Middle Eastern Dance

I'm so intrigue by the culture of Middle Eastern that I've decided to include all the cultures aspects of middle eastern, not only the music. And today, I'm going to cover the topic on dance. Everybody knows the famous bellydance. So lets find out MORE! But first, lets cover the more general history of middle eastern dance.

HISTORY OF MIDDLE EASTERN DANCE
Middle Eastern Dance has many origins. It is possible that this dance can be traced back to Mesopotamia where temple engravings depicting dancers have been found. It is believed by many that this dance started as an ancient ritual dance for fertility and childbirth. The priestesses were sometimes "sacred prostitutes" where they would perform these dances for clients as they invoked the Goddess. Around 0 B.C. there were Greek writings that described Nile dancers as rapidly vibrating. There were even different classes of dancers.

Ghawazee and Gypsy dancers were street performers who were not very educated women.


Awalim Dancers. The person who sold these Awalim dancers are called Ustiz.


Almeh was a woman who had been trained in the art of dance and music. They often played the oud and even came with a list of songs and poems that they could play and recite for you.


Every class of dancers had a very different style of dance.

Factual stories that existed there.
During the Ottoman reign over Egypt there was a surge in tourism and many soldiers. The Ghawazee dancers of course saw this as a moneymaking opportunity and would follow camps of soldiers to dance for. This embarrassed and angered the ruler of the time who exiled the Ghawazee to Esna, which is in southern Egypt, to solve his problem.

The rise of Belly Dance
In the 1880’s, the dance had a boom in Europe, which was called Salome Dancing. This was partly inspired by Mata Hari who claimed to be an eastern dancer but who in fact was pretty much a glorified stripper. In the 1890’s, the worlds fair introduced Middle Eastern dance to the western world. They termed this dance belly dance to entice people to see it. At that time, it was very risqué to talk about a woman's hips because it brought to mind other things and so even belly was a strong word to use but was as much as they could get away with without getting into trouble. The dancers who danced at the worlds fair were not dressed as you would see most Middle Eastern dancers today. They were fully clothed in long dresses with simply a piece of cloth tied about their hips.

Hollywood was the beginning of this change. As with everything that comes out of Hollywood, costuming became much more glamorous. Old Hollywood films show women for the first time with bare midriffs, a fancy bra like top and an embellished belt around their waist. This style then traveled back to Egypt where they made the final transition to the costume of the day where they lowered the belt to sit at the hips instead of the waist. This showed the moves much better.

More interesting history could be found here http://middleeasterndance.homestead.com/History.html

On a side note, I was so amazed on how they portrayed the history. For some reason, it didn't bore me and I continuosly read it until the end. Maybe because of the language they used which seem more err... friendly? Or it could be I'm so into this Middle Eastern culture right now.