The Performer Identity: Sociologically Speaking

Still on the minimum side.  Especially the hair accessories.

It's been a little while.  I have been busy recently with performances and such, so this topic is fresh on my mind.

I've been dancing ATS for about five years now, and I'm always amazed how much costuming I put on for each gig.  Usually I forget something, typically jewelry.  I love it when my darling husband tries to reassure me when I do forget something: "You wear so much crap anyway, I don't think anyone will notice."  And honestly I agree with his sentiment as well. That's why I'm warming up to the new Bessie Skirt look.  It encourages a minimal costume, which is more like my personal style.

Besides the makeup and zils and coverup, there's another piece of costuming that's not in the picture:  the performer identity.  To me, when I slip into my performer persona, it feels like I'm putting on my last piece of costuming.  "Getting into Character," as they say in theater.  The performer identity is my code of conduct I use at gigs and networking events.  When I first started as a belly dancer, I had a stage name to reflect who I was as a belly dancer, but as I grew, I realized that I'm not a completely different person when I take on the ego as a belly dancer.  I'm just me.  Dance was so intertwined in my life anyway that there wasn't a need to slip into an alternate ego, but that's just my personal experience.  I know some people feel more honest with themselves in their belly dancer egos.  They even legally changed their birth names to their stage names.  Everyone has their own methods.

So for some like myself, instead of an alternate ego, the performer identity is more like a mentality or a role.  We all have multiple roles within our daily lives.  My main ones are mother, wife, blogger, mentor, instructor, and performer.  Each role comes with a mentality that is only a small facet of who I am entirely.

What's interesting is that the performer identity can be a social identity as well as a personal identity.  So how I behave in public formulates people's impressions of me and of other dancers as well.   "When you carry this axe, you carry all of us with you." This also means that the dancer has control of the impression that other people have of him or her.  If I want people to think of me as a professional, then I'll act professionally.  I am not saying that I am pretending to be who I am not in order to fulfill social expectations.  Me as a performer is who I am because it's a personal identity - how I see myself as a performer.  At the same time, the performer is a person who interacts with other people publicly, so it's also a social identity - how others see me.  You can tell that I'm a sociology nerd.  Gotta use my degree somehow!