Interview with Miles Copeland

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>> Get hip to Miles Copeland’s Bellydance Superstars
     

by RAF KATIGBAK

It’s said that history often celebrates those who move against the grain as revolutionaries, while those who also make a profit are just shrewd businessmen. For the last 37 years, Miles Copeland has enjoyed not doing what people tell him, and he’s made a darn good living out if it to boot.

In the late ’70s, despite advice from music insiders, he became the manager of a trio of young, London-based upstarts with scruffy hair and an agitated affinity for mixing reggae, pop and rock, “We were told punk rock would never happen, that it was bullshit,” Copeland reminisces, “but they didn’t realize that it was a new, generational thing.” That band, which featured his brother Stewart on drums, was the Police.

According to box-office numbers, his latest creation, Bellydance Superstars—an explosive stage production consisting of 15 dancers blending traditional Middle Eastern dance with a variety of other ethnic styles—promises to be yet another reason for Copeland to say “I told you so” to his doubters. In its third year, BDSS has already become a smash hit in Europe, and now, with sold-out shows all over North America (including two nights in Vancouver), Copeland’s bevy of bellydancing beauties are poised to introduce the artform to a whole new Canadian audience.

Mirror: Your show’s being touted as the next Riverdance, but about 3.6 gazillion times sexier.

Miles Copeland: Definitely, and Riverdance only use the bottom half of their bodies, for chrissake! One of the big advantages we have is that we use every aspect of a woman’s body—in a proper way, of course. Riverdance is a one-trick pony, but a good one, mind you. But we have so many layers. It’s fascinating, you can’t just put it into a little box and go, oh, that’s this. That’s why no Irish show, no ballet, has a chance competing with me. They don’t have a chance! One, I’m good at what I do, and two, there’s nothing that has this social relevance.

M: Is that why bellydance seems to be catching on in the West—the social relevance?

MC: There are many reasons. It’s a whole woman’s movement, and it has political ramifications in that it’s promoting Middle Eastern music and arts at a time when we’re at war over there. Also, it’s various cultures coming together, and it’s a celebration of women—yet it started in a culture that is suppressive of women. It’s fascinating! The Sunday Times said [Bellydance Superstars] is the most important dance troupe in the world ’cause it’s the only dance troupe that has a social significance. An Arab can come to the show and realize that his culture can resonate in the West, and a Westerner can come to the show and say, hey, there’s more to Arabs than terrorism.

The unreal deal

M: Especially timely, considering the whole cartoon kerfuffle.

MC: Exactly, although I’m sure there are strict Muslims that have a problem with what we do. But hey, there are strict Christians who think dancing’s bad too. So I guess every society has their share of nutcases.

M: Some of the bellydance community criticizes you for promoting an unfair, idealized image of bellydancers.

MC: I think what was happening was that, because you can be a larger woman in this artform, all of a sudden you see younger, pretty girls promoting it, and you think, “Oh my God, they’re taking my dance away from me!” The fear was there, but has proved to be untrue. All the schools have told me that their classes have increased because of us. And it’s not just young girls, but everybody. What we’re saying is that if we make bellydance more popular, it gets more popular for everybody.

M: What about purists that question the authenticity of your show?

MC: Well, we’re not trying to do any kind of authentic this or that. I never liked authentic. The Police were never authentic, no thriving art is authentic. When we put it together, we had to deal with the fact that people have a short attention span, so it’s colourful, lots of costume changes. We also knew the music had to be great and work with a Western audience. It couldn’t be some weird, ethnic music where 20 minutes in, you’re going, “When is this gonna stop?” It’s fast moving, so nobody gets a chance to be bored. We throw in some Latin stuff, some Polynesian stuff, even some reggaeton. We do this flamenco thing and some people ask, “Why didn’t you have a real flamenco dancer?” If I wanted a real flamenco dancer, I’d go to a flamenco show! It’s the same thing if Britney Spears is doing a cover of a Beatles song. You don’t want to hear it exactly the way the Beatles did it. What would be the point? So I say to these purists, what the hell are you on about?

Male Bellydance in Egypt

an. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Farid Mesbaah, male belly dancer, hopped on a car in Cairo's Shobra district and strutted his stuff.

He clanged metal castanets, magically converted his hips into pistons and twirled his head around like a centrifuge. The crowd at tables lining a dirt alley clapped rhythmically. Young men in jeans jumped up to wiggle along.

Mesbaah was performing at the opening of the Old-Time Moon Cafe, a gig that -- along with weddings, birthdays, night clubs and circumcisions -- is typical for belly dancers. Untypical, at least in recent years, are performances by men.

Male belly dancing, a centuries-old Egyptian tradition, is making a comeback -- against the odds, considering its periodic suppression by government and religious officials. The problem for Mesbaah is that his craft has long been associated with homosexuality -- a taboo in Egypt.

``I just like to dance,'' says Mesbaah, who has seven children. ``It's very sensual. I've been doing it since I was little.''

Mesbaah is shimmying in a society that has long struggled with ever-changing limits of social tolerance. A carved relief at a pharaonic-era tomb near Cairo shows today's dance prohibitions were yesterday's norm. It depicts a chorus line of men at a religious festival; each wears a sash knotted on his left hip, a fashion for dancing men and women that lingers today.

Ghawazee Banned

Male performers were once considered more reputable than females. In his book ``The Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians,'' Edward William Lane, an Englishman and prominent Arabic scholar who lived in 19th-century Cairo, observed that male dancers were preferred by Cairenes who thought women ``ought not to expose themselves.'' From 1834 to 1849, women dancers, known as ghawazee, were banned from the city.

Rakia Hassan, 62, a retired dancer, recalls that in her childhood, males peddled their skills along with women on Muhammed Ali Street, then a one-stop shop for belly-dancer hires.

``It became a business like any other, and men were part of it,'' she says. ``You know, Egyptians love to dance -- boys, girls, whatever -- so it was not unusual. However, Islamic trend has made it more difficult for the men.''

Monarchical Decadence

During the reign of Gamal Abdul Nasser, male belly dancing all but disappeared because it smacked of monarchical decadence. Nasser took over Egypt in 1954, two years after King Farouk was overthrown by military officers.

No one knows the number of male -- or for that matter, female -- dancers now. There is no belly-dance association, an indication of the profession's seedy reputation. (Belly dance is a Western term invented by the French; Egyptians call it simply Oriental or ``homegrown'' dance.)

Male dancing, along with officially proscribed activities such as open prostitution and smoking hashish, goes on in some nightclubs. Mahmoud Karim, 20, who dances in discos along Pyramids Street, says he pretends to be an enthusiastic customer but actually gets paid by clubs to perform.

``Just in case someone objects, the owner says I'm an amateur,'' he says.

Tolerance for male dance doesn't mean tolerance for homosexuality -- even among the dancers, who have been known for at least 150 years by an Arabic word, khawal, that's become insulting slang for gay men.

Dance-Hall Raid

Gay life is dangerous in Cairo, where plainclothes police are on the lookout for hustlers on the streets. In 2001, police raided the Queen Boat, a floating dance hall, and arrested 52 men for ``debauchery'' and ``perverting religion.''

``I'm careful not to look like I'm seducing customers,'' Karim says.

Tito Seif, a well-known belly dancer whose performances are available for viewing on YouTube, dances only in the galabiyah, a slack caftan, never in anything revealing.

``I don't believe that a male belly dancer should imitate a woman,'' says Seif, 35. ``We should not forget we are men and dance in a manly way.''

He says he will leave Egypt to dance abroad because the current crop of male dancers ``is giving us a bad reputation.''

Samia Allouba, 45, a belly-dance instructor, admires male dancers -- to a point. ``Definitely, they can move,'' she says. ``As long as they don't try to imitate women. That I find disgusting.''

`More With Our Muscles'

Mesbaah jokes that women dancers are jealous of the men. ``We can do more with our muscles,'' he says. He turned his passion into a profession 10 years ago after ending a career as a metal worker.

When performing, he is on the lookout for possible hostility. ``If I think the audience is unfriendly, I just leave,'' he says.

He dresses in loose black trousers and T-shirt; no pantaloons, vests or skirts recalling the khawal past. The only accessory linking him to belly-dance dress is the waist scarf.

His family accepts his profession, except for an older brother who, Mesbaah says, is a devout Muslim and has stopped talking to him.

``Some people think it's forbidden, but we Egyptians like to have fun,'' he says.

Still, Mesbaah says he has refused to dance on film because it might hurt the marriage chances of his three daughters. He also doesn't want any of his four sons to follow in his steps.

``I'd like them to do something else,'' he says. ``Be better than me.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Daniel Williams in Cairo at dwilliams41@bloomberg.net .