Demeter's Passenger: Tribal Fusion Male Zenne Belly Dancers By Laura A. Munteanu

I recently encountered a cultural dance form that I found both challenging and with further study hypnotically beautiful. In America, this cultural presentation is a form of dance going under the label of Tribal Fusion, but a simpler description would be costumed male belly dance.

Photo: Horus Mozarabe, Tribal Fusion belly dancer

As a Romanian commentator, the Roma and Sinti part of my heritage responds to the romantic and exotic notions of the Lebanese, Turkish, Roma and Egyptian belly dance, particularly the athletic, the aesthetic and the sexual presentation of the performer's body framed by the costuming, accessories and escalating rhythms of the music. Whilst it is a popular misconception that belly dancing originated as the advertising foreplay of prostitution, the personal domestic and public presentations of belly dancing clearly, all involve a celebratory dynamic of sexual display.

Photo: Zadiel, Zenne belly dancer

The transpositions of the dance moves and the costumes to male performers appears on surface to be simply an extension of gay subcultures appropriation and mainstream dance culture, like vogueing. However, on closer inspection, despite Tribal Fusion's relatively recent origins in 1960s Californian Renaissance Fairs, seems to be much older and more complicated.

Middle Eastern countries are not noted for their tolerance of homosexual culture. Yet, in Ottoman Turkey, particularly under the Ataturk period, male belly dancers were as common as female ones, if not slightly more prevalent. It appears, that the zenne dancer, a man who dressed as a woman, and danced for the titillation of predominantly male crowds has a long and complex cultural tradition, which nearly died out by the 1960s. Whilst not exactly inhabiting gay culture as we understand it, zenne dancing appears to inhabit a submissive niche for a dominant, penetrative elite. Whereas neither parts would describe themselves as homosexual, the zenne dancer performed a feminine role, which by definition of the Ataturk culture was a submissive and titillating role.

In recent years, as a result of Caner Alper and Mehmet Binay's Turkish film "Zenne Dancer", on one hand, and american Tribal Fusion on the other, male belly dancing has undergone a cultural renaissance. In the face of religious fundamentalism in the region it appears to have shed its submissive dynamic, and it's now being performed as an assertive and defiant act by citizens, using it as a means of personal aesthetic and celebratory self esteem.

Interestingly, just to add cultural confusion it's an aesthetic form which is now embraced by the heterosexual community, as well as the homosexual community. And its resurgence it's possibly responsible for other similar displays in parallel art forms, such as the Bulgarian performer Azis, who's pop diva, lady-man performances have found inexplicable commercial success, in traditionally homophobic Bulgaria.

Coming from a culture with a strong tradition of community dance, and living now in a culture with a more inhibited sense of dance I find the mutations evident in Tribal Fusion utterly fascinating. And I leave you the following links to make your own mind up, to introduce you to this cultural form of expression.