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WHERE DOES BELLY-DANCING COME FROM?

There are a couple of answers to that question.  There exists a figurine 25,000 years old called Venus of Laussel, sculpted by a witness to a ritual dance of the life force.  At the dawn of civilization the Far East and Middle East cultures worshiped Mother Goddesses.  Between the transition from hunting societies to animal domestication, human societies became aware of life and death, and of the maternal function of  women in a state of pregnancy which was thought to be magical.  Early cultures near the Caspian Sea developed the origins for the Goddess cults and here is the beginning of the sacred dance drama of the life force because of the magic associated with birth.  This original format went through many cultures over the millennia and today has evolved into the various interpretations that we see today.

HOW AND WHEN DID IT GET SO POPULAR

IN THE UNITED STATES?

Belly-dancing’s was first seen in 1896 at the Chicago’s World Fair and is credited to Little Egypt though little is known about her except that she was there, and later immortalized on moving pictures by Thomas Edison himself. Western thought associated and still does,  belly dance movement as ‘Origin of Sin’ and thus Little Egypt’s debut quickly devolved into vaudeville, dance hall, strip tease, ‘hoochy-koochy’ and other  types of entertainment.

Halfway through this century, more cultures joined the American melting pot and American women gained in freedom and creative expression.  About the same time as the martial arts was becoming popular as a male discipline, women were becoming interested in belly-dancing.

“In the beginning there was ‘Bal Anat’

(means Dance of the Mother Goddess)”

By 1952 American women were ready for Jamila Salimpour.  She began performing in 1947 at culture events and ethnic clubs in Los Angeles and later in San Francisco.  She began teaching belly dance classes in 1952 and in 1967 moved her very popular classes to Berkely, CA, already a center of the counter-culture revolution of the sixties.  In 1968 she created  troupe Bal Anat consisting of forty members that traveled all over the country.  She inspired women’s creative development and a dance  movement that captured  many hearts worldwide.  Her troupe founded the style that today we call ‘tribal’, similar to what you see at the various Renaissance Fairs. The shows were and still are a mix of  traditional dances from the Middle East and Jamila coined the phrase  ‘a crosscut coming from many tribes’.

Written by Kareema

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