Arab Dance

Arab folk dances (), also referred to as Oriental dance, Middle-Eastern dance and Eastern dance, are the traditional folk dances of the Arabs in Arab world. Arab dance has many different styles, including the three main types of folklore, classical, and contemporary. It is enjoyed and implemented throughout the Arab region, from North Africa to the Middle East.

The term "Arabic dance" is often associated with belly dancing. However, there are many styles of traditional Arab dance and many of them have a long history. These may be folk dances, or dances that were once performed as rituals or as entertainment spectacle, and some may have been performed in the imperial court. Coalescence of oral storytelling, poetry recital, and music has a long-standing tradition in Arab history. Among the best-known of the Arab traditional dances are the belly dance, the ardah, and the dabke.

Traditional dancing is still popular among expatriate Arabs and has also been successfully exported to international folk dance groups all over the world. All dancers wear the traditional costume to embody the history of their culture and tell their ancestors stories.

History

Historically, dance has always been an important part of the Arabic culture. Some examples of the various social dances enjoyed in the Arab world are Debke (), Raqs Baladi (; relative-adjective "of town", "local", "rural", comparable to English "folk", with a lower-class connotation), and religious sacred dances.

In Spain and the Iberian Peninsula, the idea of exotic dancing existed throughout the Islamic era and sometimes included slavery. When the Umayyads conquered Spain, they sent Basque singers and dancers to Damascus and Egypt for training in the Middle Eastern style. These dancers came to be known as Al-Andalusian dancers. It is theorised that the fusion of the Al-Andalus style with the dances of the Spanish Gypsies led to the creation of flamenco.

The courtly pleasures of the Umayyad, Abbasid and Fatimid caliphs included belly dancing, soirée, and singing. Belly dancers and singers were sent from all parts of the vast empire to entertain.

During the French campaign in Egypt and Syria in 1798, Europeans were interested in the Arab world, folk dances and music of each country.

In the middle of the 19th century, the eastern side of the Arab world; Arabia, Egypt, the Levant and the Mesopotamia were collectively referred to as 'Al Sharq' or 'Mashreq'; meaning 'East'. The Middle East attracted European painters and writers described as Orientalists, who specialized in Oriental subjects; among the most prominent personalities are Jean-Léon Gérôme, Eugène Delacroix and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres.

Arabic dance was performed in the United States in 1893 at the World's Columbian Exposition, which included an exhibition entitled " The streets of Cairo". The exhibition was attended by dancers from Egypt and several other Arab countries from the Middle East and North Africa, including Syria and Algeria. The term "belly dancing" is often credited to Sol Bloom, its entertainment director, but referred to the dance as ''danse du ventre'', the name used by the French in Algeria. In his memoirs, Bloom states, "when the public learned that the literal translation was "belly dance", they delightedly concluded that it must be salacious and immoral...I had a gold mine."

Types of dance

Arabs have their own diverse and rich music and dances which is part of their identity. There are a lot of Arab traditional dances as the Arab world is a vast area. Men are also as involved as women. Here are four kinds of traditional dances.

List of classic dances

These dances date from the antiquity and have not ceased to evolve in history and in time.

Belly dance

Belly dance also referred to as Egyptian dance () is an Egyptian expressive dance, which emphasizes complex movements of the torso. Many boys and girls in countries where belly dancing is popular will learn how to do it when they are young. The dance involves movement of many different parts of the body; usually in a circular way. Both women and men can belly dance.

Shamadan

Shamadan () is a large candelabrum balanced on top of a dancer's head, in a tradition unique to Egyptian dance. This dance prop is historically used in the Egyptian wedding procession, or zeffah. The wedding procession traditionally occurs at night, winding its way through the streets of the neighborhood from the home of the bride's parents to her new home at the groom's house. This is the official moving of the bride and is led by a dancer, musicians and singers, followed by the wedding party and their friends and family.

Raqs Sharqi

Raqs Sharqi () is the classical Egyptian style of belly dance that developed during the first half of the 20th century. This dance is pre-Islamic and is an oral tradition which has changed over the centuries. Some people believe that it originated as a fertility or Goddess worshipping dance, and in North Africa it can still be used to help during childbirth.

Baladi

Baladi () means "of the country" and is a style of Egyptian folk dance from the early 20th century which is still very popular. Thus, ‘Egyptian Beledi’ means ‘of the country of Egypt’ It came about when farmers moved to the city and began dancing in small spaces. Egyptians have Baladi people, Baladi bread, Baladi rhythms, Baladi music and Baladi dance. It is a folk/social form of bellydance. It is more stationary than raqs sharqi, with little use of the arms, and the focus is on hip movements. Baladi dance has a 'heavy' feeling, with the dancer appearing relaxed and strongly connected to the ground. It is performed to baladi or folk music.

Almeh

Almeh ( ; the sublime dance in the past is ' or ', plural ' , from Arabic: ', from "to know, be learned")
was the name of a class of female entertainers in Egypt, women educated to sing and recite classical poetry and to discourse wittily. unlike the ghawazy, the awalim performed only for women and for the high class in their homes.

Ouled Nail

Ouled Nail () originated a style of music, sometimes known as Bou Saâda music after the town near their homeland. In belly dancing, the term refers to a style of dance originated by the Ouled Naïl, noted for their way of dancing. Which involves small, rapid foot movements paired with vigorous torso and hip movements.

Ghawazi

Ghawazi, Ghawazy () (also ''ghawazee'') dancers of Egypt were a group of female traveling dancers. The Ghawazee perform solo or in small groups, unveiled for heterogenic audience, in the public streets, in festivals, in cafe houses and in the Upper Egypt mawalid (local Islamic ceremony), the term itself sometimes accompanied sexual-acts in the local culture and was sometimes used as an insult. Their dancing has little of elegance; its chief peculiarity being a very rapid vibrating motion of the hips, from side to side.

Folk dances

Those dances are performed during the civil celebrations or events as birth, death, wedding or a social ascent and sometimes during religious festivals.

Dabke

Dabke (), is a Levantine folk dance event forming part of the shared sociocultural