Belly Dancing

Belly Dancing

The belly dance scene is booming.

The first exposure to Belly Dancing or Middle Eastern dance for people who do not come from a Middle-Eastern background is often at a Turkish, Lebanese or Egyptian restaurant. Some may be invited to Jewish, Arabic, Turkish or Greek wedding where a dancer is hired to entertain the guests and promote fertility of the bride and groom. Others may recall the Hollywood movies where no good film was without music, song and dance of some sort - including the Biblical epics.

We are all familiar with the range of responses we get when we mention that we "do belly dance"..... from "wow, that must be fun!" to "do you wear a jewel in your navel?" (shudder) to "oohhh" (with arched eyebrow and a look down the nose). However, it's not surprising that we meet with such a range of responses when we ourselves have difficulty in defining what we do. Do we dance for ourselves to have fun, or to entertain others? Is what we do high art, or a whisker different from stripping? Is one style of dancing more correct than another? These are difficult questions to answer. Caring passionately about the dance, I've given these questions a lot of thought.

Development of the dance in the Middle East

The development of middle-eastern dance through ancient history is rather obscure and we can only make educated guesses as to its origins. Some evidence suggests that the women's dance of the Fertile Crescent was the mother of the dance as we know it today. Certainly there are common movements throughout the Middle-East despite the development of regional and tribal styles. It is commonly understood that the movement of gypsies from place to place and the establishment of the harems (where women from different areas mingled) allowed the introduction of movements from other localities. This blending can be seen in the use of neck slides introduced from India and the transformation of hip shimmy to foot stamping in flamenco dance.

The development of the Beledi style came with the urbanization of the population. As country people moved to the cities the style of their dance changed. Beledi style and the ghawazee (gypsy dancers) influence combined and the concept of the modern cabaret dancer was born.... a blend of styles and costuming specifically for female solo dancers. This cabaret dance is at once fluid but structured. Influenced by the West and the expectations of Western tourists, it was (and is still today) appreciated by Middle-Easterners as their dance. Despite the influence of the West, the structure of the classical cabaret performance is Middle-Eastern in concept and execution. The rhythms are the rhythms of the tribes. But the dance is a new and distinct dance.

Just as Westerners have diverse opinions as to the merit or otherwise of this dance, so the attitude seems to be in the Middle-East. Many people enjoy the dance, admire the dancer's skill, find it entertaining.

Since the "glamour" era of the dance from the 1940's to the 1970's as available to us on video and in old film clips, the dance has changed again. The music in some countries has become more Westernized, the dance more like disco. Being a dance enthusiast is seen as old-fashioned, instead the singers are the heroes of the young.