The Birth of Belly Dancing

This 8-page e-book is an excerpt from a 250+ page tome entitled, “Religion, Mythology and Dance of the Ancient Near Eastern Mother Goddess and the Emergence of the Belly Dance” which I completed for my undergraduate thesis.

EXCERPT

“The story of the belly dance is certainly one that has spanned many epochs, involved many cultures and known many interpretations.  Its record often seems to be hidden under the same veil of mystery that surrounds the legendary harems of the Arabian Nights.  In researching its roots with the dawn of humanity, its role in early goddess-oriented religion and ritual, its significance in early Near Eastern mythology, and finally its transformation from ceremony to entertainment, the history of the belly dance is certainly of impressive proportions and at times somewhat incredulous. 

This is the story of the very essence of life – its creation, its cessation, its part on the Great Wheel.  This is a story not so easily fit into the vocabulary of reason and logic.  The belly dance, centered on the experience of life and motion and body, has its own language that is best understood through movement and participation. 

This account, to the best of its ability, reveals through the written word the tale of this dance of women and of life through a reexamination of the history of humankind – truly a “history of the world through the eyes of a belly dancer.”