Belly Dancing as Sacred Music

Tribal Belly Dance : Pregnancy Celebration Belly Dance

At my Covenant Group this past week (a small group of people from my Fellowship who meet once a month), we experienced belly-dancing as sacred dance with a guest instructor. We rolled our hips, snaked our arms, rolled our shoulders and shimmied -- It felt GOOD to belly-dance for an hour with the ladies from my Covenant Group.

Apparently in Middle Eastern cultures, women gather (like we do in coffee clutches) and they dance together. Belly-dancing is BY women, FOR women. The West made it sexy. It was really hard to find a sample video that was just women dancing ...

My favorite act at the Renaissance Faire in Bristol was always Shaharazade's Gypsy Travelers. A storyteller, a drummer, and a belly dancer. The last time I saw them, the dancer was about 7 months pregnant. She did some dancing and it was neat to see a pregnant belly dancer. That summer, they had a 2nd dancer as the schedule could be a bit strenuous for one.

Apparently, many of the belly-dancing moves are beneficial for pregnancy and childbirth. Those are the muscles needed to bare down ...

Another dance story : When I was in Nigeria, the born-again Christians thought dancing was a sin and that most of the students in our group were going to hell. For relief (and normalcy), I hung out with Jeff Carter, a PhD student from Harvard Divinity School who was studying a charismatic religious group in Ife, Nigeria. This small group was having a revival a few blocks from where we were staying. THEIR services were really interesting. They had a drum-kit set up at the front of the room. Obviously, music and dancing was NOT a sin. Moving your body was compulsory. I got up to dance with the rest of them and I thought I was doing all right when a lady smiled and said, "Don't worry. We'll teach you how to dance." I had to laugh. She just wanted me to loosen up and get comfortable with The Spirit. A few people were speaking in tongues and spinning and writhing around the room. The Spirit doesn't always know what to do with the human body and can be a little clumsy in these spirit possessions. It was really interesting -- and more of what I went to Nigeria to learn about in terms of traditional religion mixing with modern.