Belly- Beledi- belly, the dance du ventre ?

khanjar

New member
I read somewhere, I forget where that there are theories that the origin of the description ; ''belly'' dance pre dates dance du ventre and that because of beladi a word in a foreign language heard by other foreigners, Now intoning both words ; beledi and belly, I can understand where the latter term might have come from and can see why a country dance which beladi is might have become ''belly'' dance to foreigners.

That being in french ''belly'' dance can become ''dance du ventre''.

Maybe it was nothing at all to do with the belly, despite the fact that colonial audiences might have had a fixation about that area made bare and was in fact a case of lost in translation and what we call belly dance should be in fact called beledi dance.

Has anyone else any thoughts on this ?
 

Kashmir

New member
I read somewhere, I forget where that there are theories that the origin of the description ; ''belly'' dance pre dates dance du ventre and that because of beladi a word in a foreign language heard by other foreigners, Now intoning both words ; beledi and belly, I can understand where the latter term might have come from and can see why a country dance which beladi is might have become ''belly'' dance to foreigners.

That being in french ''belly'' dance can become ''dance du ventre''.

Maybe it was nothing at all to do with the belly, despite the fact that colonial audiences might have had a fixation about that area made bare and was in fact a case of lost in translation and what we call belly dance should be in fact called beledi dance.
I've heard this BS - and from quite a famous dancer - cannot remember who.

First up, dance du ventre was a description of dance in Algeria - specifically Ouled Nail - I'm not sure if it was ever used originally to describe Egyptian dancing which is stylistically very different. Sol Bloom used it, quite correctly, to describe the dancers in his Algerian village at the Chicago World Fair. It seems that the use of the term "belly dance" matches about that period ie 1893.

And that time there were NO bare bellies. There are photos of the performers. All are fully covered from neck to foot. The bare belly thing only arose after the 1920s - and then only in a small proportion of performers.

Post-1920 "modern" belly dance ie as performed at the Casino Opera et al was called raqs sharqi ie danse orientale - not danse du ventre. Professional Egyptian dancers call it Orientale today.

Second, the phrase raqs beledi only means something if it is being compared (or in particular flash of communal pride). In normal speech it would be called just raqs. So why wasn't it called rocks dancing? If the whole phrase was used by natives and misheard you'd end up with rocks belly or rocks belly dancing. (Maybe the origin of "Rock a Billy"?)
 

Amanda (was Aziyade)

Well-known member
I've heard this BS - and from quite a famous dancer - cannot remember who.

Jodette, on her old instructional LPs, said "belly dance" is a misunderstanding of "beledi dance" -- she's the oldest source I could find. The records are from the 70s. If you have an earlier source for the myth, I'd love to know it!!


I also think the pronunciation confusion depends entirely on your accent. In Lebanese it sounds more like "Bell-ud-ee." The Cairo kids I know say "BAHH-la-dee" with a short a, like "ballet." Don't know how it sounds in Saidi drawl. Maybe more like Blad-ee -??
 
Last edited:

Sirène

New member
From wikipedia:

The term "belly dancing" is generally credited to Sol Bloom, entertainment director of the 1893 World's Fair, the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago, although he consistently referred to the dance as "danse du ventre," of which "belly dance" is a literal translation."

Although there were dancers of this type at the 1876 Centennial in Philadelphia, it was not until the Chicago World's Fair that it gained national attention. There were authentic dancers from several Middle Eastern and North African countries, including Syria, Turkey and Algeria, but it was the dancers in the Egyptian Theater of The Street in the Cairo exhibit who gained the most notoriety. The fact that the dancers were uncorseted and gyrated their hips was shocking to Victorian sensibilities.

Wikipedia is not 100% reliable, however I also read this in Sisters of Salome by Toni Bentley, which I recall being reasonably well-researched.
 

Gloria

New member
I remember Bobby Farah saying the same thing. I find this a plausible explanation. I don't doubt that when dancers were asked what kind of dancing they were doing and answered "beledi", that the American ear would have difficulty discerning all the syllables in that foreign-sounding word. And with audiences focused on all the torso movements that were so new and strange, I'm sure "belly" was close enough and probably made sense to their 1893 sensibilities. I don't know why dancers get so offended by this simple explanation, and no one said anything about bare bellies.


The word 'ballyhoo' has a similar origin. At the 1893 Exposition W.O. Taylor, who was the manager of the Cairo Street exhibit would have the dancers and musicians go outside to drum up interest and get people inside. The phrase they would use to the crowd use would be "d'Allah hun" (pronounced 'hoo') meaning 'for the love of god". I would assume there would be some zaghareeting involved too, creating a cacophony to the Western ear and it would definitely get attention. When things would get slow, Taylor would tell the performers to go out and "do one of them 'ballyhoo' things".

Sounded close enough for him.
 

khanjar

New member
Wikipedia is open source that being anyone can update it, if that is you can move faster than the bots and be persistent , I have even updated a wiki page with information pertaining to a local matter, was I right, who knows, maybe someone will change it again if they know better or different if they can be bothered and so I also wonder about other entries on wiki, just how reliable is the information on there, for it is hardly the definitive despite what references are provided.
 

Zumarrad

Active member
I don't doubt that when dancers were asked what kind of dancing they were doing and answered "beledi", that the American ear would have difficulty discerning all the syllables in that foreign-sounding word.

But as Kashmir has pointed out above, people would not have called it raqs beledi in that time, merely raqs. As Aziyade has pointed out above, beledi is pronounced differently in different dialects.

And the first westerners who watched and chose to codify ME/NA dance as something "different" to their own dance, were not Americans. Some of them weren't even English speakers.

I can see how a person who spoke both languages from a young age IIRC like Bobby Farrah and any English speaking person might conflate the two in their own mind, because they sound similar, but I think any such conflation would have come far later than the use of the term "danse du ventre", from which belly dance is a direct translation. Sol Bloom said as much. Most Western people with education spoke at least a little French in those days.
 

Gloria

New member
I must respectfully disagree. The term beledi is not new, it has been around for a long time. They describe themselves as beledi and the word would definitely been in use even in 1893.

I have no doubt the first westerners to see middle eastern dance were neither American nor english speakers - I never claimed they were. Of course middle eastern dance was seen by westerners prior to 1893 America. I don't think anyone claimed otherwise.

The setting referenced is the Columbian Exposition, 1893, Chicago, USA, and most western people attending did not speak "at least a little French". Sol Bloom may have used the term "danse du ventre" but everyone heard, and started using, "bellydance".
 

Zumarrad

Active member
The exposition was well covered in local newspapers at the time. The dance was called "danse du ventre" and also almee dance, houri dance, nautch dance, cooch dance, hoochy coo dance... not belly dance. Because that was dirty. So when did "people" start calling it belly dance? Who talked to the dancers on such a level as to ask what they were doing, and learned the word beledi and started misusing it? Women? Remember the dance was considered revolting and obscene and unsuitable for ladies. Given it was promoted with a ballyhoo, there were probably people who thought it was "bally" dance.

Who wrote about it first for western consumption and in what language? How's that translate? Is that really just a coincidence? Ventre = belly/stomach? But that's solely a coincidence, whereas beledi/sounds like belly is the "real" origin?

Unfortunately my copy of Paul Monty's thesis has gone awol, and it has tons of newspaper quotes from the time, but from memory I'm pretty sure Sol Bloom was on record as saying *he called it and promoted it as danse du ventre* and people worked out what that translated to. He might have used the English phrase belly dance in conversation with other men, or the emphasis in written descriptions on the "muscles of the abdomen" combined with the meaning of the word ventre also informed the use of the phrase "belly dance". Aubrey Beardsley drew The Stomach Dance in 1894. People *outside* the US were aware of this dance form and writing about it and representing it in art.

Seriously, I am not talking out of my arse. Correlation does not equal causation.

Maybe neither story is right. Or both. Or a combination of the two. I just wish people would give a little more credence to non-US influence on the naming and representation of this dance form instead of assuming that Americans misheard beledi - that *is* what you wrote above - as "belly". It's a very narrow assumption that ignores what else was circulating in media at the time. I am sure some of the people who went to the Midway Plaisance could read and read newspapers.

"Most people" didn't speak French but a bit was considered part of a good education.
 
Last edited:

Amanda (was Aziyade)

Well-known member
The wikipedia entries for pretty much all the bellydance topics are disasters. When knowledgeable people try to edit them, they get re-edited immediately. We lament this on a daily basis. Sahra has said she wants to pull her hair out over all the inaccuracies in the main entry.

Also, half the time the sources referenced trace back to Wendy or Suraya Hilal, who both had enormous axes to grind on the subject of women and Middle Eastern dance. Most of the time if someone is quoting "Serpent of the Nile," you can almost immediately dismiss what they're saying, because that book is such a mess of inaccuracies!

btw - Donna Carlton's book Looking for Little Egypt covers the Columbus Expo pretty well. The French pavilion was WAY more controversial and uproar-inducing than anything Bloom put together.


On "beledi" -- first of all, it's an adjective, which always modifies a noun, except when referring to the group of people themselves, or when used as a slang term for the home-grown culture. Thus: Raqs Beledi is how it would be used to describe dance, but it's not. The word always used is simply Raqs.

I have never in my 10+ years of research heard an Arabic speaker refer to their dance as Raqs Beledi, UNLESS they were talking to a group of dancers and were trying to make a difference between Raqs Sharqi and what we call beledi. None of them (except Nadia Gamal) ever called it "Beledi Dance," and I suspect that if Bobby called it such, he got that from Nadia. Nadia's accent was Lebanese, and when she pronounced "beledi" it sounded very much like how Americans say "belly."

Personally I've been curious as to the original source of the "beledi" = "belly" thing. I thought we had a pretty long thread on the first appearance of the phrase "belly dance" and again I thought all the evidence seems to point to a translation of "dance du ventre." But the linguistic history of the whole "beledi dance" thing intrigues me. Anybody have access to literature in which the term "beledi dance" was used, prior to 1970 or so, and not directly quoting Nadia or Jodette?
 

Daimona

Moderator
Sorry for being off topic, but the best way to get better wikipedia entries and tidy up articles is to ask for citations and references for any claim that is given in the article. References is THE KEY!
And then, of course, one can argue for this or that side on the discussion page to each of the entries.
 

Gloria

New member
Wow, Zumarrad. You have a real tendency to read into things that aren't there and then become offended by them. There is nothing that can be offered that will stand up to the scrutiny of your imagination, so I think it best that I exit this conversation.

Glad to hear though, that you are not just talking out of your arse. Neither am I. I do have some degree of education on the subject myself. Even though I don't speak any French.

Best,
Gloria
 

shiradotnet

Well-known member
On her site, Shira also mentions Sol Bloom and the 1893 World's Fair:

"There's a Place in France" aka "Streets of Cairo" - That "Snake Charmer" Song

(It's in the second paragraph under "Birth of a Scandal")

Just a comment, I REALLY need to do an editing overhaul of that article, to add a formal end notes section. :)

But I do fall into the camp that believes that the term "belly dance" came from translating the French "danse du ventre", and NOT from mispronouncing the word "baladi".
 

Duvet

Member
I thought 'baladi' was the name of the music, and 'raqs baladi' is dance to (the music of) baladi. Hence it is only called 'baladi' when distinguishing it from other dance rhythms (as opposed to being a stand alone style of itself). If asked 'What was that dance?', while the dancer may have said 'raqs', the musicians would have always said 'baladi', if that was what they were playing.
Are we ever told what the musicians were playing at these Expos and Fairs? If the musicians didn't play 'baladi', than American or European attendees wouldn't hear the term, and so couldn't turn it into 'belly'.
 
Last edited:

Amanda (was Aziyade)

Well-known member
I thought 'baladi' was the name of the music, and 'raqs baladi' is dance to (the music of) baladi. Hence it is only called 'baladi' when distinguishing it from other dance rhythms (as opposed to being a stand alone style of itself). If asked 'What was that dance?', while the dancer may have said 'raqs', the musicians would have always said 'baladi', if that was what they were playing.
Are we ever told what the musicians were playing at these Expos and Fairs? If the musicians didn't play 'baladi', than American or European attendees wouldn't hear the term, and so couldn't turn it into 'belly'.

EXCELLENT question. Musicians and dancers often have an unshared vocabulary, and also often categorize things differently.

Here's a sample from the expo -- have to click the audio to hear it, but the transcript is on the site:

Chicago's First World Music Festival Dates Back to 1893 | WBEZ 91.5 Chicago

"Benjamin Ives Gilman came from Boston and spent two days at the fair, recording performances by South Pacific Islanders, American Indians and Turks. The Peabody Museum owns the 101 wax cylinders Gilman made, and they're stored now at the Library of Congress."

I wonder if these are available online ?
 

Jane

New member
I was under the impression the word beladi describes a country person who has moved to Cairo and keep their country traditions- including and not limited to dance. Has this word always applied to the dance style? I always thought it was a broader term used by Egyptians and that we dancers narrow the focus to music and dance. When was baladi first used and in what context? Did it become more prevalent at a certain time?

It does not seem logical to me that the name belly dance came from baladi dance. I can't recall that the name belly dance was used at the time of the expo. Anyone remember the first time the name belly dance was used? I'm stumped.
 

Aniseteph

New member
Sol Bloom may have used the term "danse du ventre" but everyone heard, and started using, "bellydance".

But alas none of them appeared to have written it down. :(

Oxford English Dictionary has the first use of belly dance as 1899 in W. C. Morrow's "Bohemian Paris": "The danse du ventre (literally, belly-dance) is of Turkish origin."

The first "belly dancer" is in 1931 - Cecil Beaton's diary "The wow of the evening was Carmen, the belly-dancer." (at a burlesque theatre in New York, IIRC).

Of course there may be something earlier, in which case the OED would love to know.

Incidentally they have a much earlier (1837) reference for ballyhooly (meaning uproar, pandemonium, all hell let loose), with Irish roots, and a shortened version "balihoo" in 1887. Neither refer to showman's patter.

First reference for ballyhoo as showman's touting in the US is 1901, though it's uncertain if it has the same roots.

/word nerdery
 

Erik

New member
A few years ago I was curious about the origin of the term. I used the Google News Archive search to find articles about belly dancers of the past, but I don't think this feature is available anymore. It didn't work the last time I tried it.

I saw indications in the 1950's and perhaps earlier that the word 'belly' may have been avoided by some newspapers, and 'belly dancer' was substituted by clever euphemisms, with 'torso gyrator' and 'navel oscillator' as the two I can remember.
 

gisela

Super Moderator
I was under the impression the word beladi describes a country person who has moved to Cairo and keep their country traditions- including and not limited to dance. Has this word always applied to the dance style? I always thought it was a broader term used by Egyptians and that we dancers narrow the focus to music and dance. When was baladi first used and in what context? Did it become more prevalent at a certain time?

It does not seem logical to me that the name belly dance came from baladi dance. I can't recall that the name belly dance was used at the time of the expo. Anyone remember the first time the name belly dance was used? I'm stumped.

This is what I have learnt as well. It is more a style of being. A bread can be baladi, a person, a way of dancing... In my understanding it can also be used both in a proud way and a degrading way, depending on who is talking.
 
Top