BLUE SHOP

1893, le Belly Dance

The English introduction of the term "bellydance" is credited to Mr. Sol Bloom. He was an entertainment impressionario considered to be the first to popularize belly dance in the United States by bringing authentic Middle Eastern dancers and musicians to the 1893 Chicago World's Fair (he was actually not the first to bring the dance to these shores, but earlier stage shows in the U.S. did not capture the attention of American public as his did). Some will say that Mr. Bloom's coining of the phrase "belly dance" to publicize his shows at the Fair was done with sexist, racist, and malicious intent explicitly to cause salacious outrage in the Victorian public of the day and to generate headlines (in Victorian times, polite society did not use the word "belly", or many other words that are acceptable today). In actuality, Mr. Bloom was not making up the term, but simply translating the French "Danse du Ventre" into English. It appears that the French had been using that name to describe the belly dance since the time of Napoleon's conquest of Egypt in the 1700's (and there is no documentation on exactly what date the French started using it, or exactly what regional ethnic dances they were originally referring to - Ghawazee, Ouled Nail, etc.). Unfortunately, Mr. Bloom is not alive today to tell us what his real motivations were for popularizing the now infamous name. But judging from his writings, he respected his Middle Eastern performers and their beautiful traditional art, and while not being above provoking a response from the straight-laced society of his time, it is doubtful he was being malicious in his intent. In any event, he was certainly successful in drawing attention to his belly dancers and the name quickly caught on.

After the great success of the Chicago World's Fair and the intense interest shown by the American public to the Middle Eastern dancers, belly dance became popular entertainment. Unfortunately, many of the newly minted belly dancers in the West knew little about the authentic dance and faked it as best they could in movies, vaudeville, and stages big and small. Different belly dancers used different terms to describe their dance, but the moniker "belly dancing" became the most widely recognized in the U.S.
http://www.bellydancingvideo.com/what-is-belly-dance.htm