Belly dancing classes can be found nearly everywhere these days, at almost every recreation centre or dance studio in cities across North America. Even my hometown of Russell Man., at a population of 1,500 people, had two belly-dancing classes offered at the local dance academy.

Given the exotic and often seductive appearance of the dance, these classes are often frequented by women who took the class with the intention of learning something they could use on their partners. I’ll admit I took it as an attempt to get in touch with my “sensual” side.

Who can blame us? To be quite frank, it looks very sexy. I remember watching a belly dancer perform when I was 15 on a school trip to Spain. I was mesmerized by the movements of her hips, yet it didn’t seem sleazy at all. It was more of a celebration of the female form, or at the very least, “Hey, look what I can do with my hips.”

Contrary to popular belief, belly dancing did not originate as a form of seduction for young courtesans of the wealthy and powerful sultan. The dance has been around for thousands of years, originating in the Middle East, Mediterranean and North Africa. In Arabic, the term for belly dancing is raqs sharqi, and in Turkish it is oryantal dansi, which can be roughly translated to mean “exotic oriental dance.”

Historical evidence shows Egyptian tomb paintings of the dance dating as far back as the 14th century BC. It has also been depicted in Persian miniature paintings dating back to 12th and 13th centuries BC.

However, the dance was originally a family orientated folk dance in Islamic society. The word “harem” did not originally refer to a pair of pants or a seduction chamber; it was simply a section of the home in traditional Middle Eastern society where women carried out their everyday lives. It was forbidden for men who were not a member of their family to enter, thus protecting them from strangers.

These women often held informal gatherings where they would sometimes dance for each other for entertainment. It was one way that mothers of marriageable young men could get to know eligible young women.

The dance is not viewed as a form of seduction in Middle Eastern culture, but instead as something that people do with their close friends and families. The connection between belly dancing and the erotic is due to the Romantic and Orientalist movements of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Out of this time, when the major colonial powers in Europe were desperately trying to claim parts of Africa, the Middle East and South America for themselves, came the Orientalist movement. Writers and artists such as Gustav Flaubert and Gerome made frequent trips to the south and east Mediterranean, creating works that depicted this exotic form of dance and writing back to friends and colleagues telling them to visit.

As more people began frequenting the Middle East and North Africa, they sought local entertainment. They would often hire local musicians and dancers to perform for them. In the early 20th century, nightclubs began to pop up all over cities such as Beirut and Cairo catering to European visitors.

Its association with burlesque or (gasp!) stripping stems from an incident in 1893 at the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition. At this event, one of the attractions was a series of acts portraying music and dance from various parts of the world, including North Africa.
The extremely conservative nature of the time caused people to be shocked by the vigorous movements of the dancers’ abdomens, even though the dancers were most likely fully clothed. A senator even tried to shut the act down.

Yet promoters loved it, and afterwards many vaudeville acts incorporated movements from the performance, while emphasizing its sexual appearance to draw crowds. Over the decades this dance became known as the burlesque, which in turn influenced your everyday modern stripper.
While belly dancing may have this connection, it is certainly not meant to be a means of “pleasing your lover.” That being said, it still may be useful to incorporate some of that hip-shaking I learned the next time I’m out dancing with my friends.