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A
s the trickle of tourists slowly
returns to Egypt, the fl oat-
ing nightclubs along the
Nile are back in business.
And belly dancers are once again in
high demand. Glitzy late-night shows
attract visitors from all over the world,
and especially from the Gulf ’s Arab
states, with dancers in revealing out-
fi ts performing with full traditional
musical backing.
But while many dancers are happy
to be getting back to work, there is
growing disquiet that the artform
is becoming closely associated with
drinking and nightclub culture. They
feel that the belly dance, which is
deeply rooted in Egyptian history, has
been increasingly seen as more akin to
strip dancing, and that this association
is making life diffi cult for the dancers.
“What we’re seeing more and more
of is this dance being hidden in these
underground cabarets and bars,”
says Egyptian dancer Amie Sultan. “A
normal Egyptian family who wants to
go to the theatre and watch a show will
never see this dance.”
As part of a campaign to change
perceptions , Sultan wants Egyptian
belly dance included on Unesco’s Lists
of Intangible Cultural Heritage.
Although the dance is hugely
popular – it is common to see belly
dancers at Muslim and Christian wed-
dings and star performers become
celebrities – Sultan says dancers are
seen more often as sex workers than
artists. In Egypt’s conservative soci-
ety, dancers face intense social stigma,
and even risk prosecution for wear-
ing outfi ts deemed too promiscuous
by the authorities. “A mother willhire a dancer for her son’s wedding,”
says Sultan, “but she’ll never let her
daughter become a dancer.”
Born in Singapore, Sultan began
her dancing career in ballet. When
she moved her focus to belly dance
in 2014, she was shocked by a culture
where performers compete to wear
more revealing costumes and often
undergo cosmetic surgery and breast
augmentations. “I don’t even like the
term ‘belly dance’,” says Sultan, who
now teaches what she prefers to call
Egyptian dance.
Belly dance, she says “is a term
that was invented by the French
colonialists in Egypt. They took it back
to France and called it danse du ventre
[dance of the stomach], but we never
call it that in Arabic.”
Her programme for young dancers
is run along similar lines to ballet
training. Students are taught to dance
in the style of stars from Egypt’s
“golden age” of cinema, such as Samia
Gamal and Naima Akef , and to distance
themselves from sexualised styles
found in nightclubs, where Sultan says
the traditions have been diluted with
other dance styles.
Associating belly dance with
sex work can make life diffi cult for
dancers. Women trying to break into
it as a career risk alienation from their
families, insecure accommodation at
the mercy of suspicious landlords, and
sexual ha rassment.
Unscrupulous managers have been▼ A performer at
a belly dancing
festival in Cairo
PATRICK BAZ/AFP /GETTYknown to push dancers into sex work.
Dancers can also fall foul of the govern-
ment’s strict regulations on attire. In
2019, a Russian woman was sentenced
to a year in prison for breaching the
dress code.
Dance teacher Ali Abdelfattah says
belly dancers are stigmatised in a way
that doesn’t aff ect other professional
dancers. “The ballet is seen as some-
thing graceful,” he says, “but when
people see belly dancers, it throws
up a lot of question marks. It’s not a
good image.”
Abdelfattah says most of his
students attend his workshops with-
out their families’ knowledge.
Because of the diffi culties faced by
Egyptians, these days many of those
dancing in clubs, cabarets and at wed-
dings come from abroad. Lurdiana,
a Brazilian dancer working in Cairo,
says that she was recruited in Sharm
el-Sheikh. “They need dancers here,”
she says.
Lurdiana’s former manager once
explained his preference for foreign
dancers. “He said that if an Egyptian
girl works as a belly dancer, it means
she doesn’t come from a good family
or have a good education,” she says.
“ They think that she just does it
because she wants to get money and
doesn’t have any other options. They
can’t imagine that she would do this
just because she loves it.”
EDMUND BOWER IS A JOURNALIST
BASED IN CAIRO‘Belly
dance is
a term
invented by
the French;
we never
call it that
in Arabic’Amie Sultan
DancerEGYPTShaken up
Bell y dancers
feel cultural
erosion of
an art form
By Edmund Bower CAIRO