A demonstration led by Sonia Blouin, doctoral student in history at the University of Sherbrooke.
Commonly called “belly dancing” or baladi, the “Oriental dance”, from the Arabic Raqs Sharqi, designates in Quebec the danced arts from the Arab world. Sometimes adored, sometimes denied, oriental dance carries with it the scars of its past. The orientalist and stereotypical image portrayed by colonizing countries in the 18th and 19th centuries, of an “exotic” and “erotic” dance, still persists today. Practiced first in Montreal, then elsewhere in Quebec since the 1950s, oriental dance is nevertheless not very present on the professional choreographic scene. The objective of this demonstration is to make you discover the richness of this artistic world by presenting a variety of dance numbers, both folk and modern.