A Brief History of Belly Dance

Oriental Dance

Oriental Dance or Belly Dance is the oldest form of recorded Dance in the history of mankind. Historical evidence shows that belly dancers are in Egyptian tomb paintings as early as 14th Century BC and Persian miniature paintings in the 12th and 13th Centuries. Though movements come from many related dance traditions throughout the Middle East and Mediterranean rim.

Most Oriental Dancers consider Egypt to be the origin of Belly Dance. Its apparent origins are in fertility cults and entertainment for kings. The dances spread from Mesopotamia to North Africa, where tribal women danced in the marketplace, earning coins for their dowries, and on to Rome, Spain, and India. Each region and village developed its own style.

It is also thought to be a fertility ritual passed down by women from generation to generation. The dance was done with many layers of colorful clothing, belted at the waist. No skin showed. The dancers bounced layers of skirts by tilting their pelvises violently.

In 600 AD it was banned by Islam, it did not start to emerge again into main stream culture until the late 1800’s.

The world first encountered Oriental Dance at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, in the performance of an Egyptian dancer nicknamed Little Egypt. She was wearing more cloths than most belly dancers today but she scandalized the Victorians of the time.

The term Belly Dance was coined in 1893 by Sol Bloom, impresario of the Midway Plaisance and Street Cairo in Chicago, IL. He did it deliberately, to tantalize the dirty minds of the Victorians of that era, who would pay any price to see something they thought was salacious, so they could go home and pretend to be shocked. In a time when people thought the words arm and leg were too risque (they called them limbs). Mr. Bloom calculated correctly and earned himself enough money to finance his later Congressional campaign, which he won. The name stuck.

In the 1920’s Belly Dance found a new market in Cairo~ foreigners. Night clubs started to open up to cater to them. Similar nightclubs also arose in Beirut, Lebanon. The Egyptians started to dress performers in costumes similar to the 1940’s show girl costumes of the United States. Soon, Egyptian Dance (known today as Egyptian Cabaret) was setting a new standard throughout the Middle East for treating Oriental Dance as a performing art rather than a social dance. Because of the decline of tourism in the Middle East, there has been a decline in the dance scene in Egypt since the 1960’s. Although the social dance is part of the culture throughout the Middle East, there really was not any analogous development of Oriental Dance as a performing art in Turkey, Iran, and North Africa. So that’s why many people from the Middle East refer to the public performance of Oriental dance as Arabic dance.

Today, Oriental Dance is still considered a beautiful and graceful dance in the Middle East. It is not just used in restaurants and for tourism. Today, some of the more famous Turkish and Egyptian Cabaret Dancers perform in competitions each year.

Oriental Dance is still a dance for social occasions. In the Middle East, Oriental dance is performed primarily in family situations, for example, social dinners, family outing, and New Years celebrations. It is used as a way to socialize amongst women and womens functions. The women would gather in a circle, taking turns dancing solo or with others, showing off their skill, grace and beauty to the encouragement of the others. When a girl danced for the first time, it was a rite of passage into the world of womanhood. In Morocco, it is good luck to hire a belly dancer to dance for a wedding. It is still used as a Fertility ritual in certain tribes in Morocco and Saudi Arabia. The Ritual Dance is still not intended to be seen by men. It is taught to girls at an early age to be used in child birth.

American Tribal Style

American Belly Dance, is unique in that its present form has been shaped by so many different cultural influences and traditions. Americans were enthralled by Belly Dance at the 1893 Worlds Fair, and the American Belly Dance tradition was born. Here in the United States, the most popular style performed is still traditionally Egyptian Cabaret. However, a new style has emerged, especially on the west coast, American Tribal Style Belly Dance. It is an ethnic fusion style, influenced by Middle Eastern Dance. It has nothing to do with representing a particular dance style, but it combines movement vocabularies and regional costuming to form one cohesive presentation.

The American part of the label acknowledges that the dancers are continents away from the culture that created the dance form and are taking artistic license with it. Yet they still must acknowledge, and respect the roots. The look of American Tribal Style seems authentic because of its resemblance to various gypsy tribes throughout North Africa, the Middle East, Southern Europe and India. Often, Arabs comment that the style reminds them of Belly Dance. However, the costumes are not authentic but give the feeling of home. American Belly Dance is unique in that its present form has been shaped by so many different cultural influences and traditions. Jamila Salimpour, an American, is considered the originator of American Tribal Style Belly Dance. Her dance group, Bal-Anat, paved the way for others to use a fusion of the various regional dances of the Middle East and North Africa as inspiration for their own version of Belly Dance.