American Bellydancer (2005)

American Bellydancer is an 88 minute documentary ostensibly about the history, extreme proliferation, feminism and misogyny of the ancient art form known today as Bellydancing. But it is also about tension between America and the Middle East, the dreams of young girls, the dialectic between art and politics and one man's attempt to reinvent his well-known turf in a failing music industry. With numerous tangents, the film takes a journey with Miles Copeland, former manager of the Police and Sting and founder of IRS Records, which was largely responsible for much of the new wave music of the 80's. His father, who was largely responsible for the creation of the CIA, brought his family to live in Syria where Miles first encountered a very different culture. It made sense that after IRS Records and Sting, Miles represented some of the biggest musical acts in the Mideast. American Bellydancer tracks his effort to bring this music deeper into American culture, in spite of our "issues" with that part of the world. In Riverdance, the music becomes an engine for pure spectacle as carefully synchronized dancing is put in front of it. With this in mind, Miles began an international search to form a troupe of Bellydancers with the improbable mission of bringing Middle Eastern music to the heart of America. If successful, this would be the first nationally touring troupe of Bellydancers in American history. American Bellydancer tracks the following; an audition process that spans America and beyond, an escalating battle between Miles and the American Bellydance community where some see him as the Anti-Christ come to destroy the sanctity of the art with crass commercialism, a chronicle of the hardships of making a living as a bellydancer, a sudden trip to Bali to try out some of the dancers at a World Peace Music Awards, broadcast to a billion people in Asia in response to the terror bombings there, an American road tour with the huge rock show, Lolapalooza. All this brings the dancers themselves to a transformation from an intimate world to an enormous one where they are expected to shill products, essentially live in a small bus and sacrifice their individual styles to the greater good of group choreography. As to whether or not mass exposure is good for a grass roots art form, or not, that will be left to the viewer.