Why doesn’t the instructor write that this is about free advertising? Why present herself as the victim of hate? The principle it doesn’t matter what they say about me, as long as they talk about me may not be a particularly sensible marketing strategy. Unless, thanks to it, offers for oriental dance really do start coming in more abundantly.

The entire “scandal” began with a column: Belly Dancing for Jesus, and the Tithe for the Church. It contained the following words about oriental dance:

People financed the large parish festival on Orzeszkowej Street. They donated prizes, baked cakes, performed on stage and paid for everything while watching an Arab fertility dance, which filmmakers in Hollywood turned into an erotic dance, and which left-wing Europe regards as an expression of women’s liberation and self-acceptance. Jesus watched all this from a painting on the stage.

Prizes, food and attractive dancers will obviously draw crowds, and crowds bring wallets. The fact that belly dancing is stereotypically perceived as an erotic dance intended to arouse the senses, something no heterosexual man needs to have demonstrated to him, can somehow be swallowed.

For every logically thinking person, the column’s words mean that:

  1. oriental dance is an Arab fertility dance
  2. it was Hollywood filmmakers who turned it into an erotic dance
  3. in Europe, oriental dance is regarded as an expression of women’s self-acceptance
  4. oriental dance is stereotypically perceived as an erotic dance.

These are neutral words about oriental dance, often used interchangeably with belly dance (the instructor herself advertises on her website with the words: Oriental Dance Shows – Belly Dance).

In the column:

  1. no one was subjected to hate
  2. the parishioners were not insulted
  3. no children were humiliated.

These terms appear only in the instructor’s posts.

Yes, Grażyna Hanaf’s column was critical, but it discussed the pattern by which money is collected for the church. That is: people prepare the festival themselves, sponsor the prizes themselves, dance themselves and pay for everything themselves. And the money goes toward the church’s needs. That was what the column was about. You can check it yourself.

Within several dozen minutes of the column’s publication, the instructor wrote:

Congratulations on seeing through the hidden meaning and insulting all the parishioners (...) I understand that the article with an apology is already at the editorial office...

Then, a moment later, she was already writing in this style:

I am taking this opportunity to invite all children and women of every age to classes in beautiful oriental dance (...).

After all this and the advertisements the dancer places beneath our materials, it is difficult to believe her sincerity when she writes about how she was treated in the media and the alleged hate she supposedly encountered from us.

Let us explain that, at a public institution in Bolesławiec, the instructor taught dance using taxpayers’ money, but the rules changed during the pandemic and she had to start charging her students fees. It is therefore understandable that, under such difficult circumstances, every advertisement is attractive to a dance instructor. Whether it is belly dancing at a parish festival with a banner showing Jesus in the background, or at weddings, business meetings or local celebrations.

We wish the instructor’s colleagues good reading comprehension. After their Facebook posts, one might get the impression that they are building another stereotype: that of a dancer who moves everything except her head. But that is clearly not the case, as the Bolesławiec instructor proves by cleverly slipping in advertisements while playing the victim of hate.