Belly dance
Belly dance is a Middle Eastern dance that originated in Egypt, where in the tombs of ancient Egypt specifically in Minya Governorate in Upper Egypt, numerous depictions of female dancers can be found showing women swaying with delight to the rhythms of drums and clappers. It features movements of the hips and torso. A Western-coined exonym, it is also referred to as Middle Eastern dance or Arabic dance.
It has evolved to take many different forms depending on the country and region, both in costume and dance style, with the styles and costumes of Egypt being the most recognized worldwide due to Egyptian cinema. Belly dancing in its various forms and styles is popular across the globe where it is taught by a trainer of schools of dance.
Names and terminology
"Belly dance" is a translation of the French term danse du ventre. The name first appeared in 1864 in a review of the Orientalist painting Dance of the Almeh by Jean-Léon Gérôme.The first known use of the term "belly dance" in English is found in the writing of Charles James Wills in 1883.
Raqs sharqi is a broad category of professional forms of the dance, including forms of belly dance popularly known today, such as Raqs Baladi, Sa'idi, Ghawazee, and Awalim. The informal, social form of the dance is known as Raqs Baladi in Egyptian Arabic and is considered an indigenous dance.
Belly dance is primarily a torso-driven dance, with an emphasis on articulations of the hips. Unlike many Western dance forms, the focus of the dance is on isolations of the torso muscles, rather than on movements of the limbs through space. Although some of these isolations appear similar to the isolations used in jazz ballet, they are sometimes driven differently and have a different feeling or emphasis.
Movements found in belly dance
In common with most folk dances, there is no universal naming scheme for belly dance movements. Many dancers and dance schools have developed their own naming schemes, but none of these is universally recognized. The following attempt at categorization reflects the most common naming conventions:- Percussive: Staccato movements, most commonly of the hips, used to punctuate the music or accent a beat. Lifts or drops of the hips, chest or rib cage, shoulder accents, hip rocks, hits, and twists.
- Fluid: Flowing, sinuous movements in which the body is in continuous motion, used to interpret melodic lines and lyrical sections in the music, or modulated to express complex instrumental improvisations. These movements require a great deal of abdominal muscle control. Typical movements include horizontal and vertical figures of 8 or infinity loops with the hips, horizontal or tilting hip circles, and undulations of the hips and abdomen. These basic shapes may be varied, combined, and embellished to create an infinite variety of complex, textured movements.
- Shimmies, shivers and vibrations: Small, fast, continuous movements of the hips or ribcage, which create an impression of texture and depth of movement. Shimmies are commonly layered over other movements, and are often used to interpret rolls on the tablah or riq or fast strumming of the oud or qanun. There are many types of shimmy, varying in size and method of generation. Some common shimmies include relaxed, up and down hip shimmies, straight-legged knee-driven shimmies, fast, tiny hip vibrations, twisting hip shimmies, bouncing 'earthquake' shimmies, and relaxed shoulder or rib cage shimmies.
In the Middle East
Origins and history
Belly dancing is believed to have had a long history in the Middle East. Several Greek and Roman sources including Juvenal and Martial describe dancers from Asia Minor and Spain using undulating movements, playing castanets, and sinking to the floor with "quivering thighs", descriptions that are certainly suggestive of the movements that are today associated with belly dance. Later, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries, European travellers in the Middle East such as Edward Lane and Flaubert wrote extensively of the dancers they saw there, including the Awalim and Ghawazi of Egypt.In his book, Andrew Hammond notes that practitioners of the art form agree that belly dance is lodged especially in Egyptian culture, he states: "the Greek historian Herodotus related the remarkable ability of Egyptians to create for themselves spontaneous fun, singing, clapping, and dancing in boats on the Nile during numerous religious festivals. It's from somewhere in this great, ancient tradition of gaiety that the belly dance emerged."
The courtly pleasures of the Umayyad, Abbasid and Fatimid caliphs included belly dancing, soirée and singing. Belly dancing was viewed as a normal courtship dance where the woman would seduce the man she wanted with suggestive movements, but it was always done in private since no free woman could perform in public, such dance deemed indecent in the Islamic moral code of law. The belly dancers and singers sent from all parts of the vast empire to entertain the wealthy and powerful were as such almost always slaves or prostitutes. During this era of slavery in the Muslim world, these artists were trained to entertain male guests in singing and other art forms, such as the qiyan slave artists, who became common during the era of slavery in the Umayyad Caliphate. During the era of slavery in Egypt, female slaves were trained in singing and dancing and given as gifts between men.
In the Ottoman Empire, belly dance was performed by women and later, by boys, in the sultan's palace.
Modern social context
Despite belly dance commonly being known in the West as Arabic dance or Middle Eastern dance, much of the modern Arab world and Islamic Middle East considers it a highly disreputable art-form; in certain regions it is even outlawed.Belly dance remains common in Egypt, where it has two distinct social contexts: as a folk or social dance. As a social dance, belly dance is performed at celebrations and social gatherings by ordinary people, in their ordinary clothes. In more conservative or traditional societies, these events may be gender segregated, with separate parties where men and women dance separately.
Historically, professional dance performers were the Awalim, Ghawazi. The Maazin sisters may have been the last authentic performers of Ghawazi dance in Egypt, with Khayreyya Maazin still teaching and performing as of 2020.
Belly dancing is part of Egyptian culture, and is part of Arabic culture as a whole.
Throughout the Middle East and the Arab diaspora, belly dancing is closely associated with Arabic music that is modern classical.
In Egypt
The modern Egyptian belly dance style and the modern belly dance costumes of the 19th century were featured by the Awalim. For example, many of the dancers in Badia's Casinos went on to appear in Egyptian films and had a great influence on the development of the Egyptian style and became famous, like Samia Gamal and Taheyya Kariokka, both of whom helped attract eyes to the Egyptian style worldwide while Hekmet Fahmy became famous in the period up through World War II.Professional belly dance in Cairo has not been exclusive to native Egyptians, although the country prohibited foreign-born dancers from obtaining licenses for solo work for much of 2004 out of concern that potentially inauthentic performances would dilute its culture. The ban was lifted in September 2004, but a culture of exclusivity and selectivity remained. The few non-native Egyptians permitted to perform in an authentic way invigorated the dance circuit and helped spread global awareness of the art form. American-born Layla Taj is one example of a non-native Egyptian belly dancer who has performed extensively in Cairo and the Sinai resorts.
Egyptian belly dance is noted for its controlled, precise movements.
Although belly dance is traditionally seen as a feminine art, the number of male belly dancers has increased in recent years.
In Turkey
Belly dance is referred to in Turkey as Oryantal Dans, or simply 'Oryantal' literally meaning orient. Many professional dancers and musicians in Turkey continue to be of Romani heritage, and the Roma people of Turkey have had a strong influence on the Turkish style.Belly dance in the musical industry
Influence in pop music
Belly dance today is a dance used by various artists, however the greatest representative of this dance is the Colombian singer Shakira, who led this dance to position it as her trademark, with her songs Whenever Wherever and Ojos Así. Thanks to the song Hips Don't Lie, her hip dance skills became known worldwide. Also, thanks to Whenever Wherever in 2001, the belly dance fever began popularizing it in a large part of Latin America and later taking it to the United States.Over time in her presentations Shakira added this dance mixing it with Latin dances, like Salsa and Afro-Colombian, and she also she expressed that she began to dance these movements since she was little thanks to her Lebanese grandmother. Nowadays the belly dance is a characteristic dance of this singer which presented a variant with a rope entangling it in her body and dancing to the rhythm of Whenever Wherever. Shakira is the only artist in the music industry who has used belly dance on several occasions in her artistic career. She inspired Beyoncé to explore this type of dance in her Beautiful Liar collaboration where she also acted as choreographer. At the Super Bowl LIV Halftime Show event she returned to the belly dance with rope during the transition from Ojos Así thus to Whenever Wherever.