Pilaski, Rachael

The history and problematic Orientalist contexts of belly dance within the United States has been discussed previously in academia; my project is a more ethnographic approach than many of these previous works. This particular study focuses on belly dance communities in South Florida to understand how the dancers, students, and instructors appropriate and re-appropriate the praxis of belly dance to fit within their own personal contexts. Through this work we see how contemporary belly dancing both challenges and reinforces Orientalist perspectives. I used Edward Said‟s notions of Orientalism as an analytical framework to interpret information gathered from participant-observation sessions, interviews with informants, and text analysis. I found that Orientalism influenced the history of contemporary American belly dance and that current practices reflect this history and its Orientalist origins.