Why do belly dancers wear costumes that expose the belly?
The benefits of a two-piece belly dance costume are endless, although there are just as many belly dancers who prefer to wear dresses which cover the midsection. Many dancers feel that leaving the belly exposed allows their audiences to see the intricacies of their dance technique better, while many others just like having costumes that ”fit the image”. You can see evidence of dancers wearing the stereotypical two-piece costume (also called ‘bedleh’ in Arabic) in Egyptian films dating as far back as the 1930’s and 40’s. I’ve heard from several sources that since so many of the movies and musicals in the Golden Age of Egyptian cinema were trying to emulate Hollywood standards, they also took the Westernized image of the belly dancer and adopted it as their own. How much of this is true, I don’t know, but it’s an interesting theory.
