Diary of a dancer

I have been a professional Middle Eastern dancer, or as it is called in the West, Belly Dancer, for ten years. I photographed this collection of images during a period of three years, in which I performed mostly around New York City’s five boroughs, their vicinity and parts of New Jersey. I traveled to shows with a married couple, Israelis like myself, who were my agents, Ohr and Amir. They are musicians and designers, so we were a small tightly knit creative team, spending many hours together on the road. We sometimes did as many as six or seven shows an evening, each in a different location and for a different kind of audience.

It wasn’t easy to photograph this project. Often I was the ‘surprise’ of the evening, and I had to hide all dressed up in a restroom for quite a while. Then after the show was over, we had to run to the next one. In a way, then, these photographs are a series of fleeting glimpses, the way I actually experienced this journey. I never stayed too long in one place, never got to know the people well. I was always on the move, amazed and fascinated by what I saw, but without time to ponder it. Here my look at things, in contrast to my earlier work on my family, was brief. With my family the camera's eye was intimate and informed. I had the time and leisure to bring out things I know don't meet the eye at first glance. In this project I saw a lot in short periods of time. Short but intense. And when I was actually dancing even more so. You feel things differently, you feel time differently, when you’re there at the center of things, performing, entertaining, moving: you are both more and less aware of your surroundings, both more and less concentrated on yourself. Your consciousness itself is a magnifying distorting lens: there are things you see better, more acutely, and there are many things you miss.

I started to photograph the people I performed for in different communities, the other dancers and myself, before and after the show. I wanted to photograph myself while dancing too, and I knew which moments I wanted to capture. With this I needed a great deal of help. I needed the skills of a photographer combined with an intimate acquaintance with me, and with a way that I, as a photographer, tend to see things. I needed, in short, someone who knows me very well. That was when Eran, my husband, came to my help. Some of the photographs in this collection are a collaboration between us, a few of them are Eran’s own take on the situation, his own work.

When I started this project, I used my 35 mm Nikon camera. But soon I felt that something was missing; this world was wider in my mind, the many different people, the big halls, the different situations, demanded a different format. I began using a panoramic camera: the frame was less tightly composed, less controlled, encompassed some of the disorderly, carnivalesque, ephemeral, haphazard feeling. It took in much with far less stringent demands for order. There was something loose, more spontaneous about these wider frames. Since I felt I needed both ways of seeing, I ended up using both cameras.

There are many contrasts in this work, and they too stem from the way I experienced the project. The contrast between me and myself, Elinor the day time photographer and the night time belly dancer; The contrast between glamour and dullness; The contrast between the different population groups, the different neighborhoods, the different night clubs and halls, the different kinds of events. I danced for Americans, Greeks, Indians, Bukharans, Punjabis, Turkish, Chinese and Gypsy communities. I danced in fancy restaurants for celebrities, in middle-class family events, in sleazy bars, or for men gathered in poor-house basements. There was also a contrast between belonging, giving myself to people, being among them, and being lonely before and after the show. When dancing, I often felt an extreme closeness and love for the audience, easily forgiving anything rude they might have done or said, accepting them just as they are. This is not just benevolence. It is also exhilaration, the high of being at the center of everyone's attention, the object of desire, even of longing. But before and after the show I was completely and utterly by myself, a stranger. Before the show I needed this feeling. I needed to be by myself, I needed to be lonely, isolated, so I could get myself to the point were I craved the enthusiasm and warmth. Without this thirst, I couldn’t want to give as much.

I, know, of course, that this dance is by its very essence sensual and flirtatious. I practice it that way myself. Not only towards men, but towards everyone around. In those moments of flirtatiousness, I can feel connected in an odd yet intense way, both physically and emotionally. In such moments I am grateful that the ancient essence of this 5000 years old dance – dancing not only to the people, but also with the people – was kept alive. There was a price this dance, as an art form, paid for this. It remained a popular art and was never elevated to the more respected status of ‘real’ art as did, say, Flamenco and Ballet: of necessity, it includes amateurs – the audience – in it. With all the benefits that would have come from elevation to the status of ‘serious’ art, the sort of thing we see in museums or on stage, I think Middle Eastern dancing would have lost much of its uniqueness, its elementariness, if it was taken out of these halls, those family gatherings, those popular, accessible, at times shabby, places of entertainment. So there is a tension here between the dance’s beauty, grace and technical sophistication, and the fact that it thrives on its off-stage settings. It is not just choreographically complicated, it is also direct, sexual, warm, alive. More than that, it is, in its own way, truly intimate. It could not be all that if it wasn't preformed in ordinary settings, among, rather than in front of, audiences. This is, in fact, what I personally like so much about it. The mixing with the people, dancing in living rooms, being surrounded by families, grandparents and children at once, the smell of the food and the messiness of real life, the very things art-on-stage distances you from.
Being an immigrant myself and away from my own family, missing the warmth and intensity of family gatherings, this mixing with other families was also a kind of substitute. Of course, it’s not the same, and sometimes even the illusion of belonging is not there. Sometimes, when there isn't good chemistry, when no real connection sparks up, I feel like I'm looking at things from the outside, like the stranger that, in truth, I am. When I feel that way I can’t really open up, and the magic of the dance is lost.

There are also other sides to this work. There is something addictive about the feeling of power and control. To be sure, it is a skill you need. After a few minutes of dancing, you need to learn to map the room so you can work it: recognizing the ‘weak' points, the people that will help me direct the right energy, the people that should be left alone, and the ones that could ‘cause problems.’ The managing of the crowd is crucial in this profession. If the dancer 'loses' the room, no matter how amazing the dance itself, it can't be counted on to save her. The way to make it work is different from one audience to another, I felt like a chameleon, adjusting myself to who I was dancing for. For some I needed to be the shy introverted princess in order to open them up, for some – the proud erect classic dancer, and for others I had to dance wildly on tables, slapping a man mischievously or kissing a grandmother, who in between, offered me a bite to eat as I danced. But it's not just a skill in the technical sense. The feeling is also intoxicating: being at the center of it all, holding the attention, molding the feel of a whole room. When you take the room, it's a real high. Along with all the other emotions and exchanges – giving and getting, being loved and loving, desiring and being desired – you can easily get addicted. I know that for me, it became a kind of drug. I needed it.

But this too was not all the attraction of this work for me. What drew me so powerfully to those places would not be sufficiently explained without the rare, strange, skewed, yet penetrating way this work allowed me to peek into other people’s lives. So curiosity and voyeurism have much to do with all this. Perhaps, I should add, there is also the marveling at how natural plain empathy could be, how it can sometimes, if not always, easily extend from curiosity. These occasions were usually happy events, and it is surprisingly simple how in a 30 minute glimpse – a wedding, a child’s birthday, or a celebration of reunion – emotions are contagious. You actually feel the sheer joys of other people, sometimes even recognize their hidden pains or their bitterness. It is not so much the content of the emotions but the facility of sharing them, however briefly, that endlessly fascinated me. More than that, it helped me sustain an optimism which I can’t exactly put into words, but which, I hope, I managed to catch, however fleetingly, on film.

Elinor Carucci