Abstracts - York St John University

nightclubs and dance classes, were centred on the subject of contemporary re-­‐enactments
of orientalism and mythologies around ‘Oriental woman’ as one of ‘the Other of Europe’.
Belly dancers, or oriental dancers who I interviewed in these different locations are
‘nomadic subjects’, whose identities are multiple, imagined, and performed, featuring
elements of orientalist fantasy, and often incorporating potentially empowering symbols of
Mother Goddess. They are subaltern subjects who find ways to speak through their dance,
online domains and their women-­‐dominated belly dance subcultures. Romantic
connotations with ‘all things Gypsy’, nomadism and travel are abundant in contemporary
belly dancing troupes and identities. But the ‘Gypsy-­‐belly dance’ spectacle of mystery,
exoticism, freedom and abandon by transgressive outsiders clashes with the harsh
experiences of European and Turkish Romani peoples, as well as many other migrant
groups.
By presenting a case of a Turkish Romany performer from Istanbul, I will focus on the
responsibilities of (eastern and western) performers in becoming the ‘Other’ in a
contemporary globalised world. I will explore the complexities of belly dance as a trans-­‐
national globalised dance practice that has been highly altered by digital media. My paper
will also explore the potentials of my nomadic political performance practice and dynamic
alliances between dancers and performers of different and multiple backgrounds.
Edina Husanovic was born in Bosnia where they know something about having fun with
absurd situations. She is a multi-­‐media performance artist resident in Brighton and
studying for PhD in theatre at the University of Reading. She is also known as Lily Lazuli in
the weird and wonderful world of belly dance, and has been called ‘a political belly dancer’
as in her performances she prayed to the temple of Angelina Jolie, hand-­‐stretched an Axl
Rose filo pastry pie, and belly danced as David Cameron. Little wonder that reviewers were
left ‘bewildered’, and saying: “Orientalists will be disoriented and Disorientalists
reoriented. Her mystical eyes are full of irony so beware!”
Re-imagining Social Space through an openness to the Becoming of Place
Steve Fossey (Middlesex University)
One of the challenges that makers of site specific performance face is how to qualify and
articulate site specificity, in era where prevalent discourses and practices argue less for
substantive and fixed understandings of location, and more for fluid and mulitiplicitous
senses of place. As a maker of site specific performance I find myself embracing the idea
that our senses of place, and in turn our identities that are affected by the spaces we
encounter, are in constant states of becoming. This acknowledgment liberates our
imaginings of place from the hegemonic clutches of received tacit agreements, and opens
them up to creative spatial possibilities.
Rather than accept the negativity of Marc Augé’s observation that we spend more of our
time in non-­‐places and states of transit, I am interested in exploring the positive potential of
a closer inspection of the specifics of these fluid states, positioning site itself as the
transitory process, which is in turn productive of culture and identity. I would argue that by
composing situations that combine performative approaches to dialoguing experience, with
everyday modes and technologies of communication, a re-­‐imagining of social space can
occur.
In For Space Doreen Massey argues ‘not just for a notion of becoming’ but instead ‘for the
openness of that process of becoming’ (Massey 2005: p21). This paper will discuss the
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