The Great American Saloon Series/Belly Art
Brookhiser, Richard
THE GREAT AMERICAN SALOON SERIES BELLY ART by Richard Brookhiser y ou will want to take a cab to Fa7il's International, especially at the time of night when you will be wanting to go. It's not...
...Fazil's also has an accordian and a clarinet...
...Most belly dancing in this country is Egyptian...
...This opens the vexed question of national styles...
...belly dancing—and certainly one of New York's cheapest nights out on the town...
...There is another act later on in the morning, and general dancing off and on until dawn...
...the oud, a Middle Eastern lute shaped like a huge ham...
...Elena has what it takes...
...Much of the belly dancing you see outside of ethnic night spots enourages no other opinion...
...and the Sultan never watched...
...Peel off your roll over her head, or throw a fistful of cash, like green confetti...
...The American Spectator, April 1986...
...What you see at Fazil's—the real stuff—is not a gawkfest (I've seen a wedding party there, never a bachelor party...
...She knows exactly what she wants to do at all times, and she unfailingly pulls it off...
...The best performance I ever saw her give was at a party in her loft...
...Yeah, right...
...the house beer is Budweiser...
...some tap and swing canes...
...One of the best things about belly dancers is that they don't burn out attwenty-five, like ballerinas...
...Half the crowd on a typical night are typical New Yorkers, slaking their insatiable thirst for the exotic...
...I might like it better if it had been my introductionto the dance, but the Turkish style seems to me more varied and less hokey...
...If your heart has not quailed at the neighborhood, it will sink at the sight of Fazil's staircase, a long, steep shaft, the kind junkies throw cops down to break their necks...
...Fazil's closes for the summer (no air conditioning) and for Ramadan...
...Egyptians don't do floor work, and they make more use of props—dancing on upsidedown glasses, balancing canes on their breasts, that kind of thing...
...Most dancers play finger cymbals...
...she certainly has a very grown-up daughter who watches her act from the wings...
...So you take a cab, and risk the cabbie thinking you are going to watch ALL MALE BURLESK or a screening of HOT CHERRIES which along with the bars, are the area's other major growth industries...
...The place is tiny...
...Dick Clark would give it a 95 for the beat...
...In the slow middle movement, many dancers sink to the floor and undulate on their knees, flanks, or backs...
...F azil is a Turk, as are most of the musicians and many of the performers...
...It's not that 8th Avenue at 46th Street at 11:30 on a Friday or Saturday night is dangerous, at least not for relatively young people who travel in pairs...
...What about the dancers you've come to see...
...It's worth it...
...Egyptian presumes foot-lights and floor-shows, Turkish suggests the...
...No matter...
...Fazil's International offers one of the best places in Manhattan to see Middle Eastern dancing—a.k.a...
...It never goes anywhere (it was a great trick of Western composers of the last thousand years to write endings that were also conclusions...
...A note on tipping: it is not cool to stuff money in a dancer's costume...
...the other half are Turks, enjoying the typical...
...Whatever they are doing goes all the way out their arms to their fingertips, and for about a foot beyond...
...Some of the yupscale American women who study belly dancing as a supplement to aerobics go too far in the other direction, telling you that it is an old rite of sisterhood, performed in the harems by women for other women...
...When she finishes a set, her skin is glittering with sweat, and the floor is covered with bills...
...At its best, it requires art...
...A small sign announces FAZIL'S INTERNATIONAL though it looks as if it might better say ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE...
...Anahid's forte is stopon-a-dime changes in mood...
...A six- to eight-piece band starts playing at ten...
...When she had finished, she shifted without pause to her finale, a flirtatious gypsy dance, complete with obscene hand gestures, which work only if it is absolutely clear they are not serious...
...You can tell dancers of her caliber by the fact that they dance with their hands...
...She dances under the stage name of Elena (though they aft come from Long Island or someplace, American women dance under names that make them sound as if they've come direct from Ankara...
...You will see fierce physiognomies, men who look as if they fought at the sack of Delhi, like maybe last week...
...I don't know Elena, and even if I did I wouldn't ask her age...
...On the wild side, you see swords...
...Some of the instruments are odd—the saz, a long-necked three-stringed guitar...
...Sometimes a particular tune will become a Fazil's hit...
...The first act comes on around midnight...
...Most are an inoffensive okay...
...the cover is five dollars...
...it's just that, with Hell's Kitchen to the north, and 42nd Street to the south, and the ancient Irish bars with their spindly unlit neon signs and their staggering lit-up patrons, it's not a pleasant place to stroll around in...
...At its very best, it can be deeply moving...
...Check your local paper for Ramadan...
...Richard Brookhiser, managing editor of National Review, is the author of The Outside Story (Doubleday...
...But she has to be on the far side of forty...
...Classical Arab and Turkish music drives me nuts...
...Some of them, frankly, aren't good...
...neighborhood bar, or a party at home or in a tent...
...Though she was born in the USA, she is Armenian, so her stage name and her real nameAnahid—are the same...
...The last time I wrote about an offbeat spot—the Showboat Lounge in Bellevue, Kentucky'---I got an irate anonymous letter from a patron who thought I had been running the place down, so perhaps I should make it perfectly clear, for the benefit of the obtuse, that I like Fazil's...
...Two years ago, a jaunty ditty comparing love to a dum-dum bullet became as unavoidable as "Satisfaction" in the summer of 1965...
...The success of her shows is a result of a combination of attention to detail and hard, hard work...
...Her floorwork that night could only be described as painful and heroic—like Beckett characters crawling through the mud, only beautiful...
...Authentic belly dancing is a tease, not rut, and more fun than it is teasing...
...Most people have a vague idea that a belly dancing club fits quite well on a sleazy sex strip...
...From the depths to the heights (of frivolity, anyway), in the kick of a heel...
...The backup for belly dancing, based on folk and popular music, is much more pleasant...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1987 51...
...One of Fazil's regulars, happily, is one of the best in New York...
...My other favorite dancer performs only rarely at Fazil's...
...You ascend and make a left, past Turkish movie posters and a pair of ornamental palm trees...
...Applause is always welcome...
...They are in fact the friendliest crowd in the world, welcoming every effort you make to dance (it is easy, just watch the regulars...
...A full routine, lasting over half an hour, consists of four or five different kinds of dance, keyed to the mood of the music...
...I'm told the food, at least when Fazil's mother cooked, was good...
Vol. 20 • March 1987 • No. 3
