Rough Transcript

Season 2: Episode 5

Let’s Dance

Hosts: Gillian Frank & Lauren Gutterman

Guests and Additional Audio: University of Texas Broadcaster, Germaine Brown, Roxanne Shelaby, TV Show Host, Narrator, Mychelle Crown, Helena Vlahos, TV Performance Host

University of Texas Broadcaster: Germaine Brown is one of the best-known instructors on the campus of the University of Texas at Arlington. Her classes are small, they’re not part of the regular curriculum, and they’re not offered for credit. But the course she teaches has attracted a lot of attention because of the unique nature of the subject: belly dancing.

Although instructor Brown has no college degree, and little formal training in dancing, her credentials are impressive. She’s better known by her professional name Chastity Fox, her profession used to be strip tease dancing, but a few months ago she quit stripping because she said the job was no longer challenging. Instructor Germaine Brown says this isn’t obscene, this is art.

Germaine Brown: Anybody who’s ever seen me dance knows that I’m an artist and that I really believe in teaching the dance as an art.

University of Texas Broadcaster: Most women signed up for the course because they want to get in shape. They do it by learning hip rolls, shimmies, and something called the “stomach flutter”. At the end of 6 hours of instruction, the women get certificates of proficiency in belly dancing, and a special gift from the instructor: jewels to put in their navels.

Those who go home and perform for their husbands, have you had any feedback on the results of that?

Germaine Brown: Ha ha, yes, I have. A lot of them won’t give me any details but they tell me that everything’s a lot better at home.

Lauren Gutterman: In the 1960s and 1970s, a belly dancing craze swept the United States. Audiences could enjoy live belly dancing performances in Middle Eastern restaurants and clubs. Viewers could watch belly dancers in hit movies like From Russia With Love or the popular television show I Dream of Jeannie, a sitcom centered around a romantic relationship between a genie and her master. Belly dancing even appeared in unexpected venues including Elvis Presley’s 1968 comeback special.

Thousands of American women also flocked to belly dancing classes. Many did so because they wanted to become slimmer and sexier. And at the urging of instructors like Chastity Fox, they performed titillating dances in the privacy of their bedrooms for their husbands or boyfriends. Some of these women went so far as to adopt Middle Eastern names and dress up in costumes.

At first glance, the history of belly dancing appears to be a story of white middle class women appropriating Middle Eastern culture and styles to make themselves more exotic. But the story of belly dancing is much more complex: it is a story in which Middle Eastern and American artists and audiences shaped and reshaped artistic expressions, sexual performances and cultural identities.

The creativity and entrepreneurship of Middle Eastern immigrants is at the center of the belly dancing craze. In the 1960s and 1970s, these immigrants successfully marketed their dances, their music, and even their identities to audiences worldwide. American audiences in turn learned from and imitated Middle Eastern dancers in a variety of ways, ranging from crude racial mimicry to careful study and emulation.

Gillian Frank: Among the most accomplished of these Middle Eastern dancer-entrepreneurs was Ozel Turkbas. Turkbas was a Turkish model, film star, and dancer, who immigrated to the United States in 1959. During the 1960s and 1970s, Turkbas performed in nightclubs across North America.

As Americans clamored for belly dancing performances and classes, Ozel Turkbas, joined other belly dancers, who marketed belly dancing as tool to help women stay fit and to keep their relationships sexually exciting.

Turkbas built a small commercial empire. She released several belly dancing records with titles like “How to Belly Dance for your Husband” and “How to Make Your Husband a Sultan.” These records came with booklets that offered women a crash course on belly dancing. Turkbas also sold mail-order belly dancing paraphernalia, including cymbals and costumes.

Belly dancers like Turkbas capitalized on Americans’ longstanding exoticization of the Middle East. They combined this erotic fascination with the messages of a booming American fitness culture, which told women that it was their job to stay thin and attractive. Many American women came to view belly dancing as providing them with a path to exotic identities, better bodies, and better sex lives.

I’m Gillian Frank.

Lauren Gutterman: I’m Lauren Gutterman. Welcome to Sexing History.

Americans have been fascinated with belly dancing for a long time. In the late-nineteenth century, Americans began to see belly dancing spectacles in various public entertainment venues: at world’s fairs and amusement parks, on vaudeville and burlesque stages, and in some of the earliest films ever made. Their performances were called the “hoochie-coochie” or “Oriental” dance. The dancers’ movements, as well as their bare arms, midriffs and legs, created a sensation even as they scandalized some American audiences who viewed such displays as indecent.

In the 1950s, changes to American immigration law made it easier for people from the Middle East to move to the US and become citizens. Newly arrived Middle Eastern immigrants quickly established restaurants and clubs across the nation. These spaces featured Middle Eastern cuisine, live music, and belly dancing and attracted diverse audiences.

American-born audiences already had a well-developed and eroticized fascination with the Middle East and with belly dance. And immigrants quickly grasped the ways Americans viewed Middle Eastern culture. Nightclub owners and restaurateurs played up exoticized ideas of the Middle East to bring patrons to their doors. Starting in the 1950s, Syrian, Lebanese, Turkish, and Egyptian immigrants opened restaurants and clubs that made exotic sensuality part of the place’s allure.

Gillian Frank: In 1959, Lebanese-American Lou Shelaby opened The Fez, the first Middle Eastern club in Los Angeles. Celebrities including Lee Marvin, Jayne Mansfield, and Danny Thomas frequented Shelaby’s club. There, they would listen to Arabic music, enjoy belly dancing performances, and dine on Middle Eastern cuisine.

Here is Roxanne Shelaby, Lou Shelaby’s daughter, describing the Fez:

Roxanne Shelaby: It was the only place at that time that had the full experience of Lebanese food, Arabic music, and Arabic dancing. The restaurant was actually two floors and downstairs was like the main fine dining area so it was chairs and tables. There was a raised stage so the musicians and dancer would perform an actual show for the audience. There was an upstairs that was called the Sinbad Room and that was a more authentic, like sitting on cushions on the floor and a smaller more intimate space where you were really up close and personal with the dancer and the musicians.

It became naturally sort of a cultural meeting point, for Arabs across the Middle East who had resettles in the Los Angeles area. Because there were no other places, you know, you had North Africans, you had Egyptians, you had Syrian Lebanese and people from all over the Levant. As well as people you know Saudi Arabia and the gulf. Then you had Americans, and this is the thing that really is interesting to me in that you know, American society was very interested in this new-to-them culture that was very mysterious and exotic. They seemed to be more open minded in those days. And families, and that’s the difference, like when you think of a night club you think of partying and drugs and all that kind of stuff. My dad’s clubs were always family oriented because it was more about connecting with their culture rather than a nightclub as we think of it.

Gillian Frank: Even as they catered to American tastes, nightclubs like the Fez became important gathering spots for Americans of Middle Eastern descent. In large cities or smaller towns, Middle Eastern restaurants and clubs allowed Middle Eastern immigrants to share their cuisine and traditions with each other and with other Americans from a variety of backgrounds. 

TV Show Host: Right here on Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood has its own Kasbah. As we enter the 7th veil you feel as if you’re thousands of miles away back in the ancient times of the Middle East. The scent of exotic food and the presence of belly dancers put you right in to the Arabian nights. This is Leila, the star of the show and also the owner of the club, and this is Dansie. This intriguing atmosphere right in the middle of Hollywood attracts many of its stars who come to watch or even participate.

The band is authentically Middle Eastern, the string instrument is from ancient Persia and is called a santoor, the drums are called dombang – bet you didn’t think I knew that. The musicians are Anoosh from Iran and Hamil from Iraq. 

Gillian Frank: By the 1960s, belly dancing had become a pop culture phenomenon and was thriving in night clubs in the United States. Belly dancers were featured on film, on television and in live shows that toured the continent. For many Americans, belly dancing had become one facet of a more diverse, and more permissive popular culture.

Lauren Gutterman: As belly dancing boomed in the United States, it was becoming increasingly controversial in parts of the Middle East. After World War II, territories across the Middle East and North Africa asserted political independence from European colonizers. In these newly independent countries, questions of what counted as authentic culture became central to nationalist projects. Middle Eastern political leaders sought to revive, and in many cases, to invent indigenous and authentic cultural expressions, that set them apart from the culture of European colonizers.

In countries like Egypt and Lebanon, belly dancing became an important site for these anti-colonial ideas to play out. For some Egyptian and Lebanese politicians belly dancing suggested the cultural denigration that was colonialism’s legacy. These critics were concerned that sexualized belly dancing was proliferating in clubs that catered to Western tourists. They accused tourists and belly dancers of corrupting their countries’ cherished values.

Narrator: In Egypt they have a national problem which has everyone tossing and turning. Cairo’s belly dancers are tossing their tummies while everyone is turning to watch. A special demonstration of agitated abdomens is held to determine whether or not Egypt’s 2000 stomach soloists will be allowed to return to their traditional scanty costumes. The final decision can be no snap judgement. That’s why the cities censor arranged this performance. The girls claim their navel maneuvers reveal less than the local beach. Anyone for a swim?

Gillian Frank: In order to preserve what it called “authentic Oriental” traditions, the Egyptian government began regulating how belly dancers could dress and where they could dance. In the 1950s, Egyptian officials instructed dancers to cover their navels. By 1963, the chief censor in Egypt issued an edict that stipulated: “no more hip swinging, no more belly or bosom shaking, no more lying down on the floor and executing quivering or shivering motions; no more suggestive movement.”

By 1967, the Egyptian government announced that belly dancers would have to attend state endorsed schools where they would, according to a government memo, “cleanse and polish their movements of any gesticulations having as their primary target to arouse sexual excitement of spectators.” Instead, they would learn respectable dance moves that reflected national values. According to coverage in the Associated Press, only brunettes would be admitted to these state sponsored schools because brunettes were “more representative of the Orient than blondes.” 

Lauren Gutterman: The fight over belly dancing was part of a wider effort to purify and police Egyptian culture. And sexuality became the dividing line over what counted as authentically Egyptian. As the chief censor in Egypt noted, the aim of reform is to keep “this Oriental art in consistence with public morality.” The minister even found support from some professional belly dancers because he promised to elevate the artistic aspects of the dance and push out what he called the “shameful intruders who do nothing more than expose their body charms and call themselves oriental dancers.”

Gillian Frank: Belly dancers in the United States also wrestled with the sexual meanings of their craft. Some American-based belly dancers sought to de-stigmatize belly dancing by desexualizing it. A number of belly dancers that we interviewed were upset that audiences associated them with strippers and burlesque dancers. Here’s Roxanne talking about sexuality and belly dancing:

Roxanne Shelaby: I wish that the general public would understand that belly dancing is not about a woman being scantily clad and trying to seduce a man. I would really love for them to understand that it’s a cultural dance. It is a dance of people in like throughout the Middle East although maybe they have specific folklore styles. If you’re putting on the certain music that leads to belly dancing anywhere in the Middle East. The woman is going to stand up and ties something around her hips and do those movements that we relate to or understand as being belly dancing. And some of the men, for fun.

Gillian Frank: Here’s Mychelle Crown.

Mychelle Crown: I am Mychelle Crown, I am a multi-award winning professional belly dance performer and instructor in the Sacramento California area. It is a complex subject, the sexual nature of belly dancing, in that there’s a pretty big dichotomy between Western belly dance and how sexuality is viewed here and Middle Eastern, north African, Turkish regions and how it’s viewed there. In that, in the west, belly dance is very much especially these days kind of viewed as a way for women to explore and take pride in the sensuality, they kind of come back to themselves. You’ll often hear the words “empowered sensuality” tossed around in American belly dance. And that’s great, and I think and that is it does that absolutely, but it does contrast with the Middle East where belly dance is still very much frowned upon and it’s very much considered sex work, and it’s legitimized by the government in that you have a licensed belly dancer – a license also says that you’re a prostitute. And so sensual, explore my sexuality art form and dancers in the east who are dealing with some very serious stereotypes that can be dangerous or difficult for them. The classic line is that “everyone wants a belly dancer at their wedding, but no one wants their son to marry a belly dancer.

Gillian Frank: At the same time, a number of dancers shrewdly linked belly dancing with exotic sexuality. Belly dancers like Ozel Turkbas fell into this camp. Her bra tops barely covered her substantial chest, her facial expressions emphasized the sexual meanings of her movements, and she often invited male audience members to join her on stage in erotic scenarios. Turkbas also performed at Playboy clubs in the United States and Canada, solidifying the association between belly dancers, Playboy bunnies, and strippers. 

Lauren Gutterman: The sex appeal of belly dance also became a gimmick for some performers. Helena Vlahos, an accomplished performer and Greek American, developed a nightclub routine in which she lay on the ground and flipped coins on her abdomen using only her stomach muscles. She invited audience members to take a close and prolonged look at her wriggling, half naked body on the floor: the feat, which she performed on several television shows, even earned her a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records for “unique abdominal dexterity.”

TV Performance Host: Helena Vlahos one of America’s leading interpreters of the belly dance. Like the artist she is, Helena realizes that if an art is to survive, it must adapt and change, and change here is the operative word. Helena welcome

Helena Vlahos: Hi how are you?

TV Performance Host: Very well indeed, and the change is right here: nine quarters. Will you just explain what you alone can do with them?

Helena Vlahos: Okay, the quarters placed on the belly I will be able to turn them over twice up then twice down, one at a time twice up each and then every other one down.

TV Performance Host: When did you discover you could do this?

Helena Vlahos: Many many years ago when I was dancing. Actually, somebody placed – it started with a dollar bill on my belly and as I was rolling my stomach it turned over. Then I thought to do the coins because it was easier to lie on the stomach flat and then I work my way up from one and then two, then I discovered that I can do one at a time. Then I just added on as my muscles got accustomed to handling the coins.

TV Performance Host: Two dollars and twenty-five cents coming up, rolling over, and then coming back again.

Gillian Frank: Other performers, like Turkish-born belly dancer Nyeela Bahar, who was known by her stage name “Princess Nyeela,” appealed to housewives interested in improving their bodies and spicing up their sex lives. In 1970 she published an instructional book called Exotic Exercises. Exotic Exercises included chapters on “Sexoticism” and “How to Be Number One in the Harem.” The exotic woman, Princess Nyeela explained, was the opposite of what she called the “shabby housewife, dutiful drudge.” Nyeela’s book includes pictures of her in a full-length black lace bodysuit and black patent heels as she demonstrates her fitness routines. Nyeela, in other words, embodied for and promised her audience, fitness and sex appeal.

Lauren Gutterman: Like Princess Nyeela, Ozel Turkbas marketed Middle Eastern eroticism to American-born women and their husbands. In the early 1970s she released record albums of belly dancing music, accompanied by booklets with detailed instructions for women about how to perform a belly dance for their husbands or boyfriends. The first album, How to Make your Husband a Sultan, came out in 1972. She released How to Belly Dance for Your Sultan, the following year. The liner notes for Turkbas’ first album explained that with her help, “many American women were able to learn, simply and painlessly, how to give a seductive performance.”

Importantly, Turkbas emphasized that belly dancing was both sexual and respectable, liberating but not lewd. According to her book, The Belly Dancer in You: “Belly dancing has—literally—rescued many, many women from lives of seemingly permanent unhappiness...because it’s dignified sexuality—anyone can get into it without feeling tawdry.” In other words, belly dancing offered women a way to embody and enjoy their sexuality without sacrificing their respectability. Or, put more crudely: it could teach them to be sexy without being slutty.

Gillian Frank: Turkbas, like other immigrant belly dancers, suggested that in order to achieve a more sensual and erotic self, women could adopt a Middle Eastern persona. In her book The Belly Dancer in You, she invited her non-Middle Eastern students to adopt a new name. She wrote: “You’re all set to dance. Right? Then don’t face your audience as Betty Sue Pruitt or Virginia. You’ll also find that your new name will help you find an entirely new dancer’s identity. Soon you’ll be whirling like the Adalet or Cemile you were always meant to be.” What followed was a three-page alphabetical list of names from Asiye all the way to Zubeyde.

Here’s Roxanne Shelaby, discussing the practice of taking on a Middle Eastern name:

Roxanne Shelaby: Often they take on names that are not actually names, they’re like a word they heard in Arabic and they think it sounds nice, so they took it on as a name. Or I think it’s not so much that they take on a name, it that like how much, how much work did you put in to knowing the name that you took on. Now there’s so many dancers that, I mean before we knew two Jameela’s and we knew a Suhela and you knew a Baheya, and we have kind of used up all the Arabic names. So now dancers have a first name and a last name that they take on, and again, not always culturally appropriate.

Gillian Frank: Here’s Mychelle:

Mychelle Crown: Stage names are pretty common throughout the belly dancing world- and obviously the artistic world in general, a lot of different genre’s use stage names. Different reasons, sometimes for, to have that kind of alter ego maybe you want to separate you work and your dance life. In, throughout the, belly dance really became popular in America late 1960s early 70s, when we had a big influx of Middle Eastern immigrants. In the old days you would be gifted a name by your teacher or by a restaurant owner or a musician would dub you a Middle Eastern name. But that just never felt authentic to me, I would call them Amara, and it just, people would kind of like “Amara huh? That’s your name.” (Laughs). Well it just never felt very real to me and almost a little appropriative to just pick a Middle Eastern name because it’s exotic and it didn’t make a lot of sense. So I figured if belly dance is who I am and what I want to do with my life, then I decided to do it as Mychelle Crown.

Lauren Gutterman: Belly dancing, like fitness culture more broadly, promised participants physical and spiritual transformation—a better and sexier body. But belly dancing also offered Americans a new cultural and sexual identity inspired by Middle Eastern traditions.

In the practice of belly dance, then, questions of cultural authenticity, cultural appropriation, sexual performance, fitness, art and profit all intermingled with each other. Even as they marketed a Middle Eastern identity to American audiences, Middle Eastern immigrants saw themselves as cultural ambassadors, exposing new audiences to Middle Eastern art, music, and language while celebrating their heritage. Similarly, many non-Middle Eastern belly dancers who became fans and practitioners of belly dance in the late 1960s and 1970s believed they were preserving and celebrating Middle Eastern traditions. Many of these dancers wrestled with hard questions about cultural appropriation and the ways their work might further Middle Eastern stereotypes.

Here's Roxanne:

Roxanne Shelaby: My current passion is, and that is connecting the dancers and the belly dance community with the culture. Now we live in a time where, you know, you can go to the supermarket and buy, like the hummus is next to the peanut butter. It’s just as common a food as peanut butter is. People don’t know it’s attached to any culture for the most part, they just know it tastes good. So belly dancing kind of has gone the same way, I mean we have dancers in the belly dance community who dance to American music, who have like, they couldn’t locate the Middle East on a map if you asked them. You know, they are American dancers kind of doing what they think is like the thousand and one nights idea of belly dancing. So, I’ve created a program and I call it the Middle Eastern Dance Lab where I take dancers on trips to events in the Arabic community. I’ve had some great success and dancers seem to be really interested in learning about the culture and having that connection.

Gillian Frank: By the early 1980s, the belly dancing craze had mostly faded in the United States. As Americans moved on to other fitness fads that promised better bodies and coupled sweat with sex, many professional belly dancers also moved on to other things. Still, a number of professional belly dancers continued to dance and to teach their craft in studios across the country.

The widespread fascination with belly dancing never disappeared from American culture and to this day remains a fixture in women’s fitness and self-help cultures. You can still take belly dancing classes, you can purchase Middle Eastern themed costumes online, and you can stream instructional videos with titles like Love Potion: The Belly Dance Workout and Sensual Goddess: Belly Dance for Total Beginners.

That Middle Eastern images remain so powerful in American understandings of sexual pleasure and sexual exoticism, demonstrates how profoundly Orientalism, the push and pull of markets, and immigration from the Middle East have all shaped the history of sexuality in the United States. At the same time, the persistent marketing of the Middle East and of belly dancing as pathways to physical and sexual transformation reveals another through-line from the 1960s to our present: a demand that women work out and do the hard work of making themselves and their relationships sexy and exciting.

Lauren Gutterman: Sexing History is written and produced by Gillian Frank and me, Lauren Gutterman. Our senior producer is Saniya Lee Ghanoui. Rebecca Davis is our story editor and producer. Our assistant producers are Chris Babits, Isabel Machado and Mallory Szymanski. Our intern is Julian Harbaugh.   

Gillian Frank: Thank you to Kanina, Mychelle Crown, Roberta Dougherty, Roxxanne Shelaby, and Barbara Siegel for sharing their stories with our senior producer Saniya Lee Ghanoui.

We are indebted to research by Anne Rasmussen, Anthony Shay, and Barbara Sellers-Young whose scholarship informed this episode. To learn more about their research and to see our liner notes for this episode, and all our previous episodes, please visit our website at www.sexinghistory.com

Lauren Gutterman: Sexing History is made possible with generous funding from Allen Zwickler of the Phil Zwickler Charitable and Memorial Foundation. Created in honor of the journalist, filmmaker, poet and gay activist Phil Zwickler, the Foundation "seeks to promote human rights, education, health and the arts, specifically with respect to the gay and lesbian community, and generally with regard to those individuals and groups who need assistance to survive and be heard." Visit them at pzfoundation.org

We are grateful for the support of the University of Delaware College of Arts and Sciences program for undergraduate summer research.

Gillian Frank: Sexing History is also supported by funding from the Humanities Media Project in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas, Austin. The Humanities Media Project aims “to tell human stories and invite critical conversations that educate, inspire, and connect communities. They believe that the humanities play a crucial role in maintaining a healthy, democratic society.”

Lauren Gutterman: Sexing History is grateful for a grant from the Program in American Studies and the Americas Center/Centro de las Americas at University of Virginia. The Americas Center promotes the interdisciplinary study of the arts, cultures, histories, and societies of the Americas.

Gillian Frank: If you’re enjoying our show, you can help new listeners find us. Please review us on Apple Music and share links to our episodes on social media.

To stay up to date on all things Sexing History or to send us a note, visit us on our website, www.sexinghistory.com

From all of us at Sexing History, thanks for listening.

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Transcription by Ian McCabe, University of Delaware