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IN THE MID-1950s, WHEN BELLY DANCE was undergoing a resurgence in American1 popular culture, the curious consumer could whet her or his appetite for this foreign art with the music of Mohammed El-Bak-kar, whose "Arabian" sound was featured in the Broadway show Fanny.1 The liner notes of his six albums, replaying almost every Orientalist view the Western world could offer, situated the dance and its music variously in the harems of the Sultan of Baghdad, or in "the ancient slave market, [where] maidens performed sensuous and provocative dances," or in Port Said, where "dancing girls who performed] their ancient ritual for a few modest coins (and for a little more. [took] you into their tent or hut for more enjoyable entertainment)."3 This association of belly dancing and venality, or even outright sexual sal-ability, took its place among other persistent patriarchal and colonial fantasies of access; erotic consumerism here shed the implication of deviancy, and sexual indulgences could be purchased not only easily but also for a bargain price.
El-Bakkar's albums are out on CD now, reissued for the bene-fit of the rising population of Western belly dancers, although no one has bothered to revise those liner notes, which would make any right-thinking belly dancer wince. Now, in the 2000s, American belly danc-ers, a predominantly white, middle-class, and female population, are the empowered buyers of all things Arabian on the American market. El-Bakkar's album covers and liner notes sometimes amuse and often offend them (or perhaps I should say "us," since I am one) for paint-ing the dancer as a creature of disempowered yet eager sexuality: slave girl, harem girl, or bargain-basement whore. The self-defining discourse of the belly dance community in the United States seeks to steer clear of slave markets and harem girls, focusing instead on women's community, women's history, feminine solidarity, personal enjoyment, sensual experience, cultural exchange, and artistry, often with an interlacing of goddess theology.4 Yet the specters of venality, marketable sexuality, and the sex business refuse to go away. Whether on internet forums or in classes and workshops, American belly danc-ers are on guard against sexually tainted dance practices, which they frame vehemently as not belly dance. Lift up the belly dancer's veil of sen-sual self-actualization and you see a community...