Four essentials for a dancer’s bookshelf, published in the last two years:  Belly dance around the world: New communities, performance and identity – The belly dance reader – Global moves – and You asked Aunt Rocky: Answers & advice about Raqs Sharqi & Raqs Shaabi.  Each book offers powerful ideas, analysis, and inspirations – and they’re available through Amazon!  I plan to update this post with a review of each book in the next few months!   Lynette, October 2013

Belly dance around the world: New communities, performance and identity

Edited by Caitlin E. McDonald & Barbara Sellers-Young. Here’s the blurb from the back cover:

Dancer/scholars from around the world have contributed essays on belly dance to this book. They all carefully consider the transformation of an improvised folk form from North Africa and the Middle East into a popular global dance practice. The essays explore the differences between the solo improvisational forms of North Africa and the Middle East, often referred to as raqs sharki, which are part of family celebrations, and the numerous globalized versions of this dance form, belly dance, derived from the movement vocabulary of North Africa and the Middle East but with a variety of performance styles distinct from its site of origin. Local versions of belly dance have grown and changed along with the role that dance plays in the community. The global evolution of belly dance is an inspiring example of the interplay of imagination, the internet and the social forces of local communities.

Yes, that’s me and Rahma on the cover!  I have contributed a chapter  “Performing identity/Diasporic encounters”, based on interviews with Arab women dancers.

 

 

An outstanding anthology of articles put together by Gilded Serpent, under the leadership of editor Lynette Harris.

 

 

 

Astonishing – Morocco has assembled a lifetime of philosophy, research, ideas, and advice about dance inside the covers of this book!

 

 

 

 

I’m looking forward to reading this book by Caitlin McDonald, ” a study of how dancers throughout the world use Egypt as a reference point for situating themselves within the global belly dance community and how Egypt gets romanticized and fantasized in global narratives about belly dance.”