What is belly dancing?
The moment that I had been waiting for finally has arrived. The whole gang will be spending our afternoon at The Actor’s Studio, Bangsar. The trip was fun as we went there together with several cars which was obviously led by me!! Thank God, I have already surveyed the way last week with my husband just as to make sure that I did not lead to the wrong place. We managed to beat the heavy traffic and reached Bangsar Shopping Complex at about 1:30 in the afternoon. Personally, I felt very excited because that was my very first time watching a play at a theatre.
We had an ample time linger around the shopping complex and we were considered lucky to get the chance to watch a live belly dance show. I think it was really cool to perform that kind of dance in public. I wish I could try this dance some day!! What is belly dancing? I have heard people saying it is something like stripping. I wonder just where did that linkage to stripping come from? Why do people think this way?
I have found out that the correct name for belly dancing is actually “Oriental Dance”. The Arabic name for it is “Raqs Sharqi”, which means “the dance of the East/Orient” and the Turkish call it “Oryantal”. For centuries, Oriental Dance has been a kind of folk dance in Middle Eastern society that people would do at joyous occasions such as weddings, the birth of a child, community festivals, and other events that bring people together to party. It was a dance that men, women, and children did for fun. Just like the Americans at a modern-day wedding reception might do waltzes, two-steps, or even the chicken dance, so people in the Middle East would get up with their friends to dance to their favorite music.
Unfortunately, there have been many individuals over the years who have used the dance in private as a tool for seduction. Maybe they don’t understand the real meaning of this dance. But that is not how Middle Eastern people think of Oriental dance, and that is not the role they see it having in their society. For them, the dance remains firmly in the realm of something that people of all ages do for fun when they get together with friends and family.
Modern-day stripping in America has many historical ties to belly dancing. Today the two have diverged into very separate activities with very different goals. Americans took a healthy family-oriented dance form from another culture and twisted it into something very different and obviously not family-oriented, all in the name of profits.
Whatever it is or how people see it, personally I think belly dancing or to be exact, Oriental Dance is indeed a beautiful form of an art, just like any other folk dance and I find it very important to preserve this beautiful culture for the sake of our younger generation.
We had an ample time linger around the shopping complex and we were considered lucky to get the chance to watch a live belly dance show. I think it was really cool to perform that kind of dance in public. I wish I could try this dance some day!! What is belly dancing? I have heard people saying it is something like stripping. I wonder just where did that linkage to stripping come from? Why do people think this way?
I have found out that the correct name for belly dancing is actually “Oriental Dance”. The Arabic name for it is “Raqs Sharqi”, which means “the dance of the East/Orient” and the Turkish call it “Oryantal”. For centuries, Oriental Dance has been a kind of folk dance in Middle Eastern society that people would do at joyous occasions such as weddings, the birth of a child, community festivals, and other events that bring people together to party. It was a dance that men, women, and children did for fun. Just like the Americans at a modern-day wedding reception might do waltzes, two-steps, or even the chicken dance, so people in the Middle East would get up with their friends to dance to their favorite music.
Unfortunately, there have been many individuals over the years who have used the dance in private as a tool for seduction. Maybe they don’t understand the real meaning of this dance. But that is not how Middle Eastern people think of Oriental dance, and that is not the role they see it having in their society. For them, the dance remains firmly in the realm of something that people of all ages do for fun when they get together with friends and family.
Modern-day stripping in America has many historical ties to belly dancing. Today the two have diverged into very separate activities with very different goals. Americans took a healthy family-oriented dance form from another culture and twisted it into something very different and obviously not family-oriented, all in the name of profits.
Whatever it is or how people see it, personally I think belly dancing or to be exact, Oriental Dance is indeed a beautiful form of an art, just like any other folk dance and I find it very important to preserve this beautiful culture for the sake of our younger generation.
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