DANCE REVIEW : Dreams of Jeannie Do Little to Enhance Love of Dance

It’s a little-known fact that scholars of Middle Eastern dance can’t agree on what to call “belly dancing.” Actually, it’s a little-known fact that there are scholars of Middle Eastern dance, but the form does have a complex history and technical requirements and many accomplished artists. Oh yes, and an image problem.

On Thursday night at Highways in Santa Monica, Common Threads tried to tackle the hoochie-coochie stereotypes in a program of short dances and skits tied together by the story of a woman who falls in love with “Oriental dance.”

Unfortunately, while trying to explain that there is a spiritual component and that belly dancers are not sex objects, writer/directors Pleasant Gehman and Brandi Centeno reinforced even more stereotypes.

Through over-bright monologues in person and on tape (by Melissa Berger), a version of the “mysterious East” emerged, a land of ox carts and Mercedes, where people are earthy and uninhibited. Not surprisingly, the young American girl was first drawn to Oriental dancing through TV’s “I Dream of Jeannie.” The surprise is that she never wanted more. The evening began and ended with unreflective evocations of Jeannie, swirling about in chiffon or just crossing her arms with a blinking nod.

In between, there were a few beautifully adept belly dance performances to taped music by Melody Dickey, Jacqueline Eusanio and especially Laura Crawford, whose hip and torso isolations were sharply drawn and musically rich. Elsewhere, technique and other performance skills were secondary to the expressed notion that belly dance helps women accept their bodies.

Common Threads is far, far from aiding the understanding of belly dance, a term still preferable to the colonialist-tinged “Oriental dance.” There is much to be learned about the ways we can interpret a woman’s sensuously dancing body, but not from those who are still dreaming of Jeannie--and who don’t think that’s a problem.