Anusha Mistry

The ‘danse du ventre’ (belly dance) was one of the primary attractions at the Paris exposition universelles: a hybrid dance adapted for an international audience, performed by professional female Arab dancers. It was also performed out of the exposition space in multiple guises: often either Arab dancers performing in an exposition style, or white, European cabaret dancers who appropriated then integrated the ‘danse du ventre’ into their own repertoires. This project draws on a diverse range of sources: ephemera, photography, early film, articles and illustrations, architectural plans, posters and moving postcards in order to examine the practise of exotic dance performers. The performance spaces of: the Arab street, the Arab café-concert and the theatre are also essential to understanding the shows. Overall, the paper seeks to interrogate: if and how the dancers were orientalised, how the performance environment built or deconstructed the experience of the ‘other’, and it seeks to appreciate the significant and lasting contribution that Arab dancers of multiple ethnicities made to dance and entertainment industries in Paris.

The controlled, rhythmic and hypnotic movements of the abdomen astonished audiences who were used to seeing the torso being kept straight and rigid in a corset. Undulating, mobile hips intrigued spectators who were used to appreciating the dancers' jumping legs in cancan or ballet. The first chapter, ‘Performance’, focuses on the embodied aspects of Arab-style dance performances. From textual accounts and visual ephemera we can ascertain what the Arab-style dance choreographies were like and how they were understood. The chapter is contingent on the accentuated body parts: the abdomen and pelvis, and their relationship to costume and choreography. Acts of imitation on the part of audience members and fellow dancers make the major theme of exoticism ambiguous and dancer-audience relations remain foregrounded in order to probe the power relations at play.

The performance environment was vital in shaping the experience of the dances and establishing the parameters within which the idea of the Arab world was imagined in Paris. The second chapter, ‘Staging’, acknowledges how in the 1889 and 1900 expositions, panoramas, dioramas and cineoramas all simulated travel to foreign lands. The Arab street was an attraction that went beyond this: a temporary road was built that was modelled on parts of medieval Cairo, containing café-concerts where one could watch Arab-style dancing. The Arab street offered the visitor a multi-sensorial, embodied, participatory experience. Incredibly successful and abundantly commented on, photographed and illustrated, it was used as a model for future world fair projects and was intimately connected to the idea of the ‘belly dancer’ and, by extension, the idea of the Orient.

The third chapter, ‘The City’, hinges on the idea that the processes of exoticism in Arab-style dance performances relied on ‘transplantation’ to be successful: a medium’s foreign-ness was at once conserved and inserted into a new environment. It examines how by the end of the century, ‘oriental’ dancing and particularly ‘belly dance’ performances had forged their own place within the Parisian entertainment system. The café-concert was the primary environment for Arab dance spectacles. The design history approach enables us to understand how oriental themes were applied to urban café-concerts that were otherwise understood as typically ‘French’. This hybrid performance environment was one important factor among many that facilitated the integration of a travelling, foreign dance style into popular entertainment systems. It in turn explains why the idea of Arab culture was understood primarily within the context of theatrical productions.

Design history helps us to appreciate the sensorial experience, the ambulatory experience and the gaze, enabling a richer reading into the urban colonial dynamic ‘at home’ in Paris. The definition and reinforcement of ‘oriental’ dance and settings were local and specific to the city. Arab-style exotic dance shows excited the imagination and provided spectators with a framework of references that at once connoted a fantasy, faraway land, and signalled the new urban, modern life of a ‘progressive’ metropolis.