Taiwan Today

A new dance style is shimmying into the hearts of many locals.

The audience’s shouts and applause mingle with the sound of Middle Eastern drums as belly dancer Nancy Kuo shimmies and sways across the stage. In the video recording of her performance at the ninth Ahlan Wa Sahlan Belly Dance Festival in July 2008 in Egypt, the dancer and instructor from Taiwan keeps the audience entranced throughout her routine. At the end of the five-day event, Kuo was named the winner of the competition, known as the Olympics of belly dance. Her win was not only a personal achievement, but also showed the commitment to belly dance exhibited by performers in Taiwan as well as the growing popularity of this ancient dance among locals.

Every year, the festival in Egypt attracts masters of the dance from countries around the world to demonstrate their new choreographies and techniques, as well as giving new performers the chance to receive international recognition. More than 200 contestants from 40 countries showed off their shakes, spins and gravity-defying moves at the five-day event in 2008, with Kuo awarded the championship from a panel of 30 international judges. Her win was a big surprise because no dancer from East Asia had ever taken home the gold medal before.

Kuo, who was born in Tainan in southern Taiwan, has studied dance for more than 30 years, beginning her training with ballet at the age of 3. “I’ve done some classical dance, folk dance, some contemporary, some street dance ... a little of everything,” she says.

In fact, she majored in ballet and modern dance at Chinese Culture University in Taipei and later won a government scholarship to study modern dance in Germany before finally discovering belly dance while on a performance tour in Egypt in 2003. “Its rhythm and the movement of the muscles are so different from other dances,” she says. “The body moves muscle by muscle, so dancers can develop a soft, seductive silhouette that doesn’t happen in other forms of dance.”

“After observing for a while I decided to get on with it in 2007 and take part in competitions. The more I learn, the more deeply I get involved. Now I have a real passion for belly dancing and I’m totally hooked on it,” Kuo says.

In order to learn the essence of the dance and improve her technique, Kuo flew to Egypt three times each year from 2006 to the time of the competition in 2008. She even studied under world-renowned masters including Raqia Hassan, who, in addition to organizing the festival in Egypt, is considered a “master of masters” of the dance, having educated many professional belly dancers and instructors throughout the world.

After becoming thoroughly familiar with the basic movements, Kuo started blending belly dance with local folk dances from Taiwan and modern dance movements, as well as experimenting with many types of music and costumes. Gradually she has developed her own moves and has even created entire performances.

The Chinese Ghostbuster is one of the choreographies she is most proud of, and which merges Taoist religious dance with belly dance moves. “The story is about the folktale of ghost-catcher Zhong Kui, who arranges for his younger sister to marry his benefactor,” she says. It is also the dance that landed Kuo the bronze medal at the 2007 Nagwa Fouad Cup International Belly Dance Competition held in Seoul, South Korea.

Kuo says the traditional Chinese outfits and make-up as well as the powerful music including gongs and drums made her performance really stand out from the other entrants. Audiences were thrilled with the performance, she says, adding that she was astounded that international observers would be so crazy about her dramatization of an age-old Chinese story reinterpreted in belly dance.

After Kuo claimed the gold medal at the 2008 competition in Egypt, she decided to retire from competitive dance although still at the height of her abilities. Instead, she made up her mind to devote her talents to educating younger generations of dancers. Since 2007, Kuo has had her own dance studio offering belly dance classes four times a week as well as headed a belly dance performance group based in Taoyuan, northwest Taiwan. She also travels between Taoyuan and other cities around Taiwan, sharing her enthusiasm for belly dance with new students.

Her dance partners at the competition in Seoul, Gary Chao and Chris Shao, who had little experience in belly dance before the 2007 event, were among Kuo’s first pupils. They have gone on to be some of her most proficient pupils as well, having subsequently taken part in other international belly dance events and also teaching the dance form.

Asked about her advice for beginners, Kuo suggests a good goal is to enjoy the process rather than worry about winning competitions. “Being happy and having fun when learning is the first step to enjoying belly dancing,” she says.

From Student to Teacher

Few local belly dancers have Kuo’s extensive background in dance. Performer and teacher Sun Yu-ting is an example of a belly dance enthusiast who is pursuing the art form professionally, but began with very little formal dance training.

Sun, who was born in 1985, sampled a variety of dance classes when she was a university student, motivated by a desire to get in shape or sometimes simply out of curiosity. In 2004, Sun’s mother encouraged her to try belly dance as a way to improve her posture and lose weight. She studied with instructor Violet Lee, a pioneer in the local belly dance scene and the first dancer from Taiwan to study in the Middle East. Sun found the dance came naturally and even credits belly dancing with her weight loss from 70 kilograms to 52 kilograms. Sun has since won first prize at the Taiwan Belly Dance Open Competition in 2007 and fourth place at the Asia Belly Dance Competition in Taipei that same year, which pushed her to consider dance as a career. Sun, who majored in business management at university, says she never thought she could earn a living as a belly dancer and instructor, but currently has around 100 students and leads at least two classes a day.

Sun describes her style as a sort of fusion, saying that there are few performers of “pure” belly dance anymore in Taiwan. Including aspects of local culture is a good way to introduce the dance form to local audiences, she says. “What has happened now is that a kind of grass-roots belly dance has sprung up in Taiwan in recent years. For example, dances traditionally performed by Taiwan’s aboriginals have been incorporated into belly dance, which introduces local people to the subtleties of belly dance,” Sun says.

Taiwan’s dancers have even started to develop their own props and costumes, Sun says, demonstrating her own collection of fans and even “bird wings” made of silk, which are becoming very popular. As for her outfits, Sun says that in the beginning, she preferred to cover her midriff and bought costumes from abroad like many new students. “However, I found that too much fabric made me look shorter, so I took out the bulky fabric in the middle and sewed more decorations on the rest of the clothing. I even made my own outfits and accessories to accent my body’s curves,” she says.

From her experience as a teacher, Sun has noticed a similar phenomenon among her students. “At first, students are too shy to show their bellies, worrying that their stomachs are not flat enough to expose. By the time they’ve reached the advanced level, students are more confident and they gradually roll up their T-shirts and even wear dancing clothes hoping that the teacher can correct their movements better that way,” she says.

Sun also finds that belly dancing-related businesses in Taiwan are growing. “Two years ago there were only a couple of dance studios offering belly dance classes. Now, however, there are classes at gyms and many community colleges also give belly dances classes in the evening,” Sun says. Belly dance is also a popular choice among office workers for exercise classes scheduled at lunchtime or after work, she adds.

Jenny Chen, a civil servant at the Ministry of Education (MOE), says she did not have much of a clue about belly dancing when she signed up for a class at the MOE. “Doing something a bit different during lunchtime was our original motive for starting the belly dance class,” says Chen, who has signed up for the class three times since then. She says that each student pays around US$50 for a series of 10 lessons.

“We have a room with a mirror in it and the teacher doesn’t charge much,” Chen explains during one lunchtime session. As she continues with her practice, raising her arms and moving the muscles in her midsection, she says that she and her colleagues even get together to practice without the teacher. “The most important thing is that belly dance gives us energy and keeps us flexible,” she says. “That motivates us to practice more and more.”

Not So Easy

“Looking at the popularity of belly dance today, it’s hard to describe how tough it was to introduce oriental-style belly dance into Taiwan a couple of years ago,” says Tseng Niu-lang, vice president of the Taiwan Dance & Sport Federation (TDSF), the main promoter of belly dance in Taiwan. “In 2001, I led some belly dance classes at a couple of studios, but few students came. Their parents or boyfriends or husbands considered the movements to be lewd or even ‘wicked,’” Tseng says.

Even today, when belly dance has become fairly popular, Tseng has mixed feelings about how the dance form is promoted. A locally produced television show, Let’s Dance, contributes to the popularity of belly dance in Taiwan, with the group “Pharaoh and his dancers” one of the most popular acts on the show. Tseng worries that such acts might detract from the finer points of the dance, however. “I hope in the future the dance scene can be less commercial because audiences are becoming accustomed to seeing a belly dance performance only as one part of a variety act,” she says.

“There are still a lot of people who think that belly dance is nothing more than belly, hips and hair. They don’t get the essence of the dance, for example, the facial expression and finger movements of dancers,” she says, explaining that these subtleties are what the audience should pay attention to. “The more mature the dancers are, the more sophisticated their movements.”

Tseng, who founded TDSF in 2005, is one of the most active proponents of the dance, and so far is the only contact person in Taiwan for international belly dance events. In 2005, her organization took the plunge and hosted a series of local belly dance festivals and competitions, which have continued annually since then. “The competitions started small because we didn’t dare put all our resources into one event, plus we had a tight budget,” Tseng recalls wryly.

In recent years, however, interest in the dance has grown enough to prompt at least one arts promotion agency, Da Da Arts, to organize a local tour of international performers. Belly Dance Superstars, one of the largest professional belly dance groups in the world, toured Taiwan in 2007 and again in 2008, with performances in the northern, central and southern parts of the island. The group received a warm welcome both years and there is talk of a third tour later this year.

“The shimmering belt and even the passion of the dancer are still merely brushing the surface of the dance. Belly dance is a heady mix of quivering limbs, naked navels and suggestive eye contact. Pure traditional belly dance is very emotional,” Tseng says.

Tseng has been invited as a judge for many international competitions. She says she looks for talented belly dancers at festivals and competitions around Taiwan and tries to encourage them to enter international events.

TDSF arranges workshops twice a year in addition to frequent classes to polish dance techniques, enhance musical understanding, build stage presence and improve the overall presentation of dancers. The group also offers opportunities to educate those involved in the field of belly dance, including judges, teachers and other professional performers. Currently TDSF issues certificates for people who have passed the foundation’s belly dance exams.

Tseng recommends that senior dancers consider studying abroad, however, saying the environment in Taiwan is still somewhat limited. “Taiwan is not a mature environment for belly dance, and there are still a lot of things to improve. For example, teachers’ qualifications and class levels aren’t standardized yet,” Tseng says.

“On the other hand, many people are coming out and doing interesting things,” she says. “There’s a little of everything and this variety is good, too. Belly dance transcends regular boundaries of culture as well as language. More and more Taiwanese are coming to understand and enjoy it.”

Write to Tso Lon-di at londi@mail.gio.gov.tw