Belly dancing? For Leïla Haddad, certainly not a diversion for exotic clubbers. Rather "a dance that comes from the mists of time". Originally from the island of Djerba, Tunisia, and a champion of oriental culture in Europe, Leïla Haddad has been working for years to restore the dignity of belly dancing to its ancient origins.
Having arrived in Paris to attend university as is the custom for many young Tunisians, Haddad moved to London in the 1970s where, in addition to continuing her studies, she joined an anti-apartheid theatre group. Back in Paris, she worked until 1984 with the Zulu theatre, a group founded in Dakar, where she came into contact with dancers of various origins: Senegalese, Tunisians, Algerians, united by the same convictions that animated the English group. Later he worked with the Barkane Theatre, a mime company also concerned with racial issues.
But his destiny is another: he starts teaching oriental dance at the Centre du Marais. The early days are not easy. "People looked at me sideways,' she recounted last year in an interview published in France in Danser, 'with contempt for this dance that was judged vulgar through stereotyped images... My work consisted in explaining, in showing without pause that it is a sacred gesture that comes from distant times and that each movement is linked to a very significant cosmic symbolism, such as when the hips draw an 8, the symbol of infinity and the universe, or a circle, the symbol of totality.
The origin of belly dancing is in fact very ancient. The beginnings can be traced back to the matriarchal era and to archaic fertility rites in which, according to the cult of the Mother Goddess, the female figure is clothed with a sacred character. The womb, cradle of the mystery of motherhood, is the symbolic centre of the body, the point of union between upper and lower parts, between heaven and earth, sun and moon. Traces of this kind of dance can be found in the Middle East, Egypt, Guinea and many other countries.
Since she began teaching at the Centre du Marais, Leïla Haddad has built up a passionate audience of her own, making a name for herself both as a teacher and as a dancer. Regularly invited to the United States and various European countries in order to propagate her concept of oriental dance, she has signed two shows in recent years: "Ballade en rythms and blues" and, in '88, "La danse des sept voiles", presented in Rovereto as a national première. Created for the Lille Festival in '88, "La danse des sept voiles" is inspired by the figure of Salome, drawing on the myth of Ishtar, the Babylonian Mother Goddess, who managed to cross the seven gates of the Kingdom of the Dead, thanks to her esoteric dance.
