Geee... this is the so called (from my American dancer colleagues) the Infamous Book...
In June 2001 I was in Istanbul, just over with the visit of Yerebatan Saraji, when -still there in the underground- I heard bellydance music coming out of a tourist shop.
As you can imagine I fastly located the place and entered.
And among the other things, music and books, my eyes fell on the infamous book I had heard of on the bdancer med-list.
Now let's see why infamous, or why not infamous, or why both.
Let me say that -beyond the browsing of the many photos- I enjoyed to read the text too. Although far from the completeness and pathos of other books, it makes a good drawback of the dance, specifically upon Turkey.
The book starts with the folk and religious aspects of the dance, examines some interesting historical aspect, like the Chengis and the Kochecks (the dancing female-boys), to turn then to the origins of modern belly dance in Turkey, and to the characteristics of the Turkish belly dance style.
The second part is dedicated to the Oriental Dancers, as a category, and it's greatly illustrated with plenty of photos, especially of the glorious period of the fifties and seventies years.
Photos are in B&W or color and represent many famous dancers, adored from their fans. Some are pose photos, most are taken in clubs, in Istanbul, London, and other places.
The dancers are often scantily clad.
I believe the term infamous is (jokingly) bound to this fact.
We all know that the equation belly-dance = sexy-dance is made too often (in the past and still now), accentuating just the sensual side of the dance above all other aspects. Which of course we don't like.
This mentality, which arrives to exchange dancers and strippers, is of course not of those people who have a balanced life, no sex fears, and who appreciate art, and the sensuality of body expression as a part of it.
Sensuality IS a central part of this dance, we can't deny it. As much as sex, spoken or not, is a central part of our lives, and btw the start of life itself (birth).
Anyway the book is valuable. As an Italian I'd say that among its spicy photos could well have a place those taken to the Turkish dancer Aiche' Nana', when at the time of La Dolce Vita (Fellini, years 50s) made a breathless dance in a restaurant in Rome, which she ended with a strip-tease and floorwork that made her fans crazy.
The police came... big scandalistic titles on the newspapers... other times, really other times.
Even just for the beautiful, often historical photos, this is a book to have in a dancer library.
Tanja