This thesis focuses on bellydance as screendance in Egyptian Golden Era cinema
(1940s-1960s), analysing it as a symbolic cultural product that mirrored the moral order established during the period of colonial modernity (Barlow, 1997; Jacob, 2011; Elsaket, 2013). The framework of colonial modernity assumed the backwardness of local traditional rites and daily life practices in which bellydance was involved, intertwining the local dichotomy between tradition and modernity with the notion of primitivism that defined the colonial enterprise. It is argued that the dominant discourses established by the local intelligentsia, upper-middle classes and ruling elites reproduced the colonial spirit in their modernising impulses. As dominant groups, they sought for the reformation, sanitation and re-signification of these social practices, rites, festivities and daily life celebrations, inspired by French ideas of urbanity, sociability, order and rationality developed
during the Enlightenment.The establishment of a nationalist-oriented film industry during the middecades
of the twentieth century mirrored the cultural influence of the nationalist oriented middleclass
(efendiya) in the entertainment sector. Within this milieu, the figure of the female bellydancer
arose from the cabaret as a box-office attraction, naturalising a middle-class dance aesthetics, and re-signifying the logic and meaning of rites and festivities represented in popular cinema.
Deploying Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological method, I discuss how screendance constitutes a
symbolic cultural commodity which triggers an affective affinity, connecting with the Egyptian
working classes and popular audiences, who were already predisposed to consume these films
and dance sequences due to their class habitus and practices. Thus, dances in popular, baladi,
rituals and practices were both a popular topic of screendance, and a target of imperialistic and
nationalist attempts to modernise, civilise and 'enlighten' the image of Egypt. It is argued that, due to the homology between social practices and popular screendance, this cinematic consumption established an affective/symbolic violence that operated as a misrecognised form of symbolic power with the tacit complicity of its audiences, converting bellydance sequences into rituals of colonial modernity. The implications of this violence can be observed in today’s bellydance production in contemporary Arab cinema and social media. The study is framed within the areas of postcolonial sociology, popular dance and screendance research contributing to current debates on bellydance as a controversial social practice in contemporary Egypt.