Brief history of Middle Eastern dance.

 Many of my new students are surprised to learn that the art of oriental dance was never about sexuality. The following is an excerpt from a 1968 lecture by Jamila Salimpur given at a California university.

"When anyone hears that a belly dancer is going to perform in most cases, the first thing that comes to mind is all the clichés about sexuality and sensuality for the benefit of male provocation. The dancer was originally anything but that. First, let us trace briefly the origin of the term- Belly Dance. Until fairly recently, this dance was referred to by middle Easterners simply as the Oriental dance. When the French saw the dance they called it the Danse Du Ventre- which translated means, dance of the abdomen and much latter the American G.I. was to see the dance and translate the French expression into "The Belly Dance". The history of this dance goes back to the early cult of the Mother Goddess- about 4,000 B.C. in Mesopotomia and was known as the BIRTH MAGIC RITUAL. Men were excluded from the ritual since it dealt with childbirth and the movements in the ritual imitated the involuntary spasms preceding the birth of a child. In the worship of the Mother Goddess there was the hope of a normal pregnancy and a quick and easy delivery. Archaeologists have found many Venus and Mother Goddess figurines squatting in the position of childbirth and some are in the process of parturition. The ritual was preformed in empathy at the bedside of women in labor. The Mother Goddess had many names and her role changed in different places but originally she was the patroness of women and regeneration. The Temples maintained dancers as a special class. Egypt imported solo dancers from countries famed for the dance even for religious services and way from its home ground the birth magic ritual was to lose its religious and devotional significance and become and artistic dance pantomime. In its theatrical form, the ritual changes and the dancer uses her entire body. Basic movements develop and the dancer improvises within the form. Improvisation and acrobatics depend on the ability of the individual and it goes without saying that there are good and mediocre exponents of any art form. And so the birth magic ritual is exponents of any art form. And so the birth magic ritual is exported through the Phonetian Trade routes of Etruria. The dancing girls of Cadiz, a colony of Phonecia were famous for their performances up to a tine of the early Roman Emperors."