Title: Dancing Fear & Desire: Race, Sexuality & Imperial Politics in Middle Eastern Dance Author: Stavros Stavrou Karayanni Publisher: Wilfred Laurier University Press Publish Date: 2004 Pages: 244 Genres:: Non-Fiction, Gender Studies Reviewer: SexHerald Staff

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In Dancing Fear & Desire, Stavros Karyanni takes a penetrating look at dancing as a tool to express the pain of oppression and the fire of political rebellion as well as the colonial attitude towards tsifteteli (Greek belly dancing). He draws from his own childhood experiences of witnessing the Turks invade his native home, Cyprus, in the mid-1970s, and his attraction to tsifteteli. He writes of being deeply affected after hearing Mariza Koch sing a song of protest against the Turkish occupation at the Eurovision song contest in 1976.

Like all the arts, dance always has an objective and a message and can be a ritual masquerading as a spectacle. If the eyes are the window to the soul, then the dancing body is the soul’s messenger. Additionally, dance is not just movement but a valise that contains links to both the physical and emotional past of a culture.

Part academic paper, part autobiography—all compelling—Karyanni eloquently details belly dancing’s sultry appeal to Western cultures, and its ability to arouse deep physical desires within its audience even as that same audience expressed fear towards the object of its desire.. The watering down of the belly dance is also a subject of interest to Karayanni. Making a clear distinction between tsifteteli and Egyptian traditions of belly dance, which he categorizes as “Oriental” dance, Karyanni notes how performances of what is tagged indigenous traditional belly dance performances actually are not, but instead mixes of nontraditional moves from other countries.

This author distinguishes himself through writing that is both meticulous and passionate, freely revealing his own attraction to the eroticism and freedom he finds in performing belly dancing himself as a way to punctuate his written papers that he has delivered in front of audiences around the world from Belgrade to Australia. Karyanni’s love for belly dancing, which he refers to as the “kinesthetic experience,” was something he sought to hide as a child so as not to arouse homophobia, when in fact belly dancing throughout history has been performed by young boys dressed and made up to appear like virginal maidens whose mannerisms echoed the same. Belly dancing as viewed through some Western eyes was best and most enticingly performed by women, yet Karyanni quotes visiting foreign writers, like Flaubert, who found male dancers dressed up like women most attractive. Ironically, the very dancers and dances that tapped into homophobia ultimately promoted homophilia.

Dancing Fear & Desire is a fascinating fusion of sexuality, dance, and international politics and how cultures are united through desire even as they are separated by differences.