Belly dance

"Belly dancer" redirects here. For other uses, see Belly dancer (disambiguation).

A Belly dancer from the Balkans

Belly dance (Arabic: رقص شرقي, romanized: Raqs sharqi, lit. 'oriental dance'; Turkish: Oryantal Dans) is a performance art form with ancient and multicultural roots. While commonly associated with the Middle East, its historical development spans across the Mediterranean, North Africa, the Balkans, and Central and South Asia. The dance has origins in the migration and cultural fusion of Romani, Domari, and Lom peoples—communities who carried Indian dance traditions westward over centuries, blending them with local Turkish, Persian, Arab, and North African performance practices.

The modern, theatrical version of belly dance emerged in the early 20th century through innovators like Badia Masabni, a Syrian-born performer in Egypt who blended elements of traditional Egyptian baladi, Turkish, Persian, and Latin dance forms with Western theatrical techniques. Her dance troupe helped professionalize and globalize the genre.

A Western-coined exonym, the term "belly dance" became popular during the 19th century after French observers described danse du ventre in North Africa and the Ottoman Empire. It is also referred to as Middle Eastern dance or Arabic dance.

The form has evolved significantly, taking on different stylistic and costuming elements depending on regional culture and historical moment. While Egyptian cinema helped globally popularize Egyptian styles of belly dance, Turkish Oryantal, Lebanese cabaret styles, and Romani dances also contributed heavily to what is recognized today as "belly dance"

Belly dancing remains a widely practiced and taught dance form around the globe, featured in both cultural traditions and performance arts schools.

Names and terminology

"Belly dance" is a translation of the French term danse du ventre. The name first appeared in 1864 in a review of the Orientalist painting The Dance of the Almeh by Jean-Léon Gérôme.

The first known use of the term "belly dance" in English is found in Charles James Wills' In the Land of the Lion and Sun: or, Modern Persia (1883).

In Arabic, the dance is traditionally known as raqs sharqi (Arabic: رقص شرقي, "Eastern Dance" or "Oriental Dance"). In Turkish, the equivalent term is oryantal dans. These terms refer to professional, staged forms of the dance that are typically performed in cabaret, theater, or ceremonial contexts.

Raqs sharqi is a broad category that includes popular theatrical forms of belly dance as well as traditional variants such as Raqs Baladi, Sa’idi, Ghawazi, and Awalim. Raqs Baladi ("Dance of the Country" or "Folk Dance") is a more informal, social style practiced at celebrations in Egypt. The Turkish variant, often simply called Oryantal, developed its own conventions through Ottoman, Romani, and modern Turkish influences.

Belly dance is primarily a torso-driven dance, with an emphasis on isolations and articulations of the hips. Unlike many Western dance forms, the focus is on movement generated from the center of the body, often in contrast to limb-driven techniques.

Movements found in belly dance

There is no universally standardized naming scheme for belly dance movements. Terminology varies between regions, schools, and teachers. The following classification represents common groupings found across most traditions:

• Percussive: Staccato movements, especially of the hips, ribcage, and shoulders—used to accent musical beats. Examples include hip drops, chest pops, and shoulder shimmies.
• Fluid: Flowing and continuous motions often used to interpret melodic or improvisational segments. Includes undulations, horizontal and vertical figure-eights, and circular hip movements.
• Shimmies, shivers and vibrations: Rapid, continuous shaking or vibrating motions of the hips, ribcage, or shoulders—commonly layered over slower movements to create visual contrast.

In addition to these, belly dancers may perform traveling steps, spins, level changes, and dramatic gestures such as backbends or head tosses. The arms are used to frame the torso, create shapes, and enhance expression.

In the Middle East

Origins and history

La danse de l'almée (The Dance of the Almeh) by Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1863

Belly dance has a long and regionally diverse history in the Middle East and surrounding areas. Ancient references in Greek and Roman texts—including those by Juvenal and Martial—describe undulating dance movements, musical accompaniment with castanets, and dynamic gestures, especially in Asia Minor and Hispania, suggesting an early precedent to belly dance.

A köçek

In the 18th and 19th centuries, European travelers such as Edward William Lane and Gustave Flaubert documented professional dancers across the region. In Egypt, they observed performers such as the Awalim and Ghawazi; in the Ottoman Empire, they recorded female Çengi and young male Köçek dancers, who entertained both court and public audiences. These observations contributed to the term danse du ventre (“dance of the belly”), which French Orientalists used after witnessing such performances in cities like Cairo and Istanbul.

Belly dance existed within a broader performance culture stretching from Morocco to India, shaped by the migrations and influences of Romani, Domari, and Lom peoples from the Indian subcontinent. These communities carried dance and musical traditions that blended over time with Persian court aesthetics, Arab folk rhythms, and Ottoman performance practices. In the Ottoman court, Koçek dancers performed before elite audiences until the practice was banned in the 19th century for political and moral reasons.

While belly dance developed distinct regional styles, such as Egyptian Raqs Sharqi and Turkish Oryantal, its roots remain a blend of folk, court, and ritual performance traditions. These evolved differently across time and place but often retained a focus on rhythmic torso movements, layered isolations, and musical interpretation through the body.

In Egypt

Main article: Raqs sharqi

Belly dancer on a Cairo dinner cruise

In Egypt, belly dance (raqs sharqi) is deeply embedded in cultural identity. Two historical performance traditions developed: the Ghawazi—dancers of rural origin who performed in public, and the Awalim—more elite performers, typically musicians, poets, and dancers, who entertained in upper-class homes. These traditions laid the groundwork for the theatrical style later formalized by pioneers such as Badia Masabni.

Masabni opened the first music hall in Cairo and trained dancers like Samia Gamal and Taheyya Kariokka, whose cinematic presence helped globalize the Egyptian aesthetic. This style emphasized controlled isolations, hip articulations, veil work, and intricate foot patterns, heavily influenced by ballet and theatrical staging.

Belly dance remains prevalent in Egyptian weddings and social events, where it is also performed by laypeople as part of raqs baladi. In conservative or rural areas, gender segregation may shape how dance is experienced socially. Despite political and religious backlash at various points, Egypt continues to serve as a global reference for professional belly dance.

In Turkey

A Turkish belly dancer

In Turkey, belly dance is known as Oryantal Dans (literally "Oriental Dance"). The Turkish style is heavily influenced by the country's Romani (Gypsy) population, whose traditions of expressive dance and musicianship shaped its high-energy aesthetic. Oryantal dancers are known for exaggerated hip isolations, vibrant arm and hand movements, floor work, and use of 9/8 rhythms such as Karsilama. Costumes often include sequined bras, skirts with high slits, and the use of finger cymbals (zills).

Historically, Ottoman-era entertainment included performances by both female Çengi and male Koçek dancers, who entertained the palace elite. These traditions faded under 19th-century reformist pressures but left a legacy that influences modern Oryantal performance. Turkish dancers like Nejla Ateş, Sema Yildiz, Seher Şeniz, and Emine Adalat Pee later popularized the style on international stages and in film. The boom of arabesque music in the 90s paved the way for bellydancers to take the mainstream stage again with the figures like Asena and Oryantal Didem.

Today, belly dance is featured in Turkish weddings, television, and nightclubs, with both traditional and modern fusion styles being taught and performed globally. Many prominent Turkish belly dancers continue to come from Romani backgrounds, carrying on the lineage of improvisation, musicality, and theatricality.

Belly dance in the musical industry

Influence in pop music

Belly dance today is a dance used by various artists among which are Rihanna, Beyoncé, Fergie, however the greatest representative of this dance is the Colombian singer Shakira, who led this dance to position it as her trademark, with her songs Whenever Wherever and Ojos Así. Thanks to the song Hips Don't Lie, her hip dance skills became known worldwide. Also, thanks to Whenever Wherever in 2001, the belly dance fever began popularizing it in a large part of Latin America and later taking it to the United States.

Over time in her presentations Shakira added this dance mixing it with Latin dances, like Salsa and Afro-Colombian, and she also she expressed that she began to dance these movements since she was little thanks to her Lebanese grandmother. Nowadays the belly dance is a characteristic dance of this singer which presented a variant with a rope entangling it in her body and dancing to the rhythm of Whenever Wherever. Shakira is the only artist in the music industry who has used belly dance on several occasions in her artistic career. She inspired Beyoncé to explore this type of dance in her Beautiful Liar collaboration where she also acted as choreographer. At the Super Bowl LIV Halftime Show event she returned to the belly dance with rope during the transition from Ojos así thus to Whenever Wherever.

Outside the Middle East

A belly dancer on stage in Japan, 2016

Belly dance was popularized in the West during the Romantic movement of the 18th and 19th centuries, when Orientalist artists depicted romanticized images of harem life in the Ottoman Empire.

Belly dancing has become popular outside the Arab world, and American, European, and Japanese women who have become professional belly dancers dance all over Europe and the Middle East.

In North America

Although there were dancers of this type at the 1876 Centennial in Philadelphia, it was not until the 1893 Chicago World's Fair that it gained national attention. The term "belly dancing" is often credited to Sol Bloom, the Fair's entertainment director, but he referred to the dance as danse du ventre, the name used by the French in Algeria. In his memoirs, Bloom states, "when the public learned that the literal translation was "belly dance", they delightedly concluded that it must be salacious and immoral ... I had a gold mine." Authentic dancers from several Middle Eastern and North African countries performed at the Fair, including Syria, Turkey and Algeria—but it was the dancers in the Egyptian Theater of The Street in the Cairo exhibit who gained the most notoriety. The fact that the dancers were uncorseted and gyrated their hips was shocking to Victorian sensibilities. There were no soloists, but it is claimed that a dancer nicknamed Little Egypt stole the show. Some claim the dancer was Farida Mazar Spyropoulos, but this fact is disputed.

The popularity of these dancers subsequently spawned dozens of imitators, many of whom claimed to be from the original troupe. Victorian society continued to be affronted by the dance, and dancers were sometimes arrested and fined. The dance was nicknamed the "hoochie coochie", or the shimmy and shake. A short film, "Fatima's Dance", was widely distributed in the Nickelodeon theaters. It drew criticism for its "immodest" dancing, and was eventually censored. Belly dance drew men in droves to burlesque theaters, and to carnival and circus lots.

Thomas Edison made several films of dancers in the 1890s. These included a Turkish dance, and Crissie Sheridan in 1897, and Princess Rajah from 1904, which features a dancer playing zills, doing "floor work", and balancing a chair in her teeth.

American tribal fusion dancer Rachel Brice

Ruth St. Denis also used Middle Eastern-inspired dance in D. W. Griffith's silent film Intolerance, her goal being to lift dance to a respectable art form at a time when dancers were considered to be women of loose morals. Hollywood began producing films such as The Sheik, Cleopatra, and Salomé, to capitalize on Western fantasies of the orient.

When immigrants from Arab states began to arrive in New York in the 1930s, dancers started to perform in nightclubs and restaurants. In the late 1960s and early 1970s many dancers began teaching. Middle Eastern or Eastern bands took dancers with them on tour, which helped spark interest in the dance.

Although using Turkish and Egyptian movements and music, American Cabaret ("AmCab") belly dancing has developed its own distinctive style, using props and encouraging audience interaction.

In 1987, a distinctively American style of group improvisational dance, American Tribal Style Belly Dance (ATS), was created, representing a major departure from the dance's cultural origins. A unique and wholly modern style, it makes use of steps from existing cultural dance styles, including those from India, the Middle East, and Africa. Many forms of "Tribal Fusion" belly dance have also developed, appropriating elements from many other dance and music styles including flamenco, ballet, burlesque, hula hoop and even hip hop. "Gothic Belly Dance" is a style which incorporates elements from Goth subculture. Continuing from this tradition is the emergence of touring theatrical belly dance productions such as Belly Dance Evolution produced by Jillina Carlano, Invaders of the Heart produced by Myra Krien amongst others.

In Spain

Spaniard Dalilah (Adelaida Angulo) in front of the Great Sphinx of Giza, 1957

In Spain and the Iberian Peninsula, the idea of exotic dancing existed throughout the Islamic era and sometimes included slavery. When the Arab Umayyads conquered Spain, they sent Basque singers and dancers to Damascus and Egypt for training in the Middle Eastern style. These dancers came to be known as Al-Andalusian dancers. It is theorized that the fusion of the Al-Andalus style with the dances of the Romani people in Spain led to the creation of flamenco.

In Australia

The first wave of interest in belly dancing in Australia was during the late 1970s to 1980s with the influx of migrants and refugees escaping troubles in the Middle East, including Lebanese Jamal Zraika. These immigrants created a social scene including numerous Lebanese and Turkish restaurants, providing employment for belly dancers. Rozeta Ahalyea is widely regarded as the "mother" of Australian belly dance, training early dance pioneers such as Amera Eid and Terezka Drnzik. Belly dance has now spread across the country, with belly dance communities in every capital city and many regional centres.

Estelle Asmodelle was probably the first transgender belly dancer in Australia. She travelled extensively throughout Asia and Japan working as a Belly Dancer during the 1980s through to the late 1990s. She also starred in the Australian-produced and distributed film The Enchanted Dance which sold internationally as well.

In the United Kingdom

Belly dance has been in evidence in the UK since the early 1960s. During the 1970s and 1980s, there was a thriving Arabic club scene in London, with live Arabic music and belly dancing a regular feature, but the last of these closed in the early 1990s. Several prominent members of the British belly dance community began their dance careers working in these clubs.

Today, there are fewer traditional venues for Arabic dance in the UK; however, there is a large amateur belly dance community. Several international belly dance festivals are now held in Britain such as The International Bellydance Congress, The London Belly Dance Festival and Majma Dance Festival. In addition, there are a growing number of competitions, which have increased in popularity in recent years.

The UK belly dance scene leans strongly towards the Egyptian/Arabic style, with little Turkish influence. American Tribal Style and Tribal Fusion belly dance are also popular.

In Greece

Greek belly dancing is called Tsifteteli, which is Turkish for "double stringed". While the ancient Greek dance Cordax is viewed by some to be the origins of belly dancing in Greece and perhaps the world as a whole, a connection between it and modern Greek belly dancing has yet to be established. Rather, it is generally agreed upon that belly dancing was brought to Greece via Asia Minor refugees during the Greek-Turkish population exchange of 1923. Tsifteteli soon spread across the entirety of Greece and established itself as the most popular Greek dance alongside Zeibekiko. It is characterized by a free form of movement according to the rhythm, without specific rules. It is performed almost exclusively by couples and women.

When danced by a woman "solo", it is usually done on a table full of dishes (so that she cannot take steps, but only shake her chest, waist and buttocks), while the spectators accompany her dancing with rhythmic clapping. The characteristic rhythm is in 8/4 time, arranged as either 3/3/2 eighth-notes followed by 2/2/2/xx (the last beat being silent), or sometimes the first measure is played as 2/2/x1/1x.

Although there is no official dress code associated with the dance itself, professional Greek belly dancers will usually don a complete belly dancing attire in order to emphasize their movements and draw attention to their gyrating body.

In spite of its popularity in the country, there exist a contingent of Greeks that take offense to the existence of the Tsifteteli and call for an end to its performance in Greece. Believing it to not represent Greek ideals and to be a relic of Turkish oppression, they argue it affiliates Greece with the broader Middle East rather than the west which the country supposedly belongs to. These claims, while controversial, are not entirely unfounded considering that the dance is often accompanied by Arabic-sounding music. Regardless of this opposition, the dancing style continues to thrive in Greece, being performed often in every major city.

Costume

Belly dancer wearing Raqs Sharqi attire

The costume most commonly associated with belly dance is the 'bedlah' (Arabic: بدلة; literally "suit") style, which typically includes a fitted top or bra, a fitted hip belt, and a full-length skirt or harem pants. The bra and belt may be richly decorated with beads, sequins, crystals, coins, beaded fringe and embroidery. The belt may be a separate piece, or sewn into a skirt.

The costume or bedlah (referring to the bra, belt and skirt), of Egyptian Oriental dancers has also had the distinction as being the most popular style. However, fashions have changed over the years with the help of some outside influences.

Earlier costumes were made up of a full skirt, light chemise and tight cropped vest with heavy embellishments and jewelry.

As well as the two-piece bedlah costume, full-length dresses are sometimes worn, especially when dancing more earthy baladi styles. Dresses range from closely fitting, highly decorated gowns, which often feature heavy embellishments and mesh-covered cutouts, to simpler designs which are often based on traditional clothing.

In Egypt dancers wear the bedlah. Alternatively, some wear folkloric costume inspired by traditional dress. Modest, ethnically-inspired styles with stripes are common, but theatrical variants with mesh-filled cutouts and ornamented with sequins and bead work are also popular. Most dancers complete their costume ensemble with a sparkling hip-scarf. Egypt has laws in place, that require respecting religious and worship places, and disallowing any nudity near sacred places.

Regarding what dancers can and cannot wear, according to Act No. 430 of the law on the censorship of literary works, dancers must cover their upper bodies (mainly the breasts area), and typically a sheer skin-colored mesh fabric covering the stomach is recommended. Many dancers ignore these rules, as they are rarely enforced, and performing in revealing outfits is common in Cairo and locales popular with tourists. Celebrity dancers can earn enough in a single performance to pay fines if/when they are imposed.

Health

Belly dance is a low-impact, weight-bearing exercise and is thus suitable for all ages and levels of fitness. Many of the moves involve isolations, which improves flexibility of the torso. Belly dance moves are beneficial to the spine, as the full-body undulation moves lengthen (decompress) and strengthen the entire column of spinal and abdominal muscles in a gentle way.

Dancing with a veil can help build strength in the upper body, arm and shoulders. Playing the finger cymbals (sagat/zills) trains fingers to work independently and builds strength. The legs and long muscles of the back are strengthened by hip movements.

Notable practitioners

Professional belly dancers include:

• Badia Masabni
• Dalilah
• Didem Kınalı
• Dina Talaat
• Fifi Abdou
• Layla Taj
• Mona El Said
• Özel Türkbaş
• Nadia Gamal
• Nagwa Fouad
• Nesrin Topkapı
• Naima Akef
• Samia Gamal
• Sema Yildiz
• Serena Wilson
• Soheir Zaki
• Taheyya Kariokka
• Zeinat Olwi
• Nejla Ateş

In popular culture

Egyptian belly dancer and film actress Samia Gamal is credited with bringing belly dancing to Hollywood and from there to dance schools around the world. In 1954, she famously starred as a belly dancer in the American Eastmancolor adventure film, Valley of the Kings, and the French film Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.

In British cinema, belly dancing features prominently in several James Bond films, such as the 1963 film From Russia With Love, the 1974 film The Man with the Golden Gun, and the 1977 film The Spy Who Loved Me.

Belly dancing is quite popular in various parts of the globe including India. Belly dancing has been shown in many Bollywood films, and is often accompanied with Bollywood songs and dance sequences instead of the traditional Arabic style.

Hollywood films regularly include sexualized belly dancers as part of Orientalized and exotic depictions of the Middle East.

See also

• Raqs sharqi
• Baladi
• Ghawazi
• Almah
• Köçek
• Iranian dance
• M'alayah
• Glossary of belly dance terms

External links

• Media related to Raqs Sharqi at Wikimedia Commons