The Truth About Belly Dance

A group of people from an event-organizer company were discussing on what show to come up with on the New Year's Party, when one of them stood up and excitedly suggested, "Belly dance, of course! What can be more attractive than sexy dancers in dazzling costumes? Men would feel like being ushered into the sultan's harem!"

Well, the above statement really does represent our modern society's conception of Mid-Eastern dance, which we nowadays know as Belly Dance.
And, ironically, it's a totally misleading conception.

Firstly, in the Middle-East, people don't recognize Belly Dance.
The real name of this exotic dance is Oriental Dance, and it doesn't only involve the movements of the hips and abdominal muscle, but the entire body as well.

Secondly, though this dance is performed in the harem, people (especially Westerners) have long misinterpreted the term "harem" itself.

It is best be noted that in Muslim countries, men and women don't mix -- even in the same house.
The mother and daughters have their own private ward, which is called the "harem."
After the mother has finished serving her husband and the rest of the family in the dining room, she would withdraw to the harem and perform her household duties.
It is only open for fellow females; and grandmothers, aunts, nieces, and female neighbors often gather in the harem to do female stuffs: sewing, gossiping, baking cakes, and even dancing.
It was from such female gatherings that the Oriental Dance of the Lebanese and Egyptians first emerged.
It was a social dance among women, done only in the private ward where no man was allowed to enter.
From observing the younger women dancing, mothers with bachelor sons waiting at home would choose future daughter-in-laws and proceed with the process of match-making.

You see, there is no such thing as performing this dance in the presence of a ruler. There is no courtesan-like role of Oriental dancers ever taking place in the Muslim land where it originated.

Oriental Dance is not entertainment.
It's a social dance, and there is nothing overly sensual about it.
The Belly Dance as we know it today has been much too spiced up and mixed with the modern and Western conception of exoticism.
Whether it is praised or disdained, accepted or rejected, it has become so only from the point of view of the culture that adopted it, that had severed it from the root of its origin.