Cairo, the 28th August, 2010

The old devil called DANCER!

I often forget most of the prejudices that surround my profession (and the love of my life: DANCE).
When you know your craft for too long and way too well, when you respect yourself and know about Art, it´s easy to forget that so many other people see you as a prostitute, a vamp who eats men for breakfast or any other kind of loose, immoral person so many egyptian-arabic-foreigners associate with female oriental dancing.

Coming from Classical Ballet - West - to Oriental Dance - East - I can also understand why there is a bigger respect for the first and an ancestral desdain for the other. Ignorance is the word of order here but then you would have to be actually educated to understand that.
I recently read a phrase that said: The mind is only useful when it´s open.
If only last night´s couples knew this.

Once more, I had a hard contact with a part of the reality that surrounds me. I can do my best but I can´t stop other´s minds from going wild with fears, imagination and insecurities. I can not also stop dirty minds.

Yesterday´s show was going well until a couple asked to take a photo with me.When I approached them, a friend who was near said to me:
-You can sit on his lap because she´s not jealous. Just take care you won´t steal him from her.(then laughing like a sad wizard with a heavy heart...).

The man prepared himself to hold me and receive me on his lap and I had to leave their table immediately with a face that I suppose must have said:
-Go to hell with your man and your dirty minds. Why on earth would I hold a strange man, sit on his lap and take him away from his girlfriend/wife/whatever?! WHY???

I am just a dancer, an artist doing her job. How much ignorance, dirtiness and sexually frustrated-unsatisfied men and women are out there?! PLEASEEEEEEE, folks! Go home and make love, enjoy each other, live, be REAL. And don´t put your unsatisfied needs and desires on a professional dancer who is just doing her job.

PLUS: I am not interested - not even a bit - in your men. RELAX, LADIES!!!
DANCERS are DANCERS, not prostitutes or crazy people looking for tempting/alluring/seducing the other sex.

It´s rare - thanks God - to feel this way and be reminded of the stupidity and poor minds all around my profession but, sometimes, it strikes me like a thunderbolt.
In the end, I don´t feel bad about myself because I KNOW very well what I am doing. I am dancing since I was 5 years old and that is not for nothing but, for a few moments, I can´t also stop myself from feeling sad for the image this ART I LOVE above everything still has on human sub-conscious.