Belly Dance, Pilgrimage and Identity
This book examines the globalization of belly dance and the distinct dancing communities that have evolved from it. The history of belly dance has taken place within the global flow of sojourners, immigrants, entrepreneurs, and tourists from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century. In some cases, the dance is transferred to new communities within the gender normative structure of its original location in North Africa and the Middle East. Belly dance also has become part of popular culture’s Orientalist infused discourse. The consequence of this discourse has been a global revision of the solo dances of North Africa and the Middle East into new genres that are still part of the larger belly dance community but are distinct in form and meaning from the dance as practiced within communities in North Africa and the Middle East.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Sellers-Young is a Professor Emerita in the Department of Dance, York University, Toronto. Prior to this she was Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts at York University 2008-2013. From 1990 to 2008, she was a Professor at the University of California, Davis where she served as Chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance and as Executive Director of the Robert and Margit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts. She has also taught at universities in England, China and Australia and served on working groups for the arts in the United States and Canada.
Dr. Sellers-Young's research has been supported by fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, Social Science Research Council (Canada), and the Centre for Cultural Research into Risk at the Charles Sturt University (Australia) as well as a Davis Humanities Fellowship. Other research awards include a Pacific Rim Planning Grant and a Video Development Grant from the Teaching Resources Center and the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership. She is the recipient of the 2011 Dixie Durr Award for Outstanding Service to Dance Research and the 2008 Distinguished Alumni Award from the School of Music and Dance at the University of Oregon.
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