10 Countries for Learning Belly Dance
Last Updated on February 2, 2024
I have listed below 10 countries, which are good to visit if you wish to learn about belly dancing, whether you wish to take lessons from local dancers or learn about the culture and art in general.
However, be aware that, as some of these countries are located in politically volatile areas, it may be not safe to travel there or there may be areas of those countries that it is best to avoid.
Hence, before organising your trip, always check the FCO website (www.fco.gov.uk) for some up-to-date advice.
1. Egypt
Egypt is La Mecca for belly dancers all over the world, especially the cities of Cairo and Luxor. Egyptian belly dancers are considered amongst the best in the world and Egyptian belly dance teachers are extremely sought after.
There are also a lot of great belly dancers who are not originally from Egypt, but who are based there. Just a few names that belly dancers around the world will recognise include:
- Raqia Hassan
- Dandasha
- Randa Kamel
- Dina
- and Mohamed El Hosseny (Egyptian male belly dancer, based in Finland) just to mention a few.
Also, bazaars in Egypt are great places in which to buy all your belly dance costumes, accessories and belly dance music CDs.
Last but not least, Egyptian deluxe hotels are nowadays the places where you can see a lot of great belly dancers perform. Read more tips for travelling to Egypt for belly dance training.
2. Turkey
Another great place to visit for belly dance lovers is Turkey. Turkish belly dance style is very different from the Egyptian style but equally interesting.
Belly dancers can find everything they wish to do with belly dance in Istanbul’s bazaar, and it is possible to go and see various belly dance shows in Turkey.
Famous Turkish belly dancers include Asena, Princess Banu, Nesrin Topkapi, Sibel Baris and Burcin Orhan.
A Turkish male belly dancer is Ozgen, who is based in the UK and is greatly appreciated.
3. Lebanon
Belly dance is big in Lebanon too; they even have a reality talent show on Lebanese satellite channel LBC, called Hizi Ya Nawaem (World Belly Dance Championship).
Lebanese belly dance style is very energetic and there are a lot of great Lebanese belly dancers, such as Amani, Maya Abi Saad and more.
4. Morocco
Some travel companies and some belly dance teachers organise trips to Morocco.
Belly dance lovers visiting Morocco can combine belly dance lessons with trips to the desert, visits to saunas and cultural tours.
Also, a lot of nightclubs in Morocco feature live belly dance shows. You can learn belly dance in Morocco, although this is not really a typical Moroccan dance.
In Morocco, they have a variety of local dance styles, such as Guedra and Shikhat, which you can also learn and watch.
5. Tunisia
Trips involving belly dance are also organised in Tunisia.
This country has its own unique style of belly dance and folkloric dance and it is culturally very interesting.
An expert of Tunisian belly dance is Leila Haddad, who was born in Tunisia and moved to France when she was eighteen.
In France Leila Haddad pursued her love for dance, rediscovering the ancient art form of belly dance and Tunisian dance.
Leila teaches and performs in France, where she presently lives and holds workshops around the world.
6. Algeria
Algerian belly dance is usually associated with the Ouled Nail women.
The Ouled Neil is a Berber tribe, based in Algeria, whose women traditionally went around making money from their dance performances and from selling their bodies.
Ouled Neil women started travelling very young and, once they had made enough money, they returned to their village in order to get married and start a family.
Their costumes were very rich and included heavy headdresses, lots of jewellery, coins sewed to their costumes and heavy make-up.
The jewellery of Ouled Nail dancers has inspired the costumes of today’s American tribal belly dance.
A famous belly dancer, who was born in Algeria and who has travelled the world, is Amel Tafsout.
Amel Tafsout is not only an international dancer but also an anthropologist, a choreographer, a singer and a language instructor.
Algeria is also known for its own characteristic belly dance music, called Rai.
7. Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia is one of the countries of origin of what is known today as belly dance.
Probably not worth going to for learning how to dance, but it can be nevertheless very interesting culturally.
Saudi Arabia has its own dance genre, called Khaleeji. Khaleeji is different from belly dance and the dancer wears a long and wide kaftan called thobe nashal, which is used as a prop as well as a costume.
This type of dance involves a lot of movements of the upper body and a lot of focus on footwork.
8. Syria
Although not as popular here as in Egypt or Morocco, Syria still has a popular following and you can see shows and experience this dance form in these parts.
9. Greece
Belly dance in Greece is called tsifteteli.
Tsifteteli was brought into Greece by Greek refugees who lived in Turkey and were relocated to Greece in 1922-23, as part of a population exchange between Greece and Turkey.
There is a rhythm called Tsifteteli, which is part of the rebetika music repertoire.
Nowadays Tsifteteli music can be heard everywhere in Greece, but it is usually danced socially rather than performed.
There is currently a debate over whether Tsifteteli should be considered part of the Greek cultural tradition or not.
An interesting book that includes some discussion on this topic is Dancing Fear and Desire: Race, Sexuality, and Imperial Politics in Middle Eastern Dance by Stavros Stavrou Karayanni.
10. USA
With its big influx of immigrants, the USA has always been a melting pot of cultures. Officially, belly dance arrived in the US on occasion of the “Street in Cairo” exhibition on the Midway at the World’s Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago in 1893, when Little Egypt performed (one of little Egypt’s possible identities was Farida Mazar Spyropoulos and she was a bellydancer from Syria).
However, a big part in the spread of belly dance in the US was played by the immigrants coming from various Middle Eastern and Northern African countries.
American belly dancers preserved an art form that threatened to be lost in some countries of origin and they even invented a new form of belly dance, American tribal belly dance.
Nowadays, there are a lot of great belly dance performers and teachers, well known worldwide, who are based in the USA.
Many of them are based in California, such as Jamila Salimpour and her daughter Suhaila, Jim Boz, Carolena Nericcio, the Bellydance Superstars who tour around the world all the time and more.
On the East Coast, in NYC, is Morocco, which has been involved with Arabic dance for over 50 years and still teaches and performs in the USA and abroad.
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Dr Valeria Lo Iacono is a belly dancer and a dance researcher with a PhD in dance and heritage. Valeria also teaches and performs as a belly dance but also enjoys learning ballet, jazz dance and other dance genres.
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I’d like to know where a male beginner can learn Bellydance and be trained to be a performer. I’m a male in southern California. There are male Bellydancers here but they fit a certain lifestyle demographic. I’m apparently seen as some plain guy from Orange County. I can’t find proper training. No one will train me seriously. Is there a country with a Bellydance community that accepts male dancers, where an unskilled immigrant can make a living and be accepted by other dancers?
Singapore
Look for Darren Ho and Arjae Vitug. They are both male bellydance teachers that have their own dance company in Singapore
Hi Ewanni, it is not easy, but I can think of maybe two places:
1) Germany, where Horacio and Beata Cifuentes teach in their oriental dance school:
http://www.oriental-fantasy.com/en/
2) Finland, where there is the school of the Egyptian male dancer El Hosseny:
http://www.elhossenydance.com/
The majority of their students are women, but I am sure that they take seriously male dancers in the same way.
I am not sure how easy it is to find a job and get a visa to stay in Germany and Finland and how hard the languages are (although many people speak English in those countries, particularly in Finland) . It may be worth trying to find out though.
Valeria
Thanks you for this article. however Tunisia is way far from the art of bellydance. I studied and performed bellydance in the States, moved to Tunisia to find very few people practicing raks sharki, after learning few moves (not even correctly) from Youtube. Tunisian people are poor, and life is kind of hard for them to spend money on dance classes.
Meanwhile, there is few dance teachers who teach other forms of dance (modern, hip hop, ballet ) they recruit “dancers” (who are not even dancers), and then they will perform with them few “shows” after being taught the only moves and choreography that has been performed.
Bellydance in tunisia is in decline and we trying so hard to revive it due to so many other obstacles, hard to talk about in this comment.
Hi Naziha, thank you for the update. It is sad to hear about the situation in Tunisia and the decline not just of belly dance, but of local dances in particular. Let me know how you get on with your attempts to revive it.
All the tips shared in this post are effective for performing Belly dance live shows. I am learning belly dance from Melbourne Bellydance and this information really help me in future. Thanks for sharing.
Hi, I think your website might be having browser compatibility issues.
When I look at your blog site in Firefox, it looks fine but when opening in Internet
Explorer, it has some overlapping. I just wanted to give you a quick heads up!
Other then that, great blog!
Hi, thank you for letting me know about this problem and for reading my blog ! I will look into this technical issue.
“Greek belly dance is called tsifteteli. Tsifteteli has been danced in Greece for centuries, as some say that belly dance was performed in Greece already by the ancient Greeks. Nowadays Tsifteteli music can be heard everywhere in Greece, but it is usually danced socially rather then performed.”
no, no, just no! 1) it’s called “Cifteteli”, 2) it’s not Greek AT ALL, it’s Turkish, and 3) It has NOT been danced in Greece for centuries. No kind of “Belly dance” has ever been known to Greece AT ALL, before 1923, when a specific number of Greeks who lived in Turkey, were settled to Greece, after a population exchange between the two countries. “Cifteteli” became known to Greece after the population exchange of 1923, which is not “centuries” but less than a century, and ever since then it’s not considered a “Greek dance”, basically tsifteteli is the word that Greeks use for belly dance. No folklore festival or similar events ever have tsifteteli shows in Greece, simply because it’s not considered something Greek.
With all respect, if you want to have an accurate article there, correct the Greek section, if not remove it at all (no, Greece is not a country which has traditionally anything to do with belly dance)
Hi Johnnie, thank you for your comment.
I wrote this section a long time ago and, since then, I have done more research on different forms of belly dance.
Indeed, as you state, Tsifteteli arrived in Greece since 1923 and there is no evidence that it was present before then, in spite of some authors’ claims.
However, the spelling Tsifteteli is perfectly fine as used by Karayanni, the author I now mention in my post, as well as by other academics who have written on this topic.
Also, there is some debate over whether the style of belly dance called Tsifteteli is part of the Greek tradition or not (there seem to be political issues at stake here so am not taking any definite position) and Karayanni’s book is a good source to read to find out more about it. I leave it to readers to make up their own minds.
Hi,
I’m looking for the classes of belly dancing in country where I may surfing too.
Thank you everyone for advice.
Have a amazing day,
br Markéta
Hi I’m looking for a belly dance holiday for 2 to 3 wks where I can learn and hopefully master the moves…2 or hrs a day wld be enough ..