Belly dance (Arabic: رقص شرقي, romanized: Raqs sharqi, lit. ‘oriental dance’) is a Middle Eastern dance that originated in Egypt, which features movements of the hips and torso. A Western-coined exonym, it is also referred to as Middle Eastern dance or Arabic dance.

Belly dancing is believed to have had a long history in the Middle East. Several Greek and Roman sources including Juvenal and Martial describe dancers from Asia Minor and Spain using undulating movements, playing castanets, and sinking to the floor with “quivering thighs”, descriptions that are certainly suggestive of the movements that are today associated with  dance. Later, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries, European travelers in the Middle East such as Edward Lane and Flaubert wrote extensively of the dancers they saw there, including the Awalim and Ghawazi of Egypt.

In his book, Andrew Hammond notes that practitioners of the art form agree that this dance is lodged especially in Egyptian culture, he states: “the Greek historian Herodotus related the remarkable ability of Egyptians to create for themselves spontaneous fun, singing, clapping, and dancing in boats on the Nile during numerous religious festivals. It’s from somewhere in this great, ancient tradition of gaiety that the  dance emerged.

The courtly pleasures of the Umayyad, Abbasid and Fatimid caliphs included this dancing, soirée and singing.  dancers and singers were sent from all parts of the vast empire to entertain.

Historically, professional dance performers were the Awalim (primarily musicians and poets), Ghawazi. The Maazin sisters may have been the last authentic performers of Ghawazi dance in Egypt, with Khayreyya Maazin still teaching and performing as of 2020. this dancing is part of Egyptian culture, and is part of Arabic culture as a whole. Throughout the Middle East and the Arab diaspora, belly dancing is closely associated with Arabic music that is modern classical

this dancing is quite popular in various parts of the world including India. has been shown in many Bollywood films, and is often accompanied with Bollywood songs and dance sequences instead of the traditional Arabic style.^[72]

Hollywood films regularly include sexualized belly dancers as part of Orientalized and exotic depictions of the Middle East