Belly Dancers of the World -- Music Photo-Video

Belly dance is a dance that originated in North Africa and traces its origin back to Egypt. It features movements of the hips and torso. The origin of the name 'belly dance' comes from the French Danse du ventre, which translates as "dance of the stomach". It has evolved to take many different forms depending on the country and region, both in costume and dance style; with the Egyptian styles and costumes being the most recognized worldwide due to Egyptian cinema. The Egyptian style with its traditional Egyptian rhymes is popular worldwide with many schools around the globe now practicing it.
"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 in reference to the Middle Eastern dancers who performed at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1893.
Raqs sharqi ('Eastern Dance' or 'Dance of the Orient') is a broad category of professional forms of the dance, including forms of belly dance popularly known today, such as Raqs Baladi, Sa'idi, Ghawazee, and Awalim. The informal, social form of the dance is known as Raqs Baladi ('Dance of the Country' or 'Folk Dance') in Egyptian Arabic and is considered an indigenous dance.
Belly dance is primarily a torso-driven dance, with an emphasis on articulations of the hips. Unlike many Western dance forms, the focus of the dance is on isolations of the torso muscles, rather than on movements of the limbs through space. Although some of these isolations appear similar to the isolations used in jazz ballet, they are sometimes driven differently and have a different feeling or emphasis.
In common with most folk dances, there is no universal naming scheme for belly dance movements. Many dancers and dance schools have developed their own naming schemes, but none of these is universally recognized. The following attempt at categorization reflects the most common naming conventions:
In his book, Andrew Hammond notes that practitioners of the art form agree that belly dance is lodged especially in Egyptian culture, he states: "the Greek historian Herodotus related the remarkable ability of Egyptians to create for themselves spontaneous fun, singing, clapping, and dancing in boats on the Nile during numerous religious festivals. It's from somewhere in this great, ancient tradition of gaiety that the belly dance emerged."
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.

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