What is Belly Dance? Part 1

A couple years ago I had arranged to have my dance students dance for a local 4^th of July festival. I was trying to expand the venues in which to have new students acquire some stage experience. I had cleared it with the festival directors who instructed me to call the person in charges of the stage set up. The conversation still reverberate like the sound chalk on an old time the black board. His response was "This is a family event...we can't be have no hooch Koch thank, or what ever you call what you do, at our festival..." When I tried to explain the insults to the festival directors, they were like a deer in front of the head lights; they did't have a clue what I was upset about, either

Now, mind you, this is a festival that serves alcohol and has musicians on a stage singing songs like "Cocaine" all night. I even suspect some of these old rock-and-rollers might be friends with "Mary Jane" but somehow what I proposed was distasteful? I pondered... I would have normally used the term "Middle-Eastern dance" but in the wake of 911I had found the repose to anything from the Middle-East was associated to terrorism and referred to with derogatory phrases like "towel head" and "sand nigger-" With the family name "Zbeide" I have even had my phone tapped. I have had a supervisor fmake statements like "you do that sexual dancing" (Dance therapy goups at the State Hospital? ) and have a few of my associates that have been fired or denied jobs because they dance. Welcome to the land to the free!

Belly dance is really a misnomer. The proper name for art is Danes Oriental (No I did't spell it wrong!) or Racks AL Shark. (Dance or the Orient.) The term "belly dance" appears for the first time at The World's Columbian Exposition as known as 1893 Chicago World's Fair. The World's Fair was named for the 400^th Anniversary of Christopher Columbus' Discovery of the "new world." Some theories are that Americans corrupted the Arabic word "Bleed" dance for "Belly dance." The other theory is, that a French speaking dancer (Yes, French was still the educated language is Europe.) who called herself "Little Egypt" titled performance "danses de venture" and that was translated to "belly dance" in English. The story goes that when the fair opened no body wanted to come see and "oriental dance" and when translated to "belly dance" it was the last show at the exhibition to close.

In either event, I think it is important to look at the culture of the time to see fully understand what transpired. It the Victorian Era (Queen Victoria was the Queen of England at the time.), there was a Gothic Revival, there were distinct classes, the Woman's Rights Movement was just conceived, Charles Darwin had just published "The Origins of Species" , "Jack the Ripper" was on the loose, and most lower class children were still working and being maimed in the mills.

There was 4 percent more women and men, thousands of women had been banned from working in the mines and out of work. Single women who had intercourse were all label as "fallen women." The emphasis on female purity was in homemaking, women could only divorce their husbands on oft adultery included abuse. Men could divorce their wife on any grounds. Victorian prudery was so strong that even then uncovered legs on piano's were scandalous. Women of the lower classes still hand made the all family's clothing and the very lives of Victorian women were constricted corsets. Since is took three people to get lacked into this torture device, I doubt that men saw the wife's very often without the. Middle class women were instructed not to enjoy sex, think of it as their duty, and to lie still and think of mother England.

In this context movement of the stomach was certainly considered to erotic.

The ethnic "Beledi" costume consisted of a long flowing blouse, a vest, pantaloons covered with layered scarves about the hips and a head piece that usually included a veil. The silent movie era had yet to be conceived. The cut away costume of the Hollywood melodrama and fantasy films of the 1920' like Cleopatra, The Sheik, and The Thief of Baghdad, were century's in the future.