Danza del vientre vs. Neoburlesque: ¿prácticas subversivas o tecnologías de género?

• Main Author: Mª Dolores Tena Medialdea
• Format: Article
• Language: Spanish
• Published: Universidad Pablo de Olavide de Sevilla 2017-12-01
• Series: Ambigua
• Subjects: belly dance; striptease; neoburlesque; commodification of sexuality; postfeminism; queer theory; cultural criticism; postcolonial studies.
• Online Access: https://www.upo.es/revistas/index.php/ambigua/article/view/2653/2243

This essay analyses the commercial reification of two types of dance, the named Oriental or belly dance and the striptease, which raised as popular countercultural spectacles in Western metropolis during the last colonial period. Largely regarded as feminine, these dances have been reinterpreted within the framework of neoliberal politics and the global cultural market, such as means of empowerment through performing the sexed body. This research offers a historicist approach of the recent and consecutive popularization of these two dance styles, linked by the Western erotic imaginary until the 1970s, which allows to explore the ongoing transnational imposition of the US cultural procedures and ideals of bodily display.Likewise, their comparative study has been informed by the analytical perspectives of the Gender, Cultural and Postcolonial Studies in order to elucidate to which extent their present interweaving with identitary processes has been mediated by the performative power of the mass media. Considering the corporal image of their performers as well as the different discourses with which both dances are trying to be legitimized, according to postfeminists and queer approaches, this study contributes to exemplify the progressive hypersexualization of the prevailing gender identities. At the same time, it also reveals the cyclical character of trends and the increasingly social and marketable value bestowed to sexuality in postcapitalist societies.