Goddess Dance, Sacred Dance

A Consideration of the Goddess Movement in American “Bellydance”

Arise and dance, oh daughter,
And greet the flowing Nile;
The Goddess bless with beauteous grace
Thy swaying form, thy smile.

Introduction

In the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, a movement began in the American danse orientale and fusion community to explore aspects of dance that related more to personal, spiritual quests than to dance as a discipline. This movement brought both good and bad to the community. Good, in that dance theatre expanded and many people not drawn to dance itself were drawn to experience the spiritual or personal aspects of movement as self-expresison, and bad in that it led many unaware people to equate bellydance with a religious expression of the great Goddess or the Divine Feminine, both of which muddied the waters of understanding the true intent of the originating dance called raks sharq, or bellydance.