Bellydance

There is a correlation between bellydance and the lost spiritual practices from diverse cultures. The dance form that today many calls belly dance is extremely old and traces of it can be found up to 6,000 years ago, in some pagan societies who used to worship a feminine deity, to celebrate women's fertility as something magic.

As early as 1000 B.C., temple engravings depicting dancers have been found in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Greece. They connect the emergence of belly dance with the ceremonies worshiping of the Egyptian Goddess Isis, the Greek Aphrodite, Mesopotamian Ishtar, all of whom are personifying an image of Great Mother Goddess. Until today some Bedouin tribes perform the ceremonial dance – women surround the woman in labor far from male eyes, and dance driving away all evil spirits. They make movements similar to the movements of labor so that spirits can’t distinguish which one of the women gives birth, and can’t steal the soul of the newborn.

In the time of the Phoenicians (11th Century BC to 5th Century BC) Arab family of the Umayyad came to Spain from Lebanon and sent Basque singers and dancers to Damascus and Egypt for training in the Middle Eastern style.

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 travelers in the Middle East such as Edward Lane and Flaubert wrote extensively of the dancers they saw there, including the Awalim and Ghawazee 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."

In the Ottoman Empire, belly dance was performed by women and later, by boys, in the Sultan's palace.[1]

Belly dancing history crosses many cultural boundaries, getting its start in the Middle East and Africa, and moving on to evolve in western cultures as both a form of cultural dance and entertainment. In the 21st century, the genre has gained considerable popularity all around the world. 

The term "belly dance" is a westernized name that originally referred to traditional Middle Eastern dancing. The earliest forms of belly dance were the Egyptian ghawazi dance during the 19th century, and Raqs Sharqi, an Arabic dance of the 20th century. Despite Egypt's location in Africa and contributions from other nations such as France, Turkey and the United States, the term belly dance typically includes all traditional dances of the Middle Eastern region, including those not geographically situated there.

The first belly dancers were a group of traveling dancers known as the ghawazee. These women were considered gypsies* in Egypt in the 18th century, and were banished from Cairo during the 1830s, but went on to perform in Upper Egypt and later in the Middle East and Europe. Belly dancing was, during this time period, often known as "Oriental" dancing, and the women were made famous in Europe by authors and painters intrigued by the exotic nature of the art.

*"Gypsy" is commonly used to describe the Romani people. But the term carries many negative connotations, and its derivative carries even more: when somebody is "gypped," they are, according to Merriam-Webster, "defrauded, swindled, cheated." [2]

From the ghawazee troupe, the raqs sharqi genre of belly dancing began to develop. More urban than the purest dance forms in earlier belly dancing history, it quickly became popular and took cues from not only the ghawazee but also various folk-dance styles, ballet, Latin dance, and even American marching bands.[3]

Belly dancing gained popularity in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. In the late 1960s Tribal Style bellydance began in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. Jamila Salimpour is credited for beginning the eclectic fusion approach to Middle Eastern dance in her presentations at the Northern California Renaissance Pleasure Faire with her seminal group, Bal Anat. Bal Anat showcased small ensembles of dancers costumed in rich textiles and heavy jewelry, each representing a region or style of belly dance, while a chorus of dancers played cymbals and other instruments in a chorus behind them. For the costumes and dances in Bal Anat, Jamila drew inspiration from current anthropological research, as well as from her own imagination and a hefty dose of fantasy. She was one of the first to showcase performing with a sword, which is now one of the most popular props in belly dance. Her show also featured balancing on water goblets, dancing with live snakes, and performing with water pots. Bal Anat continues to perform, making it the world’s oldest belly dance company.

This new style was uniquely American in it’s fusionary approach, since it did not accurately represent any particular tribe from any particular place and was aptly named “California Tribal” or “American Tribal” by Morocco of New York. 

Although Jamila did not call this fusion blend of influences “tribal” or anything other than bellydance. Suhaila mentions in an interview “An Afternoon with Suhaila” in Jareeda Magazine, May 1996, that “The whole split in American between tribal and cabaret styles is funny to me. It wasn’t tribal style it was more of an attempt to give our audience a 30-minute education in the dances of the Middle East, cabaret style included.”

The next step towards today’s interpretation of American Tribal Style Bellydance came from One of Jamila Salimpour’s students Masha Archer in the 1970s. Masha founded her own group the San Francisco Classic Dance Troupe and developed her own interpretation of bellydance. Her style was focused more on the artistic side of a group presentation. She “added more uniformity to the new style by not distinguishing between the regions and simply identifying it as bellydance” – from “The Lineage of American Tribal Style” by Rina Rall, TribalTalk, Vol. 2 #3. As she and her students evolved, their approach shifted more towards American and European aesthetics and ideas, including the use of non-Middle Eastern music, costume and styles of movement.

One of her students, Carolena Nericcio, took ideas from Masha’s classes, Jamila’s approach and her own sense of style and began working on what would become the primary interpretation of American Tribal Style Bellydance we know today. Carolena founded San Francisco’s FatChanceBellyDance in 1987. Carolena and her dancers developed the fine art of “leading and following.” [4]

These faraway places lend us their aesthetic, steps, and their music. Belly dance is a celebration of the physical form. We feel the soulful connection to the music and the Divine connection to our ancestors.

[1]“Belly dance.” Wikipedia, 25 May 2022, < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belly_dance>.

[2] Janaki Challa, 2013, Why Being 'Gypped' Hurts The Roma More Than It Hurts You, Code Switch: Word Watch, accessed 22 June 2022, https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/12/30/242429836/why-being-gypped-hurts-the-roma-more-than-it-hurts-you.

[3]Tamara Warta, Belly Dancing History, Love to Know, accessed 22 June 2022, <https://dance.lovetoknow.com/belly-dancing-history>.

[4] Brice, Rachel (2018). Genesis. 8 Elements of Belly Dance Phase 1 Initiation Study Guide.