The Orient was almost a European invention, and had been since antiquity a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences. (Said 1978,1)

The past century has witnessed the phenomenon of belly dancing becoming a key icon of the Middle East in the West. This iconic representation often causes outrage, resentment, and even protest among Arabs who resent Westerners (mis)representing them by focusing on cabaret-style belly dance, a low-class and disreputable symbol for many in the Arab world, as a primary media image of the Middle East. Since the 1970s, millions of women and some men in the West have been attracted to belly dancing, investing millions of dollars and enormous time acquiring the basic skill of the dance in order to perform it. This essay will address several issues that are raised by the phenomenon of belly dancing and its transformation, globalization, and acculturation in the West; it is designed to develop a newly emerging area of performance/cultural research, drawing from the fields of dance and transnational studies.

This essay looks at the works of Selma Selim Sırrı (b. 1906) and her father Selim Sırrı Tarcan (1874–1956), who wrote on dance in the 1920s, a period that marked the transition from the Ottoman Empire to modern Turkey. The Ottoman Empire ruled across the Mediterranean world between the thirteenth and twentieth centuries, collapsing after World War I. The Republic of Turkey was declared in 1923, distancing itself from the Ottoman tradition to adopt a westernization reform program. Written in the early Republican era, the works of Selma Selim Sırrı and Selim Sırrı Tarcan mark the shift from Ottoman dance traditions to a more Western approach to dance. Inspired by Isadora Duncan, Selma Selim Sırrı (1926) explored the idea of modern dance for Ottoman women in a booklet entitled Selma Selim Sırrı Hanım'ın Bedii Raksları (The Aesthetic Dances of Miss Selma Selim Sırrı, see Fig. 1). Her father was the author of Halk Dansları ve Tarcan Zeybeği (Folk Dances and the Tarcan Zeybek, see Fig. 2), a book that focused on the process of refining folk dances, in particular the zeybek genre, to suit the tastes of an educated, urban audience.

Israel is a society of Jewish immigrants who have returned to their ancient biblical homeland. It is also a complex society made up of people of varied cultures and ideologies, enduring changing economic and political situations. For the past eighty years, Israeli dancers have reflected and helped to shape the internal dialogues of Israeli life and contributed to a global exchange of dance ideas, especially with modern dancers from Europe and America.

The independence of ancient Israel came to an end in C.E. 73, when Romans destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem after fierce battles with the Jews. The great revolt against Roman rule (132–135) failed, and in its wake the Romans banished the Jews from their country. Thus began a two-thousand-year exile, during which the Jews in the diaspora preserved their religion, suffered anti-Semitic persecutions, and dreamed of returning to their land, to Eretz Israel—Zion.

When Vertigo, an Israeli dance company, performed in collaboration with the English Ricochet dancers, there was one dance on the stage—one choreography—but the audience saw two different modes of movement. The English dancers were learned, elegant, arms and feet drawing long lines in space, the feet articulate. The Israelis danced with a powerful thrust, extremities loose, with total commitment and daring, their movements leaving in space traces of explosions too fast to recollect rather than spirals of continuity. How did this mode of movement develop? What is “Israeli” about Israeli dance?

In this essay I offer a brief history of concert dance in Israel, then a largely descriptive account of choreographic and motional themes that distinguish contemporary Israeli dance. My descriptions of works by contemporary Israeli choreographers Jasmine Goder, Ronit Ziv, Anat Danielli, Shlomi Bitton, and Noa Dar are drawn mostly from observation of performances held during yearly Curtain Up festivals at the Suzanne Dellal Center for Dance and Theater in Tel Aviv. I also discuss works by Inbal Pinto, Rami Be'er, Nir Ben-Gal and Liât Dror, and finally, Ohad Naharin, artistic director and choreographer of the Batsheva Dance Company.