rosalinddancer:

gallifrey-six:

rosalinddancer:

gallifrey-six:

rosalinddancer:

rosalinddancer:

1. FUCK YOU and the mentally challenged horse you rode in on

2.  Take a gander at this list written by a ballet teacher on being a professional dancer.  While it is intended for those reading the ballet blog… it fits for EVERY style of dance out there. 
(Put behind the cut to save the dashboards)

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Hells to the yes.

I’ve been belly dancing (regularly) for about six months now. I hear so many people say, “Oh, belly dancing? I bet that’s easy.” It’s not. It is fucking hard. I figure skated from the age of six until I was twelve— jumping and spinning on quarter-inch-thick pieces of metal with picks on the ends. Belly dancing is harder than that. It is more painful and, quite frankly, it’s one of the most difficult things that I do.

For anyone who thinks it’s easy or “not a sport”: Basically… fuck you. Yeah, “fuck you” is about right here.

For anyone who thinks that belly dancers are sluts or glorified strippers: Fuck you harder. It’s seriously very challenging and there is a lot of cultural and historical significance behind it, and it’s no sluttier than ballerinas or figure skaters who dance/skate around in short skirts and very tight tights.* Is belly dance sexy? Hell yes, it is. But we don’t dance for you— we dance because we enjoy it and because it’s empowering.

And… wow, sorry, this got a lot rantier than I meant it to. But this is something that really annoys me (okay, a couple of things.) If you ever consider saying something like this, stop for a second and consider if what you’re about to denigrate is something you could pick up in five minutes or so. If not, then smile, don’t say anything, and fucking congratulate the person who has worked very hard to make what they do look as easy as it seems, because I guaran-frakking-tee you it isn’t.

*I’m not bashing ballerinas or skaters— merely a comparison between what is considered “acceptable” and what isn’t.

I wasn’t even wanting to go into the sexual aspect of belly dance, because that is a rant that i’ve posted on before HERE regarding my frustrations when it comes to how people assume that all belly dance is is sexual.  It doesn’t help when some of the sister studios in my area perform at club and are pictured next to go-go dancers… talk about setting belly dancers BACK instead of forward..

ick..

*nods* I think it’s partly that people have difficulty separating sensuality from sexual availability. And it really doesn’t make sense— like I said, ballerinas are just as scantily clad (or more so) than belly dancers, and a lot of lifts in pairs figure skating involve the male skater lifting the woman from the crotch… but you don’t see the same sort of objectification that you do of belly dancers. And I’m guessing the common rebuttal is something to the effect of “if it bothers you, just do a different type of dance”, right? And that’s bullshit. It’s the attitudes that are the problem, not the dance.

I haven’t actually run up against this mentality in person (nowhere NEAR ready to perform, and it doesn’t come up much in conversation with people who don’t know me that well) but it’s only a matter of time.

That mentality is sadly why I don’t share that i am a belly dancer with the “common rabble”.. because i get the lewd private show jokes, and recently got a “joke” about letting a guy know when i did lap dances… Since i was at work when this person said something… and was an outside vendor… there wasn’t really much that i could do short of “laugh” along with him and curse him in my head and visualize stabbing him repeatedly with a rusty spoon.

Eeurgh… wow. I mean, however funny that guy may have thought it, that’s just rude, period.

I would have just been like…

“…really?”

(Also— fantastic use of “mentally challenged horse”. I was not expecting that.)

hahaha… i had just seen that episode a few days ago… and the image popped up into my head as i was typing the rant.

Believe me if i was in  ANY other venue besides work, i’d have ripped him a new one, but my professionalism won out in the end and i did the smart thing and kept my mouth shut.

I’ve never really been able to properly articulate this, but honestly, I think the main reason belly dancers are conflated with strippers has a lot to do with the fact that it is a dance that comes from another (rather reviled) culture. Ballet, figure skating, ballroom dancing and the like are considered western dances, so of course they can’t be sexual even when there are blatantly sexual aspects to those dances (lifts, etc). But because belly dance originates from ‘less advanced’ ‘brown’ people, there’s no way it can be as elevated the western dances in their minds. This is also probably why it isn’t considered to be as difficult as ballet and the like.

(Source: balletpages.blogspot.com, via roslinatreidesdance)