The History Of Authentic Belly Dancing

. Saturday, January 2, 2010
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By Tanik Nertt

Belly dancing is a term employed in the West to describe ancient Arab dance. Belly dancing is extremely an inadequate term, since all parts of the body are used in traditional Arab dance or raqs sharqi, that is the proper terminology for the foremost poular vogue within the West. Raqs sharqi really places a lot of stress on the hips instead of belly dancing.

Belly dancing comes in several styles of vogue, relying on the region and country of origin. Some styles are totally Western interpretations.

Raqs sharqi, that means that Oriental dance in translation, is the type performed in restaurants and clubs within the West. This dance is generally performed by women, although sometimes by men as well. It is an improvisational dance that's most typically performed solo.

Raqs baladi, that means that dance of country, is the folks vogue of belly dancing performed at social events by men and women in Middle Eastern countries.

The origins of belly dancing are unknown and often fiercely debated. One theory is that it was developed by women to help other girls in childbirth or to demonstrate childbirth. There's no real proof of this, however, and while this would possibly explain half of the dance, it certainly would not justify all that's involved in belly dancing.

Another theory explains that the belly dance began in Northern Africa and unfold through the Caravans to other Middle Jap countries. There's also a theory that belly dancing saw its origin in Ancient Babylon. This theory follows that prior to Islam, the ladies danced and the men played drums at social events. Once Islamic times the women were no longer permitted to dance, and the ritual fell to slave girls.

The first recorded encounter with belly dancing was when Napoleon invaded Egypt and his troops came across Gypsy dancers. It gained popularity within the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when, during the Romantic Movement, artists used it to depict romanticized version of harem living in the Ottoman Empire. It was regarding this time when oriental dancers began working at exhibits and therefore the World's Truthful, causing more of a stir than many of the technical demonstrations.

Belly dancing very gained national attention at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. It's here that entertainment director Sol Bloom is credited with having concocted the phrase. There's, but, no proof that he ever used the term and newspapers of the day were using the French terminology, danse de ventre, to describe the Oriental dancing. Nonetheless, the actual fact that uncorseted girls were gyrating their hips at many exhibitions of the World's Fair brought shock to some Victorian sensibilities and set the term belly dancing into the ordinary lexicon.

Such popularity spawned tons, if not thousands, of dancers around the country to assert their acts as authentic, when most of them were improvised solos routines. The dancing became so widespread that it was the topic of many early films by Thomas Edison. A little later, Hollywood sought to make the most the Western intrigue with the orient in films like The Sheik, Cleopatra, and Salome.

These days, belly dancing is a very excepted and appreciated kind of entertainment worldwide, though we tend to will never know who is doing the genuine dance and who is not.

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