Our local Folk Festival currently schedules belly dancers but does not do the same for poetry and story telling. Question: which is more 'folk'? My opinion, though I'm not a big fan of open forum poetry readings and story telling, is that it is folk in a way that belly dancing can't approach. Belly dancing may be great exercise, as its proponents claim, and it may be visually exciting to approximately half of the audience as the goggle-eyes attest but I don't see its relevance in our culture. Amplitude may be historically correct for belly dancers but when those double-bellied bodies sashay down the aisles it makes me giggle.

Besides, it makes me physically cold- when I see all that skin whether in an auditorium or outdoors it makes me reach for a coat.

Any thoughts? Please give me some ammunition/amplification (giggle that I can march into a board meeting with.

Ebbie