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Last Updated
25/01/2008

HISTORY OF BELLY DANCE

History of the Turks
The Turks originate from Central-Asia. They lived as tribes in the highlands and through the centuries they emigrated to the West. When they arived to Iran they adopted the Islam and around 1000 years ago they settled in Anatolia.
In the time when the Turks were still having their tribal lives in Central-Asia they possessed a shamanistic belief. The Shaman was the instructor of the religion and was an interpretor between the people and God. During the rituals the Shaman danced all along and was accompined by the music of a tambourine. This Shamanistic dances were the first dances known to the Turks.
When the Turks arrived to Iran they encountered another way of dancing: the oriental dance. This kind of dancing was not known to them but they soon adapted the dance and gave their own interpretation to it. The dance became a mix of oriental and Byzantine dance in which the religion and anatolian symbols were inbedded.
According to Islam it is forbidden for half-naked women to dance before men unknown to them. But the Turks found out a way to enjoy these dances: gypsy women, named chengi, danced before women and köchek, male dancers, danced for a male audience.

Gypsies and mother goddess
The gypsy people orginate from the Indian peninsula. In the 5th century A.D. they moved to the Middle East, the Meditteranean countries and Europe. The traditional background of the dance of the Gypsies goes back to religious rituals in India. Dancing and sexuality are intrinsic to the Krishna and Tantra creeds.
In Antolia the people worshipped the mother goddess. The mother goddess was the symbol of maternaty and fertility and in statues this goddess was always shown with big breast and wide hips. The temples erected to the mother goddess were protected and honoured by priestesses. According to the rituals these priestesses danced in a way to arouse the worshippers and had sexual intercoarse afterwards.
In Anatolia the original backgrounds of the bellydance is to be found in a mix of the religious dances of the gypsies and the dances of the priestesses of the mother goddess.

Chengi
The Gypsies settled in Anatolia in the 15th Century. Gypsy women, called Chengi, worked as organised groups. A Chengi group was called a ‘kol’. Each kol consisted of a chief, her aide and 12 dancers.A group of musicians accompanied the dancers. Most of the Chengi dancers had lesbian love affairs, just some of them had affairs with both sexes.
The Chengi groups were invited to dance at wedding-parties and at parties in public baths. As mentioned before women could only dance before women so their were only female guests at these parties. The hostess of the party bargained with the chief of the kol about the price of their performance. They also decided whether the dancers could collect tips during the show or would just get an agreed payment. Some hostesses thought it would disturb the guests if the dancers would go round to collect tips. But mostly, inspite of which agreement was made, the women who liked the dancers and danced along with them would tip them or stuck gold coins on their foreheads.
Sometimes Chengi groups were invited to dance in the Palace where danced for the women of the Harem.
At the end of the 19th century the restriction for Chengi only to dance for a female audience stopped and they started to dance at parties for men’s entertainment.
At the beginning of the 20th century during the period ot the decline of the Ottoman Empire the Cengi lost their popularity. Due to the downfall of the economy people could not afford to invite and pay these big groups of Chengi to their houses and organise parties. Many Chengi groups diminished to four or five dancers. The interst of the people changed and asked for western ways of amusement like western shows and cabaret.

Kochek
In the 15th century there was an emerge of male dancers who were called ‘Köchek’. These Köchek only danced in front of a male audience. The Köchek danced in women’s clothes and danced a sexually provocative oriental dance which was called Köchekce.
In 1856 the pofession of the Köchek became forbidden by a firman of the Sultan.
Still in some regions in the northwest of Anatolia male dancers dressed as women exist. They perform on weddings and on special celebration days. Nowadays it has the characteristics of a popular game and lost its sensual touch.

Modern Times
In 1919 a Turkish woman danced for the first time on stage. After that time dancers found more and more opportunities to dance as they whished and choose their own style of costumes. Because Turkey is seculiar state the religion doesn’t give restrictions to the dancers in creating choreograpies or dresses, as they do in some other non-seculiar muslim countries.
Bellydancing is since centuries an art of dancing in middle-eastern countries, north-Africa and Turkey. But since a couple of years this form of dancing is also gaining popularity in the rest of the world. Nowadays you can find bellydance schools and famous bellydancers in every corner of the world. The developement of the dance continues. People create their own choreographies mixed with their own ideas of dancing and cultural backgrounds. Nowadays there exists a great diversity of styles in the world of bellydance, from tradional forms in Egypt to combinations of Flamenco and Tribal Dances.
In this way bellydance is not restricted as dance of the orient but became a dance of the world with its origins and roots in the orient.

Source: Oriental Belly Dance, Kemal Ozdemir, Dönence Basim ve Yayin Hizmetleri, Istanbul 2002