Belly dance

Belly dance (Egyptian Arabic: رقص شرقي, translated: Eastern/Oriental Dance, romanized: Raks/Raas Sharqi) is a Middle Eastern dance that traces its roots back to Ancient Egypt. It features movements of the hips and torso. 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 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: Percussive: Staccato movements, most commonly of the hips, used to punctuate the music or accent a beat.