The origins of Oriental dance, also known as belly dance, can be traced back more than 6,000 years to a time when dance was used to worship the great mother goddess. This sacred dancing featured sharp hip movements and abdominal contractions and spasms that mimicked the female body's responses during labor and delivery, and some believe that Oriental dance originated as a means of preparing women to give birth. The dance itself was considered sacred and not intended to be seen by men.
Though belly dancing is believed to have evolved out of pagan fertility rituals in the ancient cultures of the Middle East, Greece and India, it is commonly thought that nomadic tribes of gypsies were responsible for spreading it from India into Afghanistan and Persia, then into Turkey, Egypt, North Africa and Europe. In 1453 in Istanbul, Turkey, female belly dancers entertained in the courts of the Ottoman Empire. In Egypt, dancers called ghawazee were immortalized in history when Napoleon's armies invaded Egypt in 1798 and soldiers reported seeing the "scandalous and exotic" dancers.
Belly dance spread to Europe and America in the late 19th century mainly due to the flow of tourists to the Middle East. In 1851 Oriental dancers performed at the Crystal Palace Exhibition in London. The first documented evidence of belly dance performances in America was at the Philadelphia Centennial in 1876. In 1893 at the Chicago World's Fair, a sideshow belly dancer named Little Egypt sparked controversy among straight-laced Americans with her "lewd" movements.
For most of the first half of the 20th century in the U.S., belly dancing was centered in small clubs frequented by Greek and Turkish clientele. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, belly dancing became more refined as studios opened to train dancers. Interest in belly dancing waned in the early 1980s but blossomed again in the late 1980s to the present day with the advent of instructional videos and the Internet.
Oriental dance is done with the entire body, not just the belly. It is usually a solo dance that incorporates undulating hips and shoulders with stamps of the feet or jumps. Often, the dancer is barefoot, enforcing the connection to Mother Earth. Many belly dancers use finger cymbals while dancing; others incorporate props such as veils, canes and candelabras.
The basic belly dance costume of today consists of bustier, harem pants, layered skirts, veils and coin-studded belts. (The custom of wearing coins as decoration is derived from the time when gypsy dancers would perform in the streets and stash the gold coins they received in their belts for safekeeping.) Historically, though, belly dance costumes were more modest, consisting of long dresses with long sleeves and loose pants underneath. The two-piece costume that is generally attributed to belly dancers originated in the 1930s in an Egyptian nightclub whose European clientele found the original costume not revealing enough.
In Egypt, Oriental dance is called raqs sharqi (pronounced roks sharkee), which translates literally to "eastern dance" or "Oriental dance." The French named it dance du ventre or dance of the stomach. It is known in Turkey as Oryantal tansi. According to historians, the term "belly dance" was coined by Sol Bloom, a sideshow impresario, for the Chicago World's Fair in 1893 in order to attract mid-Victorian audiences.
Although it is performed throughout the Middle East, Oriental dance has flourished the most in Egypt, Lebanon and Turkey. Today in the Middle East, women dance for other women as a way to amuse themselves during the day. At modern Middle Eastern weddings, it is still the custom for the bride and groom to hire a belly dancer and have their picture taken with their hands on the belly dancer's stomach, a reference to the dance's relation to ancient fertility cults. In the U.S. Oriental dance is performed in nightclubs and in theaters. It usually is danced solo and the costumes are generally flashy and sometimes skimpy. Extensive use of veils, swords and sometimes snakes is now common. Belly dancing classes are now ubiquitous as it is seen as a body-friendly form of exercise.