Belly Dancing Is Not Exotic Dancing

I agree. Do all these belly dancers know they`re on an exotic dancing web page (101exoticdancers)? Although there are some strippers who employ bellydance moves, most belly dancers are dance artists who perform this folk dance form for families and businesses.

Do NOT try to hire a bellydancer for a bachelor party. No dancer worth her bedlah would knowingly dance for an all-male group. Belly Dance is a folkloric dance appropriate for all ages; anyone hiring a dancer for titillation will be disappointed. As the popular saying goes, we pay so much for the costumes, there`s no way we`re taking them off for anyone!

What do belly dancer do

Asking what a belly dancer does is like asking a ballerina what he/she does.

Your "Arabian theme" bachelor party is very insulting to us as dancer. No real belly dancer would do this. We do not wear "layers of veils" with nothing underneith, nor do we have our audience remove pieces of clothing until we are "virtually naked". Nor do we give our audience massages or feed them food. We are not strippers, or a "nicer" version of a stripper. We are DANCERS who take classes, attend workshops, and practice on our own free time in order to perfect our skills as DANCERS. For most of us, this dance is our life`s passion. We spend our whole life improving our skills. For someone to suggest we toss them aside and become harem women for a bachelor party is a slap in the face to all that we have worked for. Please discontinue suggesting belly dancers for bachelor parties. I cannot describe to you how insulting it is.

Thank you
-Dima

Shelby, I can tell you what we *don`t* do, if that helps. Here is a list:

-Take off our clothing
-Interact sexually with our audience
-Do "private" parties for one person
-Feed food to people, or give them massages
-Allow our audience to touch or grab us
-Touch our audience

If you have seen a "belly dancer" doing any of these things, you have not seen a real dancer. These "dancers" do not represent us. They get jobs because the club owner thinks it will bring more business to have a dancer who pleases the men. They often have little to no actual dance training. These dancers take our jobs because we wont degrade ourselves by doing these sexual things that they are willing to do. Thus, many real dancers don`t get the dance jobs, because we wont titillate our audience.

A simple definition of what our dance is like... Hm. We use muscle isolation to move specific parts of the body. For example, move *just* the hips, or *just* the stomach muscles for belly rolls. The moves can be soft and fluid, like Shakira`s snakey hips which are done in a figure 8 shape. Or the moves can be sharp, like making one hip "pop" up, perhaps alternating your hips doing this. Some moves we layer with others to create some very difficult and amazing effects. There is traveling, full body movements, prop, and more. It would be too difficult to describe everything we do. This is a dance you really have to see before you can understand it! It takes a lot of control and practice. It cannot be mastered overnight, or even in a year. Most dancer who have been dancing for a year are still "baby dancers". It takes YEARS. On top of that, there are many different styles that can be learned and mastered. Some master Egyptian, Turkish, American, Tribal, or another style. Others mix styles, or even other dances such as "gypsy" to create fusion. There is a lot to belly dance!