Grandmother's Secrets:
The Ancient Rituals And Healing Power Of Belly Dancing

sold in the United Kingdom under the title:

Belly Dancing: the Art of Becoming a Woman

Title	Grandmother's Secrets: The Ancient Rituals & Healing Power Of Belly Dancing, sold in the United Kingdom as Belly Dancing: the Art of Becoming a Woman
Author	Rosina-Fawzia Al-Rawi
ISBN	156656302X
Publisher	Interlink Books
Category	Nonfiction: Middle Eastern Culture, History
Shira's Rating	(on a scale of 0 to 5)

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What It's About

This book is divided into four major parts.

The first part tells of the author's childhood memories from growing up in Iraq, with a focus on her grandmother and the other household women who raised her. This section offers a glimpse into the rhythm of an upper-class Middle Eastern household of a few decades ago. It is presented as a series of experiences between the child and the adults of her household, particularly her grandmother. Each anecdote is portrayed as a learning experience for young Fawzia.

The second part provides an overview of the history of women's dance. It starts with ancient times, and progresses to modern times. The focus is not limited solely to belly dancing--it covers "women's" dance, so it also discusses the evolution of historical European dance. The coverage of this topic is superficial, which makes sense considering that there is limited space to address a broad subject.

The third part starts at the top of the head and progresses through the body down to the toes, discussing ways to use each body part in the dance. Some of the movements described are actual belly dancing movements that would be familiar to experienced dancers, while others fall more into the category of body awareness exercises, and the book really doesn't identify which are which. The author's intent here is not to provide instruction on how to put together a belly dance performance to display in front of other people, but rather how to use this dance form for one's own personal wellness program. It offers exercises (both mental and physical) for bringing mind and body into harmony.

The final part talks about specific variations of the dance, such as using a cane as a prop, and rituals in which dance can play a part--menstruation, birth, and mourning, to name a few. In each case, the author explains the variation and then attaches her ritual meaning to it.

Its Good Points

I particularly enjoyed the first part of the book. The world it presents is very different from my experience growing up in the United States, and it handles the topic very well. The personal glimpses were fascinating, and it presented the anecdotes in a way that heightened my understanding and respect for the Iraqi culture. Beyond simply describing life in another culture, this book shares the wisdom that a matriarch has handed down to her family. One example:

Whenever I went down the stairs in our house I looked down to avoid falling. One day my grandmother was watching me. "Let your feet see for you," she told me. "They'll keep you from falling much better than your eyes! Feel with your toes until you find the edge and let your heels slide down the stair until they find the next one. Put yourself in your center, in the place below your navel, and keep your head high!"

That was fun, and I spent days going up and down the stairs like a queen. This is how I realized, with time, that my feet were "seeing" better and better. I felt my soles become more aware, my feet more sensitive and sensual. I came to trust them more and more, and my balance eventually settled in the lower part of my body.

The third and fourth parts would probably offer their strongest appeal to readers who would like suggestions on how to incorporate the dance into their personal growth. Readers who would like to integrate the dance into their spiritual practices will probably enjoy working with this section. The suggested exercises are geared to lead the dancer to positive body image, self-acceptance, and inner peace. I found these exercises to be rather intriguing, and I'll probably try exploring some of them.

This book was originally published in German. It was translated into English for the North America market. The translator has done an excellent job of producing a result that reads smoothly, with none of the awkwardness that some translations exhibit.

The photographs in the book were excellent. I wish there had been more!

Overall, the author comes across as someone who loves the dance, and has made a place for it in her day-to-day life. Her tone is warm and inviting, and she makes the reader want to share in the fulfillment that she herself has found in dancing.

On The Negative Side....

This is not a history book, although on the surface the reader might think it is.

In the third and fourth parts, the author ascribes ritual meanings to movements that do not match the actual history of how these dances came into being. For example, in Part Four, "The Veil Dance", the use of a veil in belly dancing is described as follows:

It's fun to shroud oneself, showing only the part of oneself that one wishes to expose. The veil lends the dance an element of mystery. Swung over the head or over one's shoulder, it seems to take in the space and extend one's aura. As the dancer's body melds with the veil, the sacred manifests itself. The individual disappears behind the archetype, the divine; the mystical and erotic become one.

In the veil dance, a woman dances the knowledge of the new living creature that can be born from her. She dances the eternal return of life; even without children, she dances this awareness of life that comes to her from the rhythms inside.

The above description is certainly more poetic than the mundane explanation that veil dancing as it is performed in Egypt today arose when a Russian dance teacher urged Samia Gamal to make her entrance holding a billowy piece of fabric as a way of helping her develop more graceful-looking arms. Yet the Russian dance teacher is historical fact. The "mystical and erotic" perspective is not. (For a correct historical perspective on the history of dancing with a veil, see The Veil And Oriental Dance by Elizabeth Artemis Mourat elsewhere on this web site.) Similar issues exist throughout the Third and Fourth parts of this book.

I wish the author would have included language indicating that her statements about the symbolism of various common dance variations and how to use them in ritual are her own ideas. I like the idea of exploring the ways the dance might fit into one's ritual, but it should be done in a way that differentiates between the writer's creative ideas and ethnic/historical fact. Because she didn't specify, I'm concerned that newcomers to the dance will read these sections and believe that they represent historically accurate descriptions of the origins of the dance--which they don't.