Rachel Brice Fan Page

Among the Bellydance Superstars, your style is a lot slower, deeper. Do some people have a problem with that?

Yeah, a lot of people don't feel that it's bellydance. But that's OK. If people need to fiercely defend the tradition of the art form, that's OK. People like to talk about what's Tribal and what's not, what's bellydance and what's not. But when you study dance ethnology, and you see where the intersections are, they're fuzzy. Everything is influenced by everything else, especially when you follow the Gypsies that start in one place and travel around, just picking things up and throwing things out. There is no "pure dance," really. So it's given me a lot of tolerance.

Why do you think bellydance is experiencing such a boom right now?

It's just time, I think. It's a great time for women right now, because in many parts of the world, women are given complete freedom to express themselves. It's a time too for women's sexuality and sensuality to be embraced, and it has been. Women are being given an element of freedom they've never been given before, and a chance to explore who they are. This is one of the first times a dance like this can be considered art and not stigmatized.

Do you find it ironic that in much of the Middle East, the dance can't be performed?

Oh, yeah. But it's probably one of the reasons that it is blooming everywhere else. People love anything with a taste of illegality. In the U.S., most people respond to bellydance but have no idea that it's Middle Eastern; a lot of them think it's from India. So people always ask where it's from, and I love telling them.

For the uninitiated, what's the difference between Tribal and Cabaret styles?

Cabaret . . . it's very, very flirtatious, cute, hands-in-the-hair style. First, in America [back in the 1950s/'60s], there was the whole Hollywoodization of Arabic culture, sort of glamorizing and Orientalizing the whole thing. "I Dream of Jeannie," super-sparkly evening gowns with the belly cut-out, or whatever.

Tribal Fusion is an interpretation of American Tribal Style, started by [dance teacher] Carolina Nericcio. It changed the posture and what it was communicating -- it displays power: shoulders back, chest up, elbows forward. And it brought in a lot of the more rural music of North Africa and India -- the Gypsy element of the deal, rather than the Hollywood element. And Carolina's whole posture and arm cycles, it's all very flamenco. American Tribal style is improvisation, but it's based on a set of movements, maybe 25 or so, that are done with three or more dancers, sometimes two, but generally more. And the improv is based on cues and transitions that are very specific.

What do you say to people who say, "Japanese don't have the body for bellydance?"

People told me that for years! "You can't bellydance, you don't have a belly." "You're too skinny, too Jewish!" (Laughs) If people find something that moves them, and practice till where it doesn't look human anymore, to me that's all it takes. It doesn't have to look like Turkish bellydance. A lot of people say Tribal isn't bellydance, and that's fine. Call it whatever you want. You just have to know that you like it. If you like it, it's all good.

It'll be interesting to see how Japan takes on bellydance and makes it its own. Because the body type is very different, and it's going to look totally different, but it'll settle in and become something of its own.