Sorry,
this is going to be long. I have a lot to say. 

If there’s anything positive coming out of
post-revolutionary Egypt, it is the new belly dance channel, “El-Tet.”  Based in Bahrain with an office in Cairo,
El-Tet features performances by Egyptian and foreign belly dancers 24 hours a
day. That’s right. Shimmies and undulations around the clock on national Egyptian
TV. The channel, which is a little over a year old, takes its name from the Egyptian
Arabic word for the accordion/tabla section of a baladi piece. It is actually
pronounced “tit,” but for obvious reasons, you’ll almost always see it
transliterated as “El-Tet.”  Short “e,”
not “i.”

I first encountered the new channel last
December, when some of my musicians insisted they had seen me dancing on TV. I hadn’t
heard of the channel before, and I had no idea why they were saying this,
although I found the idea of a channel named “The Tit” quite hilarious. So, I assumed
they probably saw another dancer who resembled me. I was right. My tabla player showed me the clip of the
dancer in question, and sure enough, it wasn’t me. I don’t know how he confused
us, but then again, Egyptians tend to think all of us foreigners look alike.

That night, I went home and tuned in to
El-Tet. It felt weird watching so many non-Egyptian dancers, a lot of whom I
know, dancing on my Egyptian TV set. From the US, I recognized Sadie, Sabah,
and Virginia. I saw Saida from Argentina. From Eastern Europe, I saw Maria
Shashkova, Dariya, and a bunch of other Russian and Ukrainian dancers I had
never heard of.  Huh. How did that work?
Were they YouTube clips? Did dancers outside of Egypt know about the channel
and submit their videos? Why weren’t any of the foreign dancers working in
Egypt featured? Most importantly, I wondered, where were the Egyptian
dancers? 

Suddenly, as if to answer that last
question, the channel aired a series of performances by Egyptian belly dancers.
No big names or anything. Just average dancers on the market. Out of the five
Egyptians featured on El-Tet, I knew one and liked two. Their performances were
nothing extraordinary, but I was happy to see them on the channel. Unlike the foreigners,
they were filmed on location by the channel production team. The first time
around, the team rented out some space and hired a band. Only, the band didn’t
actually play. The musicians merely took their places behind the dancers, pretending
to play while the dancers performed to CD. Sort of like lip syncing. Each dancer
shot three or four clips—one or two alongside a singer, and two or three by
herself. Most of the songs they danced to were newer shaabi songs that you hear in cabarets and tuk-tuks—you know, those tiny, black, box-looking vehicles that buzz
around Cairo’s streets. And the dancing was more Haram cabaret-style dancing
than raqs shaqi, but oh well. Tis the
state of the art. 

Commercial Controversy

After watching El-Tet for two days, I started
taking note of the commercials. Interestingly, these commercials became the
pretext for the arrest of the channel’s owner of last week (he has been
released by the way). These are in-your-face, obnoxious, homemade commercials
that almost exclusively advertise all types of products for sexual enhancement,
penile and breast enlargement, and magic potions for this or that problem. The
commercial for erectile dysfunction is my personal favorite. It features the
before and after pictures of a man with a long, drooping mustache glued down
with gel. The after picture shows the mustache flipping directions and steadily
rising upward. Subtle, huh? There are also ads for lie detectors and X-Ray cameras
(both of which I’d love to buy).   

All kidding aside, the ads are in poor
taste. I mean, maybe if they were a little more subtle and professionally done,
they would be acceptable. But when combined with the personals that scroll at
the bottom of the screen during dancers’ performances, they become a little revolting.
Not to mention, they give the channel and
the dance an undeserved negative image.

Great. I said what needed to be said. I
echoed the sentiments of many belly dancers around the world who think the
channel is sleazy, and who were happy the owner was arrested for airing these
commercials. Now hear me out on why I support, or rather, why I’m willing to
overlook the existence of these ads.

Simply put, El-Tet is faced with the
option of accepting ads for sexual products, on the one hand, or shutting down,
on the other. In my not-so-humble opinion, keeping the channel running on
sleazy ads is the lesser of the two evils. Not only is this channel bringing
the dance back to the people, but it is an advancement for the art, the culture,
and women. Conversely, this channel represents a slap in the face for religious
fanaticism, misogyny, ignorance, and hate. I therefore applaud the channel
owner for bucking against the tide of religious fanaticism that is taking the
country by storm.

As anyone in the media industry knows, ads
are an indispensable source of funding. No ads, no money. No money, no media
outlet. Right now, these ads are the only source of revenue available to the fledgling
belly dance channel. Since belly dancing is tantamount to prostitution in
Egypt, no respectable companies are willing to advertise on a channel that
features belly dancing. No mobile phone or furniture company in its right mind
would pay to have their products associated with belly dancing. To make matters
worse, El-Tet does not take money from any of its artists. Even if it did, it
would not be enough to sustain the channel. The owner is thus forced to accept
these ads in order to keep his channel alive. Personally, I’m willing to
forgive that. Since the channel does more good than harm, we might consider
accepting that at this point and time in history, it needs to operate under
less than ideal circumstances. 

Culture War?

More importantly, however, I see the
El-Tet incident as the latest in a larger culture war that is raging in Egypt. Since
the fall of former President Hosni Mubarak, religious fanatics have attacked Egyptian
culture in ways that Egypt has never seen before. They are challenging
everything from belly dancing to cinema to Pharaonic culture. Not even the
Sphinx is immune to this! (link).  Indeed,
before the arrest of El-Tet’s owner, famous Egyptian actor Adel Imam was facing
a prison sentence for blasphemy. Additionally, the beard mafia physically
assaulted cinema students at Ain Shems University for staging a reenactment of
the Sadat years. Many cabarets have either been burnt down and bought out by
religious groups, or closed for lack of business. And hotels like the Grand
Hyatt and Mena House have cancelled their belly dance shows altogether. You can
read more about this kind of stuff here.  

Similarly, last week’s arrest was an
attack on the belly dancing and on women. Though the owner was arrested on
charges of “facilitating prostitution” (because of the personals ads that scroll
on the bottom of the dance clips), the real “problem” is that there are half-naked
women gyrating on national TV. And we all know how religious people feel about
that. Viewers did complain about the ads, yes, but that merely gave the
authorities a weapon with which to attack the channel. This becomes clear in
light of the fact that Egypt already has a TV station broadcasting personals
around the clock, and that the morality police have not made a fuss about it.
This is probably because those ads only contain text, which not everyone can
read. But mostly everyone can see. Hence the problem with the belly dance
channel. I’m willing to bet most viewers are too busy watching the dancers to
even notice the scrolling ads. 

Lest you think I’m defending the channel
because I did some video shoots for it, rest assured there is no self-interest
here whatsoever. Even before I was invited to dance for the channel, I realized
what a major advancement it was for the dance, and more importantly, for Egypt.
If anything, my collaboration with El-Tet has given me a rare opportunity to
really get to know its production team and its intentions, which I believe are
nothing but the best. 

My Experience with El-Tet

Contrary to what I expected, every person
working on this production is decent and respectable.  There are no slime balls, as one has become
accustomed to encountering in the Egyptian dance industry. From the channel owner
himself to the producers and makeup artists, each person is committed to promoting
belly dance as an art. What is even more remarkable is that they spend
thousands of dollars to make sure the videos they shoot are both pleasing and
respectable. If you take a look at the videos, you’ll see they are filmed in
beautiful villas replete with fireplaces, tasteful furniture, clocks, confetti(!),
etc. They are trying their best to create a positive image.

Working with the team was a pleasure. Both
of the times I was invited to film, I showed up on location with my costumes. The
production team would then sift through them and pick the ones they liked best.
They were especially intrigued by my newspaper costume and asked me to wear it. 

I didn’t know what to expect from the
first shoot. I arrived at the villa at 10 am, hungry and tired… and downed one
too many Nescafes while waiting to have my makeup done. There were four other dancers
in the villas well. Egyptians. Two were being filmed. The two other were doing
hair and makeup. After quite a long wait, it was my turn for makeup. However, the
makeup and hair artists were under strict orders to keep me looking “foreign.” That
meant white foundation, no black eyeliner, no heavy eye shadow, nude lipstick,
and pin straight hair. The only thing Egyptian about me was my eyebrows. You
know, those V-shaped, angry eyebrows that are the hallmark of Egyptian makeup
artistry. 

When I asked the makeup artist to put black
eyeliner on me, he jokingly not jokingly responded that eyeliner is for
prostitutes. And when I suggested he make me look a little exotic, he replied that
I was already exotic. Well, to Egyptians I was. To me, I just didn’t recognize
myself. Nor did I feel like a belly dancer. But I let it go. Perhaps they saw
something I didn’t. 

Shortly after, a young man approached me
with a tray full of glitter in one hand, and red lipstick in the other. He glittered
my entire body—arms, legs, tummy, chest, and all—with his bare hands. He then smudged
the lipstick on my knee caps, cleavage, and armpits! That was the first time I
ever let a strange Egyptian man put his hands on me. I wouldn’t give it a
second thought in the US, but here, things are different. Strangely enough, he
was fast and professional, and did not make it awkward.

Then it was time to film. The production
team wanted me to dance in some narrow corridor, declaring it would look great
on screen. And it did, except that I had no room to do traveling movements or
stretch my arms. I felt like Jeanie in a bottle. AND, I somehow used a veil for
my entrance to Set il-Hosen. Other than my arms looking all scrunched
and some major glitches in the editing, I was pleased with the final
product. 

The next clip I shot was with singer Ahmed
Salah. Ahmed is a popular shaabi
singer on the nightclub circuit who looks a little like Baha Sultan. He sang a
cute song called Salamtak ya Dimaghi, which
loosely translates as “Bye-bye, my brain.” The idea of the song is that he
loses his mind every time he sees the girl he likes. This was a really fun video
to shoot, primarily because there were a lot of bloopers. The best was when the
huge Styrofoam prop wall fell over on Ahmed’s head while he was singing. Neither
of us could stop laughing for the remainder of the shoot.

The last clip I shot that day was to Safa
Farid’s version of Esmaooni. I wore a
teal sequined leopard print costume for that shoot. By this point in the
evening, I was exhausted, starving, and irritable. I wanted nothing more than
to go home. And I would have, except I didn’t want to be rude and walk away
after I had promised them three clips. So, I did a run-through of Esmaooni, fully aware that I was not
producing my best work, and not really caring. Ironically, Esmaooni became the most popular clip on the whole channel,
receiving more call-in and online votes than any other clip since the channel
started. Ever since, whenever I’m dancing at weddings and birthday parties,
Egyptians in the audience chant the word esmaooni
over and over until I indulge them and dance to it. 

For all the negatives people have pointed
out, El-Tet does more good than harm. Here’s why.

First and most important, it is bringing belly
dance back to the people. Thanks to El-Tet, anyone can turn on their TV and
delight themselves to a belly dance performance. Before the channel came into existence,
many Egyptians did not have access to belly dancing shows. This is because the
prices for attending a belly dance performance are so expensive that most
Egyptians cannot afford them. So in a way, belly dance has almost become an
elite form of entertainment for the rich and for other foreign belly dancers. El-Tet
changed that overnight. It has allowed Egyptians to access this part of their culture
again. And Egyptians are taking it seriously. I hear them having intelligent
conversations about the dance. They discuss who their favorite dancers are, and
what they think about the costumes, music selection, etc. In short, people are
getting excited about the dance, which is a good thing all around.

Second (and needless to say), El-Tet is a
step in the right direction for women, secularism, and art. I don’t have to say
anything else about that.

Third, televised belly dance is fostering
a healthy spirit of competition amongst dancers. I’ll explain what I mean by
this. Generally, there are two ways to deal with competition. One way is to
harm your competition by destroying their reputation and/or personal items.
This is what normally goes on here. The second way is to outshine your
competition—observe their performance and try to do better. This is what El-Tet
is encouraging, albeit unknowingly. Dancers are now exposed to each other on
the screen. They are observing each other’s moves, costumes, looks, and music
selection, and are striving to outdo each other for the next video shoot. This
is a positive thing. Trust me. It is
motivating dancers to improve their dancing by observing others and creating
new content. Eventually, this will lead to a major improvement in the overall
level of dancing here.

El-Tet is also allowing a whole new generation
of dancers to gain exposure. Before this channel, Egyptians only knew of Dina. Now
they are hiring other dancers, including myself, for their parties. This is
great. There are a lot of dancers who need the work, and a few who are real
star material. Assuming religious extremists do not destroy the dance, this
channel is priming a new generation of stars who will actually be known to the
Egyptian public the way that Samia Gamal, Fifi Abdo, Soheir Zaki, and Nagwa Fouad
were.

Personally speaking, I have benefitted
from dancing on the channel. Publicity is always a good thing, and I have been
more in demand because of it. I also like hearing and reading Egyptians’
comments about my dancing.

Don’t get me wrong. Just the thought of dancing
on Egyptian national TV is nerve wracking. It means that everyone is watching
me. Everyone. Men, women, young, old,
religious fanatics, other dancers, agents, producers. That is a lot of
pressure. And I am not too happy about landlords and neighbors watching this
channel—I could (and have) been evicted for being a belly dancer. I’m also not too
sure how I feel when random people on the street sing the songs I danced to. I
mean, I’m so used to being “undercover,” and then these people blow my cover. It
is nice knowing that people recognize me though. 

I have also been criticized for appearing
on the channel. Some have said that the level of dancing on the channel was
rather low (and low class) and that I would ruin myself by appearing on
it.  Others said people would become overexposed
to me, which would lessen my appeal. Still others suggested I would be exposed
to a whole lot of unwanted harassment and criticism. I considered all of the
above before agreeing to be filmed, but in the end, I decided to work with the
channel.  You only live once. Plus, I’m a
sucker for new experiences, even if they are not always good.  This experience, however, turned out to be
more than good. I’m so happy I took them up on their offer to be videotaped. If
nothing else, this has inspired me to write the longest blog post in history!