Belly Dancing

Yesterday, on a cold, snowy afternoon, I went to watch a dear friend perform in a belly dancing show. The performance was made up of three different Belly Dancing Groups of slightly different styles, all in order to raise funds for The Shakespeare Hospice .

The Shakespeare Hospice is based in Shottery near Stratford-upon-Avon and provides help and support to patients with life limiting illness. They currently need about 1.5 million pounds to keep the wheels turning, and only receive about 9% of that from the government, so every penny that comes from external fundraising is vital, and hard earned by the volunteers and fundraisers.

So, the Belly Dancing Event yesterday was very well attended and great fun to watch. It was inspiring to watch ladies of all different ages, put their inhibitions aside and strut their stuff. The work that had clearly gone into the routines, with both choreography and practise was clear for all to see and the belly dancing costumes were just amazing. Every one of them did themselves proud!

Belly Dancing Divas

Of course, most of my life in one shape of form has been consumed by the constant desire to lose weight, and although I’ve had a bash at most forms of exercise to try to hurry things along and tone up the wobbly bits, belly dancing had never crossed my mind, and I guess, even if it had, the thought of my belly dancing independently of the rest of me, would have been a thing I just couldn’t have subjected anyone to!

So, this morning, I had a little look into this belly dancing thing. I’ve even ordered a DVD! I thought I might have a go, you know, in the peace and quiet of the 4 square foot of living room not currently taken up with cats and cushions!

More Belly Dancing Divas

The DVD is coming from the USA, so it’ll take a few days to get here. By the time I’ve had a go, dislocated a few bones and recovered, it’ll be a while longer before I’m in any fit state to post a review, BUT, I will, I promise I will. I’ll put up the details of the DVD, so if you want to check it out yourself, and have a go at belly dancing, you can just click on the link!

History of Belly Dancing

Throughout history, the documentation of women and their lives is generally less well recorded than the men folks’; this means that the finer points of women and their lives are often rather blurred and tend to get a little distorted as much of the information that is now written down, had only been passed on verbally for generations. Mistakes and embellishments were bound to happen.

Consequently, the nitty gritty behind the history of belly dancing is often debated by those in the know. One thing that is certain though, is that it is a style of dancing with no rule books or associations that say how it should or shouldn’t be done, and is a form of physical and spiritual entertainment that has been generally passed down through the ages from women to their daughters who then grew into women.

Belly dancing has its roots firmly in one of the oldest social dances in history, and is native to Asia and North Africa.

Belly dancing does have strong connections with fertility and child birth and is often said to have been a way of women to keep fit and mobile during pregnancy, whilst building strength in the correct muscles to make for an easier birth, and also as a way to get back into shape following the arrival of the baby.

Very often belly dancing is accepted as something done by women, in the company of women. It is believed that this comes from the times when across the Eastern continents, the man would have many wives and they would all live together. The belly dancing was often used to pass the time.

The direction began to change slightly when the men got to know about the dancing, and when he had his male friends visit, they would call out a few of the women to entertain them.

It would only have been human nature that occasionally one or more of the women would take advantage of their dancing ability and their physical assets in order to secure a better life for themselves, this could easily account for why belly dancing, in some styles has taken on a more seductive aura.

The change in perception of the whole belly dance theme followed the introduction of belly dancing into the social scene in Cairo, when it entered the night clubs and hotels and started to be features in films and popular culture.

Even so, irrelevant of its vague or uncertain origins, what westerners refer to as belly dance is known in the Middle East as Raks Sharki; which translates roughly to ‘dance of the east’, or ‘oriental dance’. There are many regional variations of Middle Eastern dance grouped loosely under the term ‘belly dance’, but the term belly dance itself usually refers to the contemporary nightclub variety as opposed to traditional folk dance -’raks sha’abi or ‘baladi’, which is a traditional solo woman’s dance. The term belly dance comes from a phrase coined when the French saw women belly dancing, ‘Danse du ventre’, and refers to the rotation and movement of the mid section of the body, apparently independently.

There are also different nightclub styles of belly dancing, but the main contemporary form is the Eqyptian style.

Historically, belly dancing has always been performed by both males and females, but usually in sex-segregated gatherings. The exceptions to this would be at weddings for example, when the dancers were in the company of close family and friends. Social dancing of this type is actively encouraged, but the performance of belly dancing of a paid nature in revealing costumes is very much frowned upon.

Mind you, I’ve got to say, if I turned up to belly dance anywhere, they’d be paying me to stay sat down!