a grassroot movement, a desire to embrace their ethnic roots. This was the first answer which had come into my mind, but my pre- field research made it clear that it was not a phenomenon which could easily be explained by that formulation. I came across performances not solely in the Turkish community but in a broad array of contexts, from summer festivals to elderly homes to LGBTTQ nightclubs.These early observations made me feel that the Turkish belly dance in Berlin was a rather complicated phenomenon. The Turkish community in Berlin was designated in the literature as having been “stuck between two worlds” because of the earlier experiences of the first wave migrants in Germany (Fındıkçıo"lu, 2012: 17) Recently, the conceptualization has taken a more positive turn, as over the decades Turkish people have formed closer relationships with the German society. As many cultural figures successfully integrated, the conceptualizations came to be portrayed in a positive light, such as “describing the experience as “enjoying both worlds” and “transcending the national categories”. This research discusses the socio-economic and sensory factors behind the reason of my interlocutors’ choice of a belly dancing career. I will discuss how my interlocutors’ experience could contribute to the debates on the cultural identity of the Turkish diaspora in Germany. More positive conceptualizations have emerged in the recent literature, such as “encompassing both worlds” (Diessel, 2001) My interlocutors themselves had various differing positions on their self-conceptualizations, Suzan and Zadiel saw themselves as German, and did not like the hybrid term “Turkish-German”, whereas Nilay saw herself stuck between both worlds, and Cihangir reflected the term of encompassing both worlds. Previous studies have examined the Turkish-German musical cultures, from traditional saz instrumentalists to modern fusion of oriental hip hop, but there has been no previous study done on the belly dance culture of the Turkish-Germans in Berlin. How does a body, a belly dancing body express or construct the cultural and gender identities of individuals or groups? I will refer to the social conditions which lead up to their choosing the career of professional belly dancing, and focus on the significance of belly dancing for them personally, especially their gender and sexual identity. My fieldwork has been an experience resembling free diving; the form of diving without oxygen tanks. The first month, our exchanges have mostly been about outward appearances and forms, for example comparing Arabic style to the Turkish one. As time progressed and my relationship got deeper with my interlocutors, as a “diver of knowledge” I entered the phase called !2 “the free fall”, the state in which the diver is deeper than 15-20 meters and the human body has lost its property of buoyancy, effortlessly sinking into the depths of the water. From then on, the information exchange with my interlocutors has been rapid, intimate and abundant, exactly the sense of allowing one’s self to dive without buoyancy in the depths of water. Therefore, I have decided to explain my ethnographical journey as if it is a journey under the sea. The Introduction is called “Holding Breath”. The First Chapter is “The Surface”. The Second Chapter is “The First 15 Meters”, because it is after 15 meters that the human body loses its buoyancy and begins to sink into the state of free fall. The Third Chapter, where I get the most intimate information from my interlocutors in a high speed is “The Free Fall”. and the Conclusion is “Resurfacing”. Wouldn’t the image of a dancer have been more appropriate rather than a diver? The whole subject of the thesis is dance, and the body parts of the belly and hips. For three months I have observed, talked about, wrote about dance as well as dancing myself. But the metaphor which best describes my journey is diving rather than dancing. My project is about dance, but it is also a dive through dance. At first I had trouble holding my breath and going down. I was instinctively scared of the process of letting go of my body in “free fall”. But after a first few unsuccessful attempts due to inexperience or irrational fear, I soon let go of my weight and started to move effortlessly. The key point here is that the water has always been a very important imagery in my sensoria and kinaesthesia as an ethnographer and as a dancer. I grew up by the Bosphorus and us Istanbul people say, “We can’t live in a place with no water.” My fieldwork in Berlin was interestingly also often near water; near Spree, near the canals, near the parks… Belly dance is not just a dance for me, but is a flow, a way of moving, forever intertwined with the lights reflecting from the Bosphorus strait into the moist air. Therefore the free diver metaphor seemed appropriate for my field Berlin too. Theoretical Framework My main research question is “How are the belly dance experiences of the dance professionals with Turkish background in Berlin?”. In Chapter One, I am drawing from sensory ethnography and informing the reader about the specific kinaesthetic experience of my interlocutors. I argue that my interlocutor’s choreographies challenge the Carthesian split between mind and body because they have integrated intellect into their dance. I am referring to the work of sensory ethnographers such as Yolanda van Ede. In Chapter Two, I will discuss the global belly dance market and how my interlocutors navigate through it by utilizing Bourdieu’s concept of the cultural capital. On the third !3 and final chapter, I discuss gender and sexual identity in relation to hegemonic (Gramsci, 2004), neoliberal beauty ideas and how my interlocutors challenge, refuse to accept, and negotiate with these ideas. I am using Judith Butler’s concepts of parody and subversiveness when analyzing the performances of my male interlocutors. In conclusion, all of these different theories come together to explain the singular phenomenon of belly dancing in the specific context of the Turkish diaspora in Berlin.
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