PEOPLE ALWAYS ASK….    © 2004   Patricia Scott

(In gratitude to the many dancers/historians who share their knowledge in workshops, books, and on the Web)

 

What is “belly dancing”?  Where did it begin?  For that matter, when did dance itself begin? 

 

My own weird theory is that early humans heard the tapping of a woodpecker, the giggle of water on rocks, the winnowing of wings overhead and, with these sounds in mind, they put two sticks together and created rhythm.  Then someone listening said, “Cool beat.  Let’s dance.” 

 

Can this be verified?  Why, no.  Because before history was written, information was passed on by symbolic pictures that were scratched, painted or carved on flat, static mediums.  Interpreting these historical “records” isn’t easy, particularly when looking for evidence of motion.  Still, I suspect that where there were ears and a human culture there was dance.

 

Paleolithic drawings on a cave wall at Addaura near Palermo, Sicily (c. 15,000-10,000 B.C.) show human figures exhibiting “dancelike* movements.”1   Marija Gimbutus (1989) sees the sacred ring dance* in a vase-support in Cucuteni ceramics made in the second half of the 5th millennium B.C.2  (Stylized figures in a circle. I can barely make out six cute butts…  Are they talking, debating, praying, or are they indeed dancing?)   Hour-glass shaped figures with arms above their heads painted on sarcophagi or caves found in NW Bulgaria (c. 4500-4000 B.C.) and the Ukraine (c. 3800-3600 B.C.) were interpreted as ritual dancers.3  A Minoan fresco in Crete’s Palace of Knossos (2000-1700 B.C.) is said to depict a “dancing girl,” hair flowing out with her spins; and a gold signet-ring from the tomb of Isopata near Knossos (c. 1500  B.C.) shows “a religious scene which may represent an ecstatic ritual dance and an ‘epiphany’ of a goddess.”4  The statuette of the Dancers and lyre player (Palaikastro, Eastern Crete c. 1300 B.C.) and the fresco of the Garden fete: girls dancing before the crowd (Knossos, c. 1500 BC) seem more obviously dance.5  (*Emphasis all mine.)

 

Fertility cults are associated with nearly every culture.  Sacred dance is often said to be integral to the practice.  The ancient Greeks have mentioned priestesses engaged in “ecstatic dances” at the temple of Artemis at Ephesus and ecstatic dances in connection with Pan, the ancient god of nature, and Aphrodite, goddess of human love and fertility, on the island of Cyprus and of Dionysus.6  Still, what did any of this dance really look like, and how was it akin to “belly dance”?   We can deduce and extrapolate, but until there is time travel we may never know.

 

 “Belly dancing,” as it’s mistakenly called in this country, derives from dance movements done all over the Middle East, North Africa, Southern Europe and India,7 and even farther afield for American belly dance.  Its foundation, many believe, is raks sharki (or raqs al sharqi) which means Dance of the East, or Oriental Dance, said to be one of the oldest continuing classical folk dance forms in existence.   As such, it has been part of the family setting for both men and women in North Africa, the Middle East, and as far east as Iran for centuries, where it is associated most strongly with weddings and other family occasions.8 

 

It’s said that this dance began, and may continue in some quarters, as a birthing ritual.  The undulations of a circle of women can be hypnotic and they may remind a woman in labor of the muscle movements that may assist the birthing process.9  Indeed Morocco--dancer, author and historian--calls Oriental dancing  “the oldest form of natural childbirth instruction”.10  

 

On the other hand, I’ve also heard the theory that this dance began in the harem when a particularly large sultan was unable to produce himself any of the movements conducive to sexual intercourse.  And it’s further been suggested that this dance originated as a temple dance for the goddess. 

 

The first theory has been borne out by oral tradition.  The second has had no confirming evidence.  For the third, the evidence, while remarkable, has been inconclusive.

 

Certainly ancient records reveal movement reminiscent of Oriental dance or “belly dancing”.  A Greek papyrus from 206 A.D. contains a contract for the performance of a “castanet” or cymbal dancer. 11 In addition, Greek vases bear witness, it’s said, to courtesan dancers called on to entertain, which one researcher described, saying: “they used to rotate the hips in the manner of a pestle” (in a mortar).12  Irena Lexova in her study of Egyptian tomb drawings discovered a movement she describes as a hip “down,” a downward step still used in Oriental dance and “belly dance” today.13   And Morocco cites a Roman general who “excoriated the ‘Iberian dancing girls, who sank with quivering lascivious thighs, to the ground.’”14 

 

Dance and dancers are mentioned in many texts and contexts, but whether the dance is similar to belly dancing/oriental dance/raks sharki, we cannot tell.  “The Muslim world never regarded dance as an art [thus, like most cultures] they never made any historical documentation or description of the dance,” says Tarik Sultan.15  However, Europeans began documenting Middle Eastern dance in the 1800s, with descriptions that seem to assure that what they found certainly was a predecessor of today’s dance, whether known as oriental dance, raks sharki or belly dance.

 

According to Encyclopedia Britannica, Egyptian archaeology begun by Napoleon enabled Jean Francois Champollion to decipher ancient Egyptian writing for the first time in 1822. What a break-through!  In 1846 ancient Mesopotamian cuneiform writing was first deciphered.  Then Heinrich Schliemann investigated the origins of Greek civilization at Troy and Mycenae in the 1870s, followed by discoveries at Rhodes by M.A. Biliotti.  Arthur Evans began work at Knossos in Crete in 1900 to discover the Minoan civilization.  The piece de resistance of all this antiquities hunting was probably the 1922 discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen, with its amazing treasures eventually revealed.16

 

In any case, slow unveiling is seductive, whether of a physical body or of a body of knowledge.  As a result, there grew a thirst for antiquities and all things ancient.  During the 1800s Europeans were drawn to the Middle East and North Africa, which they observed with a stranger’s eye. Seen from the perspective of a self-centered and self-serving, straight-laced (even corseted), rich, technologically advanced society, what they found was wondrous, fascinating and/or despicable and morally corrupt.  The accounts they have left us—written, photographed and painted—are suspect.  They created a faux culture that Europeans “bought” and then sold back to the original.

 

The French were among those both enamored and offended by the undulations of the dancers in these unusual lands, especially the Ghawazee (Sinte “Gypsies”) in Egypt and the Ouled Nail in North Africa.  To describe what they saw they coined the expression le danse du ventre, dance of the stomach.  Eventually, dancers and musicians from the Middle East were brought to the United States, in particular for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876.  But the dancers brought to Chicago by Sol Bloom for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exhibition caused a sensation when they were marketed as “belly dancers.”17 It was after that the dance in the United States came to be called “belly dance.” 

 

It’s said that the first nightclubs to offer this type of entertainment in a public setting appeared in Egypt in the 1920s, with similar nightclubs appearing in Lebanon.  Then dancers could be seen in movies originating in Cairo and Beirut.  Meanwhile, the U.S. movie industry conjured up fantasy harems which, when presented in film, cross-pollinated with those in the Middle East, changing the costumes and presentation of the dance forever.18  The Egyptian entertainment industry blossomed.  The “modern nightclub dancer” may have been born thereafter at the Opera Casino, a dance hall opened by Badia Masabni, a Lebanese woman.19 

 

The dance began to flourish in the States in perhaps the 1960s and 1970s, where it has ebbed and surged ever since. 

 

The desire for a diverse dance vocabulary of many times and cultures discomfits those determined to retain and revere the original dance.  But I maintain that, like hunters and gatherers, both are necessary for our common survival. 

 

Dance with passion!

 

End Notes

1   Janson & Janson, 1964, pp. 20-21. (Janson, H.W. & Janson, Dora Jane. 1964.  History of Art.  Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc. and New York: Henry Abrams, Inc.)

2   Gimbutus, 1989, pp. 310-312.  (Gimbutas, Marija.  1989.  The

Language of the Goddess.  San Francisco: Harper & Row.)

3   Gimbutus, 1989, pp. 241-242.

4   Michailidou, 1983, pp. 24, 124-125.  (Michailidou, Ann.  1983.

Knossos: A Complete Guide to the Palace of Minos, trans. A. Doumas & T. Cullen. Athens: Ekdotike Athenon.)

5   Platon, 1966, plates 119 & 11, respectively.  (Platon, Nicolas. 1966. Crete, trans. from the Greek.  London: Frederick Muller Ltd.)

6   Harding, 1993.  (Harding, K.  1993. Origins of Oriental Dance. 

Retrieved 12/27/03 from Web site: http://www.bdancer.com/history/BDhist1.html )

7   Andrea Deagon.  Retrieved from Web site:  http://people.uncw.edu/deagona/raqs/origins.htm

8   Shira, 2002.  (Shira. 2002.  Why the Fuss Over Egyptian Style Music & Oriental Dance?  Retrieved 12/27/03 from Web site: http://www.shira.net/egyptianfuss.htm )

9   Morocco, 1964.   (Morocco.  1964.  “Belly Dancing” and Childbirth. Retrieved 12/27/03 from Web site: http://www.casbahdance.org/bdance+childbirth.html )

10  Morocco, 1964.

11  Harding, 1993.

12  Lilian Lawler, cited in Harding, 1993.

13   Irena Lexova, cited in Harding, 1993.  (See perhaps Irena Lexova, 2000, Ancient Egyptian Dances, English trans. K. Haltmar. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc.)

14  Morocco, personal communication, Jan. 11, 2004.

15  Tarik Sultan.  (Sultan, Tarik.  Oriental Dance: It Isn’t Just For Women.  Retrieved 12/27/03 from Web site: http://www.casbahdance.org/notwoman_trk.html  )

16  Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1976, p. 1078.  (Encyclopaedia Britannica, Macropaedia Vol. 1, 15th Edition.  1976. Chicago: Enclopaedia Britannica, Inc.)

17  Morocco, personal communication, Jan. 11, 2004.

18  Shira, 2002. Retrieved from Web site: http://www.shira.net/egyptianfuss.htm

19  Tarik Sultan.  Retrieved from Web site: http://www.casbahdance.org/notwoman_trk.html