hadi, hadi (with a flick of the hip)

I don't know if taking belly dancing lessons in one of the art form's countries of origin is any more authentic than the cardio belly sculpting class I once took at LA fitness, but what the hell. I'm going to do it anyway.

I googled "belly dancing Istanbul" and came up with a page of women in gauche costumes catering to Western fantasies and idealizations of the East.(Cue Edward Said)

As far as I know, the quintessential tableau of an exotic belly dancer in a smokey, dimly lit tavern adorned with colorful tapestries, romantic candle-lit lanterns and enthralled men does not exist. A voluptuous, mysterious woman emerging from some incense-heavy corner to tempt men with her exotic eyes seems like something out of a bad 70's porno. The closest I've come to uncovering the belly dancing mystique was seeing exotic dancers dressed in Santa mini-skirts at a club on New Year's, or the tacky belly dancing costumes with faux gold coins hanging from furry bra tops sold at the bazaars, clubs for tourists playing off of some ancient riff about Oriental spice roads and Ottoman Sultan's harems. Its just so hard to hold onto the mis-en-sen of the past when you're a country trying so hard shed misconceptions and rightfully stake your claim in coordinates of time and space: 21st Century, The Industrialized Western world.

Basically, I put the belly dance right up there with people who think Turkey is accurately represented in Oriental Express and everyone wearing fezzes.

If anything, the culture I live on a daily basis - the culture I will take away and remember when I leave - is one overcrowded streets and over attentive waiters, political propaganda trucks blaring recorded messages and live phone calls to constituents through the streets at all hours, stuffed buses where covered women more often garner scorn than exude mystique, taxi drivers who find my attempt at Turkish cute and endearing, conflicts between secularism and democracy, men who stare not necessarily out of or overt sexual desire but merely out of curiosity, because everything is everyone's business. That doesn't sound very romantic, exotic, cultured, or even like very much fun. It sounds like real life.

Yes, Istanbul is rife with history, but much of it is muted, hidden or downright rejected. Besides, I live here in the present day, and that's what matters.
I was drawn to belly dancing for the same reasons I enjoyed burlesque; it is subtle, subdued, and much more appealing in an MTV world of overt sexuality and public displays of physicality. But perhaps the other doesn’t exist. We are always copying each other, until we can no longer recognize the original.