Why don't you sit down for a few hours and I'll tell you all about it...... Okay, okay, let me see if I can give you a shorter answer. Wikipedia sums it up nicely by saying that belly dancing is "a Western term for a traditional Arab art form". Belly dance is also known as Raqs Sharqi (Arabic for "Dance of the East"), Oriental Dance, and Middle Eastern Dance. Belly dance technique is characterized by isolated movements in the body that can be smooth and flowing, or sharp and staccato. The name "belly dance" is a bit of a misnomer, however, as this dance form uses the whole body and really has little to do with the belly! While it's difficult to trace the exact origins of this dance form, many believe that belly dance stemmed from social dancing within Middle Eastern families and evolved into a performance art with influences from several other cultures. Today you can find belly dancers on almost every continent, and there is an international subculture of belly dance festivals, competitions, online forums, classes and events out there that you probably never knew existed!

No, that's not true. It's a common misconception that belly dance is all about wearing revealing costumes and shaking our hips for men, but nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, these ''revealing costumes'' cover more than most cocktail dresses and can cost a small fortune! The term ''shaking hips'' doesn't even begin to cover the wealth of intricate and difficult movements belly dancers master as part of their technique (within the whole body, not just the hips). Furthermore, if you go to any belly dance show you will see that the audience is mostly women!

Its origins are predominantly Middle Eastern, and much of the dance as we know it today has been shaped by the dancers and choreographers of Egypt. However, dancers and musicians from Turkey, Greece, Lebanon, Persia, India, Morocco, Tunisia, America, and several other countries have contributed to the art of belly dance, and it continues to evolve and grow to this very day.

A belly dancer's costume is her ultimate tool of expression--after her dancing, of course. Most of the professional costumes that are made for the belly dance market are from designers in Egypt and Turkey, and each one is a wearable work of art. Every bead, sequin, and rhinestone is attached by hand, and several women (and some men) spend weeks working on these garments. Hence the high price, although many designers offer lower-priced, less ornate ''starter costumes'' for the budget-conscious dancer.

The benefits of a two-piece belly dance costume are endless, although there are just as many belly dancers who prefer to wear dresses which cover the midsection. Many dancers feel that leaving the belly exposed allows their audiences to see the intricacies of their dance technique better, while many others just like having costumes that ''fit the image''. You can see evidence of dancers wearing the stereotypical two-piece costume (also called 'bedleh' in Arabic) in Egyptian films dating as far back as the 1930's and 40's. I've heard from several sources that since so many of the movies and musicals in the Golden Age of Egyptian cinema were trying to emulate Hollywood standards, they also took the Westernized image of the belly dancer and adopted it as their own. How much of this is true, I don't know, but it's an interesting theory.

Believe it or not, yes, there are a few men who belly dance! To be more accurate, some of these male dancers would consider their dancing more folkloric or "Oriental" style, and they may not even use the term ''belly dance'', but there are still similarities in the use of technique, music, and costuming between them and their female counterparts. If you're interested in knowing more about the fascinating world of men who belly dance, try Googling names like Horacio Cifuentes, Tariq Sultan, DaVid of Scandanavia, Jim Boz, Serkan, and Amir Thaleb.