Arab folk dance

The tradition & historical record

Arab folk dances (Arabic: رقص عربي, romanized: raqs ʿarabiyy), 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. ¹

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 (Arabic: دبكة, also spelled Dabkeh), Raqs Baladi (Arabic: بلدي, romanized: baladī; 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". ¹

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. ¹

These dances date from the antiquity and have not ceased to evolve in history and in time. ¹

Belly dance also referred to as Egyptian dance (Arabic: رقص شرقي, romanized: Raqs sharqi) 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. ¹

Shamadan (Arabic: شمعدان) 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. ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Arab folk dances”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

Arab folk dance is Traditional folk dances of the Arabs, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 2 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ²