Belly Dancing
A belly dance class is an excellent opportunity to meet the liberated essence within you, and to discover softness and power through color, sound, and the vibrant energy of the dance. Belly dancing builds correct posture, muscle strengthening, flexibility, breath endurance, and of course a great deal of joy. The class is a physical and spiritual experience, a colorful celebration full of humor and substance.
You can start at any age!
We have classes for beginners and continuing students on Sundays, Mondays, and Wednesdays.
Belly Dancing in Tel Aviv
Belly dancing is among the most ancient dances in human history. Some argue that Oriental dance was born in the region of Babylon (Iraq and Persia) and along the Nile, and was spread by Roma and Bedouin tribes as far east as India and as far west as Andalusia and Spain. It is believed that the Roma came from India and Spain, and influenced dance in North Africa and the Middle East.
Around 4500 BCE, there are references to religious myths associated with the goddess Ishtar, a Babylonian goddess who symbolized both earth and fertility on one hand, and death and destruction on the other. The cult was linked to the lunar cycle and the seasons. According to the myth, Ishtar saved her husband Tammuz, who died at the end of summer. She did this through dance, wrapping a veil around her hips and removing one veil at a time until the reunion with Tammuz, which was expressed in the arrival of spring. The assumption is that her dance movements resembled those of Middle Eastern belly dances, and the veil around the hips is a dance prop that has survived to our day.
The dance was then considered the most ancient and fundamental form of spiritual expression, and served as a channel bringing humans closer to the divine. This role was given to women, some of whom were priestesses who lived in temples where they worshipped goddesses. Women would meet once a month on hilltops and dance fertility dances, whose common thread was belly movements. The dance was intended to strengthen the uterine muscles, increase sexual energy, awaken joy, and praise the mysteries of life.
Later, during the Pharaonic period in Egypt around 1500 BCE, there is evidence from Pharaonic paintings of women raising their arms in typical dance poses. In this era the separation began between the dance and its religious meaning. Dancers who were considered skilled and successful performed before kings and nobles for pleasure and entertainment. Later, both in Egypt and in the Roman Empire, the dance became established as a form of entertainment.
In the Islamic Arab world, the attitude toward dance was very ambivalent, and was therefore banned from public audiences. Dancers preserved the dance in its cultic meaning inside homes, behind closed doors. This allowed it to develop greatly, especially in North Africa, the Middle East, and the deserts of the Near East. The dance became complex and varied, reaching the level of an art form.
Women who performed in public were poor and turned dance into a source of livelihood. Some were forced to combine prostitution with dancing. During the Ottoman rule in the 18th century, French and English soldiers arrived in Egypt, and these dancers (known as Ghawazi and Awalim) performed for payment. The whole business was managed by men (called Ustaz).
At the end of the 19th century, world fairs were held in Paris and Chicago, and thus Oriental dance entered the West. It was called by the French "belly dance." Hollywood adopted the sensual dance and fashioned for it revealing and glittering attire, replacing the full dress with a veil wrapped around the hips. This attire, and the use of choreography in films, entered Egyptian cinema in the 1920s. In the 1940s, great dancers such as Samia Gamal, Tahia Karioka, and Naima Akef began to become famous, becoming international stars. Simultaneously, nightclubs flourished in Cairo.
