Oriental dance includes a variety of dance styles which are primarily solo improvisational
dances performed by women, either in private for their families, or in public as paid
professionals. To really understand the range of Oriental dance today, one has to look has to look
at the history of dancers, and how they were perceived by their own times and cultures
throughout the near and middle east. The historical record shows the progression in several
cultures of a dance which began in temples, passed on to the secular in an erotic form, and
evolved into a class of professional dancers. Thus, as historians would say, it progresses from
the religious sphere to the realm of dance as spectacle or entertainment. And, at the same time,
various forms of eastern dance continue to be used in a medicinal or religious sense in the
various trance dances found throughout the middle east today. Certainly in all of these countries,
dance is also a part of everyday life for men and women, but this aspect of dance is more difficult
to document. Therefore we will look at the history or dance in religious and professional
entertainment situations.

Ancient Greece and Macedonia

Lilian Lawler noted that the Greeks have participated in esoteric religious rites which included
dancing throughout their history. Here is a group of Dionysian dancers in the throes of
ecstasy. In addition to the rites of Dionysus and Bacchus, there were many deities which had
fertility rites. At the shrine of the goddess Artemis in southern Greece, choruses of young girls
sang and danced in her honor. In Sparta, girls and young women came to the shrine of Artemis
and performed unrestrained, ecstatic dances to the goddess while wearing "only one chiton",
which was normally their underdress. In connection with the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, in
Asia Minor, there is mention of mysteries in which maiden priestesses engaged in "ecstatic
dances". At Ancyra, also in Asia Minor, it is said that women performed dances likened to
"Bacchic orgies" in both the cults of Artemis and the goddess Athena.

There was also the goddess Hecate, mysterious goddess of magic arts. She had power over the
dead and was worshipped at night, in secret rites which undoubtedly included dancing. Pan, the
ancient god of nature, was also worshipped in nocturnal mysteries and dances in the Greek
world. There were also mysteries celebrated in honor of Aphrodite, goddess of human love and
fertility on the island of Cyprus. Ecstatic and lewd dances to the tympanum (a type of cymbal)
were a feature of these rites. And there were, of course, the great mysteries celebrated at Eleusis,
near Athens, for Demeter and Persephone.

The Greeks "borrowed" many of these cults from Thrace, Syria, Phrygia, and Asia Minor in
general. They were often characterized by frenzied nocturnal dances, with crazed outcries, to the
stirring accompaniment of shrill flutes, tympana, metal cymbals, castanets of wood, earthenware
or metal, horns, "bull-roarers", and rattles. There is also mention of snake handling, trances,
prophesying, and even of self-mutilation. Some were performed openly and some only in secret.
In these rites, music and dance were used as a form of "medicine" for illness of the spirit and the
body, as will be seen in the "trance dance" cults that still survive in many parts of the Middle
East.

Little is known about the rituals of the Cabiri, where Phillip of Macedonia (father of Alexander
the Great) met his future wife, Olympia, but they are recorded as having taken place at night,
with the excesses typical to Dionysic celebrations. The cult was very old, probably Phoenician in
origin, and was rooted in nature worship as was that of Dionysus. The mysterious ritual was
conducted by torchlight. Olympias was a princess of Epirus, site of the ancient oracle of Dodona,
and should have been familiar with the mysticism of the cults of the northern and western
borderlands of the Greek world. She is, in fact, said to be a priestess of Dionysus and led her
followers in orgiastic rites in which snakes apparently played a major part. One ancient author
wrote of her habit of taking tame snakes out of baskets of ivy and allowing them to curl
themselves around the thyrsis of the woman 'so as to terrify the men'. Phillip eventually became
so nervous about his wife's religious observances that his affection cooled, and he "seldom came
to sleep with her".

If additional confirmation is needed as to the symbolism of snakes, a surviving folk custom
relating to the ancient fertility rites was recorded just before World War II. One of these rituals
was the yearly charming of the poskok vipers on a "snake hill" near Skopje, making them slither
over female garments spread out on the ground, thus bringing fertility to the women. These
rituals are now prohibited by law. About ten miles from Skpoje there is another village which
also has a "snake hill" believed to be the capital of the Snake Tsar of the world. Thousands of
Posoks live on its rocky slopes. These are the deadliest form of European vipers. The belief was
that no snakes would strike on snake day (March 14 and 22) and that none could be injured. The
women who wished to become pregnant would taunt the snakes. If she was jumped on by a
snake, the woman would wash her garments in water, and have her husband would wash his face
with it. They would expect a child the following year.

The upper class citizens of Classical Greece deplored "professionalism" of any kind. But
it is quite certain that members of the lower classes constituted "professional" dancers and
musicians, who were employed for their entertainment. The transition from religious to purely
secular is a major change for the dance everywhere it occurs. Certainly at their favorite
entertainment, the "symposia" or dinner party courtesan dancers were called upon to entertain. In
Greek vases they are pictured in scanty costume, or entirely nude, dancing spiritedly to the music
of the flute. These courtesans also performed a variety of the pyrrhic dance (leaping), with
helmet, shield and spear. The so called "Ionic dances" were also associated with the courtesans,
spoken of as notorious for their softness and lasciviousness.

The steps and figures in which Greek courtesans engaged, as Lawler points out, look very
much like those associated with the dances of classical Greek comedy. Included in this genre
were several movements which were essentially a rotation of the hips and abdomen; the same
movement was as found in the dances of courtesans. One such figure or dance is called "makter"
or "maktrismos", both words derived from "maktra" which translates into "a kneading-trough,
tub". We are told specifically that it involved a lascivious swaying of the hips. A similar dance
called variously "igde, igdis, igdisma" derives its name from the word for "a mortar". This, in
turn goes back to a verb meaning "grind, pound". In this dance 'they used to rotate the hips in the
manner of a pestle' (in a mortar); it also involved "writhing, twisting". Lawler concludes that this
dance must have included both a rotation of the hips, a movement which reminded the Greeks of
the stirring of a pestle and also an occasional sharp jerk, suggestive of pounding. It was certainly
a lewd performance, and was not some sort of "folk dance" about the pounding of food as some
Victorian era scholars have suggested. It lacks only the name to become a lively version of our
own "belly dance".

Enough documentation exists to prove that these dancers, using some type of castanet or
cymbal, or clapper, danced with great joy and vivacity. We don't know exactly what their music
might have sounded like , but certainly there were flutes, lyres, and some type of drum.
Appropriate colors for these costumes included yellow or green and vermillion, since these are
mentioned as "appropriate to women devoted to the cult of pleasure". As Christianity became
more influential, many of the dancers were forced to retreat from the capital to small towns.
Some undoubtedly went to the East, and to Constantinople, where spectacles and dances
continued to be popular. From there, in the sixth century, arose the dancer who became Empress,
Theodora. This common circus dancing girl married the aristocratic Justinian, and helped him
rule the Byzantine empire.