[From an interview with Morocco conducted by Dr. Barbara Sellers-Young, PhD at the request of the Oral History Archives of the Dance Collection of the Lincoln Center Library of/for the Performing Arts in New York City]

Not too long after I started in those ethnic clubs, I began to get offers of much higher-paying jobs in American clubs, where I would have to dance to very non-Mideastern, American music because, at that time, there was no such thing as portable tape/ cassette (or CD) players. In addition, the musicians’ union was a lot stronger and mandated using whatever musicians were already there, even if they hadn’t a clue as to what was the appropriate music.

I went to a few of those places to see what kind of show they had. Mostly I walked right out. No way: I wasn’t interested in them. I didn’t like the music nor the sort of “show” they expected and required. For several years I refused to work to American music. I wouldn’t dance unless the music was authentic and I simply would not put on the sort of sexy-schmexy “sultan act” malarkey they required, but in those days it was very easy to work seven nights a week, fifty two weeks a year, within the ethnic environment, and, though the American clubs paid muchy better, I could still be very well paid in proportion to the economy.

When later on I realized well, hell, I could make really good money occasionally working at those American events where they were legit and didn’t want a pseudo-strip act, I would. However, the downside was that I would have to haul my tush around to songs like “Fiddler on the Roof”, “Hava Nagila”, “Caravan”, "Miserlou," which is actually a Greek song, or maybe an Arabic song. I could do it, and it was fun seeing the audience reaction, when they realized they were getting something more and much better than they had expected. However, for me it wasn’t the same kind of fun dancing to it, as it was with the real music …

I was seeing more and more “belly” dance that acquiesced to the raunchola harem girl fantasy they were expecting in the American environments and the performers that were catering to this: it was a shock and a disappointment (I was much younger, more idealistic and naïve!) Also, in that day and age even in the ethnic clubs, the level of skill that was expected was far, far lower than it is today. I mean, now-a-days, if I walked in anywhere with the lack of skill I had on Day One, I’d be laughed out of the place, but, I wasn’t kidding when I said that in that day, because there were far more jobs than there were dancers, Godzilla could have gotten a gig if she had a bedlah.

When I’d try and tell people that the raunchola version was not what the dance is about, that it is certainly not what I am about. They would say, “Prove it.” Which is what started my research.

BSY: So, I’m going to back up before we get into your extensive research projects. I think it would be helpful for people to hear descriptions of what went on in the evening, I mean, for example, like what were the first things…the dances and who danced with whom. You alluded to this but I think it would be good for people to expand upon that.

M: Okay. The music would start, in most clubs, except for the Egyptian Gardens, the music would start at nine-thirty in the evening. In the Egyptian Gardens, it started at ten. At that time, the E.G. was the elite club in that grouping and it was also the only one on the second floor of an otherwise residential building. All the others were ground floor/ street level, in one or two-story buildings. It was the only one without a big picture window out front. You’d go up one flight of stairs (there was a mural of Nejla Atesh in her role in “Fanny” on the wall to the right, at the landing), you’d look in the door, and see who was sitting on the stage, to know who was singing, dancing and playing that night.

In all the clubs, the evening would start with a band all playing a song together. They used a series of two or three songs, one segueing into the other. Then, one of the singers would sing a set, would either stand up where he or she was sitting and take the microphone, or get out on the dance floor and sing with the microphone. The women singers would dance in between the verses and the choruses, but the male singers were also musicians, so they would play taxims in between the verses. The band would play…one instrument would take a solo, and what would happen is they would improvise. It was called taxim, meaning “solo,” where it would start in a mode of a sabah or another mode and go on somewhere, move around, move around, come back and then the others would join in and another instrument would go off.
When a singer, in whatever language, would also improvise vocally in the same manner, they would call it the amaneh, or the yaleil. It was, in other words, Scat, but much older Middle Eastern style, except that a lot of times they weren’t using gibberish syllables, the way scat does. It was just displaying the beauty of the voice and the ability to improvise around the maqam.

While the singer was singing, people would sometimes get up and dance, either singly, or in duos or in lines and circles. If they wanted a specific song, they would give money to the band. They’d either throw it in singles or they’d give a five or a ten, and there were people who were notorious for working in some factory all day and coming once a week to the bouzoukia and throwing their whole salary on the floor for just one song, so they could be big man in the bouzoukia, and eating lettuce sandwiches for the rest of the week, kind of thing. The grandparents or the parents would urge the little kids to get up and dance and sometimes they’d take the little girls or little boys and they’d put them on the table to dance, but older people didn’t get up on the table. Never! Or, if a young guy, if there was a girl he really liked, he’d get up and he would rooster. Oh God, did they rooster. It was, you know, and coming from the American culture at that point, where the only color for men’s shirts was white, white, or white, or this new television blue (because white was too shiny for black and white television), seeing guys wearing colorful clothing and really fluffing their feathers…it was something so different and interesting to me, whereas the women - especially the Greek women - were, in a lot of ways, much more subdued than the men. Then, there’d be an Oriental dancer for a minimum of 30 – 45 minutes a set and the whole cycle wouold begin again.

BSY: Now, did the customers do any Raks Sharki?

M: Oh yes, they would always do the line and circle dances and they would get up and twitch some major tushy during the Oriental songs, especially during the taxims..Those of us onstage, we could easily tell where somebody was from by how s/he danced to the Oriental tunes …

BSY: So the men and the women were [almost never] dancing together.

M: Yes. The usual scenario would be that the man would dance alone or two or three men, they danced with each other. The women did it the same way. Or a man would dance with his sister or his mother or his wife. In some families, it was okay for engaged couples to dance together, but usually it was men with men and women with women.

BSY: Did they ever have, like you’d have the solo female oriental dances. Now did they ever have solo male oriental dances?

M: Performing in the clubs, in costume, at that time, no. Not in the clubs. But, you would occasionally find it at big Turkish parties. You wouldn’t find it at that point in Lebanese parties but you’d see the guys getting up and dancing, sometimes by themselves, or sometimes somebody would be so good, that the others would sit down and watch. Or get down on one knee and clap, and watch. But the Egyptians, they’d do that more often. The men would get up, but they would also, the Egyptians and the Lebanese more than the Turks or the Greeks, would tie a scarf around their hips, the men, so that it would accentuate their movements. So would the women. They would tie a scarf around their hips.

There was once a club that had been on 42nd Street – I forget the name - west of 8th Avenue. I only remembered it by accident, a couple of years after I’d become an Oriental dancer, when I passed by where it had been. All of a sudden, I realized that I *had* seen Oriental dance once, before I got my first job in the Arabian Nights, in 1956 when I was out on a date with this twit I was going with at the time! It had been a Greek club and there was this Turkish couple, Duru and Nilufer, who danced together, but they did a variety of dances – including an Oriental dance. There wasn’t any problem from the audience (my date and I were the only “civilians” in the place): they accepted and enjoyed it. There was also a very good Oriental dancer there that night named Badia, who was Algerian. But this I only remembered years later. I had never actually heard of that sort of dance before and did not know what it was called. I’d never seen anything like Duru and Nilufer before or since. (I’ve seen other couples, but not with the variety of really good dances D & N did!) When I got my first job at the Arabian Nights, none of the dancers, who were working there at the time, danced the way that Badia had. She was light years in front of what was going on on Eighth Avenue in December 1960.