What is Oriental Dance
At first glance, the term ‘Oriental Dance’ may seem vague. A literal translation of the term Raqs al-Sharqui in Arabic, it defines, nevertheless, something quite specific, i.e. a dance which spread throughout the eastern Mediterranean basin and is characterized by revolving – cyclical movements of the breast and pelvis, intense hip motions and waiving motions of torso and arms.
When reference is made to oriental dances, in a conversation outside the circles where belly-dancing is practised, it is frequently accompanied by an embarrassed silence of the participants, even taken as a joke, but both attitudes manifest a way of thinking, a particular mentality, and the ignorance of most people. We have to admit, to find an excuse for this mentality, that the spectacle offered in certain places of entertainment has no artistic value whatsoever. An oriental dance can be sensual, elegant, seemly, in fact, refined, full of finesse, purebred and of noble race; it can assume a sacred and noble form
Oriental dances have no precise date of birth. They were born among the Phoenicians, in the land approximating contemporary Lebanon. Were they brought by gypsies from northern India? Were they imported into Egypt by the Turks? This is the dominant theory, given that Egypt was conquered by the Turks in 1415 and remained part of the Ottoman Empire for more than 400 years, but the opposite could be the case, i.e. that they were taught to the Turks by the Egyptians. Theories abound and they contradict each other.
It seems that this genre of symbolic dance is the surviving form of a dance associated with fertility rituals, the worship of Mother Goddess of matriarchal societies. Such dances reproduced symbolically the movements of child-conception and child-birth and praised motherhood, by re-enacting the mystery of life-conception, pain and joy, accompanying the arrival in the world of a new soul, in a celebration of nature and spring.
We find traces of this dance all over the world. Here are examples of dances and of written sources:
• Hip and belly movements, clearly visible in murals of Africa and eastern Spain, in sculptures of ancient India and ancient Greece, in the worship of Baktet and the goddess Hathor in ancient Egypt, and in Via Appia in Rome;
• Accounts of women dancing all night-long, on the hills of ancient Orient (Anatolia);
• Wild dances of women in Sparta, in the temples of Artemis, goddess of the moon, and erotic and ecstatic dances of the priestesses of Aphrodite in Cyprus, in the temples of the goddess of fertility;
• The dance of the Shulamite maiden in the Hebrew Bible, in the Song of Songs, and the dance of Salome in the Gospel of St. Matthew;
• Romans enjoying the sight of Syrian dancers, commanded to entertain, in the superb but little-known, 6th c. BC poem by Virgil La Copa, tavern keeper or barmaid;
• Accounts by the Romans Pliny the Younger, Martial and Juvenal of the dancers of Cadiz, a Phoenician colony, who danced naked and, according to Juvenal, pleased more to women than men;
• Chronicle of Adam of Bremen in the 11th century, in which he complains about the lewd dances of women in north Europe;
• Traditional Middle East and North Africa dances, like the Bedouin dance, the dance Guedra among others, which is executed mostly in sitting position, and is still being performed in north Morocco and northern Mauritania;
• Oupa-Oupa dance of Maori women in New Zealand, which could still be seen in 1950 in Tahiti, performed by the Tamouré tribe;
• Hula dance of the Hawaii islands, still being performed by dancers in the Antilles
• Pelvis and lower belly dance of the Bafiote of Loango (Congo) and of other West Africa tribes or similar dance in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands;
• Nomadic gypsies of Rajasthan dancing in villages before money collection.
If this form of dance was so widespread in the past all over the world, the question arises why we call it “oriental”. It is because it was in Islamic countries, to the east of the Mediterranean basin, that it was best preserved and reached its greatest refinement. It was in these countries that that this dancing tradition was kept alive. It is there that,
• Women dance in company, without ever having received tuition; they dance on every occasion, simply, to have a pleasant time, in all celebrations and in weddings;
• In regions where weddings are still arranged by the families, young girls dance to attract the attention of would-be mothers-in-law;
• They dance when a child is born, to assist the mother’s effort, the expectant mother following a common rhythm of breathing and heart beating as given by the beats of the fertility dance.
Suzanne de SOYE
