Travel back in time to belly dancers like the Ghawazee and Awalim dancers from Egypt, the Ouled Nail dancers from Algeria and the Roma dancers who developed the art of belly dancing centuries before us.
Belly dancing comes from Egypt. It originated within the Ancient Egyptian civilization and remained there for a long while. However, Romani travelers in Egypt adopted the dance and brought it with them during their movements. In this way, the Romani became associated with it by ignorant foreigners.
If you take a close look at how people who call us “belly dancers” dance now and how Middle Eastern dancers danced hundreds of years ago, things will obviously be different.
The history of belly dancing crosses many cultural boundaries, starting in the Middle East and Africa and moving into Western cultures as a form of cultural dance and exotic entertainment.
The Ancient Origins of Belly Dancing
According to some reports, belly dancing today is extremely ancient and its traces can be found up to 6000 years ago, in some pagan societies that worshiped a female deity to glorify female fertility as something magical. Dance has been a form of self-expression for thousands of years, and there are several theories regarding the origin of belly dancing.
Belly dancing spread throughout the Middle East and beyond, having been brought to other countries by a nomadic traveler known as the Gypsies. Belly dancing is a form of dance that originated centuries ago; involves isolating the muscles for movements such as twisting the abdomen and moving the hips.
In recent years, mainly due to the feminist movement of the 70s and 80s, more and more women (first in the US, then around the world, including Europe, Oceania and the Far East) are discovering the inspiring nature of belly dancing. women. Belly dancing during this period was often referred to as “oriental” dance, and the first belly dancers became famous in Europe through writers and artists intrigued by the exotic nature of the art.
Although there were dancers performing Middle Eastern styles at the much smaller 1876 centenary celebration in Philadelphia, it was not until the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 that belly dancing caught national attention.
The Emergence of Belly Dancing in the United States
It is believed that belly dancing first appeared in the United States in 1893, when a dancer named “Little Egypt” performed at the Chicago World’s Fair. Cairo is traditionally the birthplace of Arabian dance, where great belly dancers, such as Henry Kissinger’s favorite Nagwa Fouad, learned and performed. The Middle East’s most famous belly dancer, Musabah Balbaki, has been performing at the Amor y Libertad nightclub in northern Beirut for years.
Aisha Ali, a dance expert from North Africa, observed and recorded a small group of nail belly dancers who were still performing in Bou Saada in the 1960s and 1960s. Research by Andrea Diagons shows that the bedle (belly dance costume) we know today originated in France based on the costumes worn by Mata Hari and other music hall dancers and was brought to Egypt by people who saw it in Paris and decided to bring it to the stages of the Middle East.
While we can’t yet pinpoint exactly how bedle was used in raqs sharqi (Egyptian belly dance) costumes, one thing is certain: no one has been able to document the use of a bra/girdle/bra in costumes. in the Middle East until the 20th century, and raqs (belly dance) definitely existed as a performance art before that.
Men Belly Dance as Well
As for the men, they are still dancing the folklore style of the country where the belly dance originated, not the dancer called Little Egypt. While I like the term, I don’t think it fits with what we call belly dancing, such as tribal dances performed in groups, and rax Sharki performed outside of his home country. Perform in a group, choreographing rather than improvising.
Despite Egypt’s position in Africa and the contributions of other countries such as France, Turkey and the United States, the term “belly dance” is now commonly used to refer to all traditional dances in the Middle East, including those that are not geographically there. All of these names, both in Turkish and Arabic, mean “Dance of the East” or “Dance of the East,” which is why many of our American dance researchers today prefer the linguistically correct term Oriental Dance.
Of course, no scene in the Islamic world can be excluded from the “locality” of Eastern dance, but its origin must be distinguished from the function of development or subsequent development.
Eastern Dancing and Its Long Plebeian Interest
The ancient art of oriental dance is still regarded in many parts of the Middle East as an informal dance practiced by people of all ages for the entertainment of friends and family. The dance had many other characteristics, often used in antiquity for secular entertainment and dancing everyday activities (a good example of this is the Persian dance, which has retained this character to this day).
Some examples of what the dances represented range from blessing and healing people to simulating harvesting and planting crops, preparing for childbirth, preparing for a wedding ceremony, and social entertainment.
Another idea believed to be behind the various belly dances is that they originated from the cult of the great mother goddess and matured from a combination of fertility cults, religious rituals, and magical and secular dances in particularly related ancient civilizations. to the cult of the great mother goddess. For example, my first belly dance teacher, whose family is Iraqi and Jordanian, told me how even today women sometimes dance on introductions and also select potential brides for their children based on how girls dance.
At this point, belly dancing had a rather sensual reputation, and Western women worked hard to reinvent it as a female-oriented dance to be performed in conjunction with women’s celebrations such as childbirth and worship of a new age goddess. Belly dance, a fast and complex rhythmic movement of the hips, is a special and fascinating dance originated by the women of the Ouled Nile tribe of the Berber culture in modern Algeria, the Ouled Nile tribe of the Berber culture at the present time. day Algeria before Islamization in the 7th century.
