Dubai Awesome Belly Dance

The first known use of the term "belly dance" in English is in reference to the Middle Eastern dancers who performed at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1893.

The informal, social form of the dance is known as Raqs Baladi ('Dance of the Country' or 'Folk Dance') in Egyptian Arabic and is considered an indigenous dance. Raqs Sharqi ('Eastern Dance') is a broad category of professional forms of the dance, including forms of belly dance popularly known today, such as Raqs Baladi, Sa'idi, Ghawazee, and Awalim.

Randa Kamel, Egyptian belly dancer
Randa Kamel, Egyptian belly dancer
Belly dance is primarily a torso-driven dance, with an emphasis on articulations of the hips.[6] Unlike many Western dance forms, the focus of the dance is on isolations of the torso muscles, rather than on movements of the limbs through space. Although some of these isolations appear similar to the isolations used in jazz ballet, they are sometimes driven differently and have a different feeling or emphasis.