Usually wooden, they are clappers which can produce a loud and rapid clacking sounds to the music. Several James Bond films and music videos have featured belly dancers. In The Man with the Golden Gun, the belly dancer Saida wears a spent bullet in her navel, which Bond accidentally swallows while trying to retrieve it.
Sherif, who has been dancing since she was a child, is currently a belly dance instructor in Alexandria and has taught dance classes in Turkey and France. Nehad el-Sherif, a veiled young woman who has been working as a belly dance trainer for three years, said that people love to define belly dance as a kind of fitness practice. When gyms started including oriental dance as part of their programs it turned into a fitness practice. All-women dance classes started about 10 years ago in Cairo with an Egyptian-Senegalese trainer, Aicha Babacar.
Folkloric routines will be featured in belly dance stage shows in the Middle East and elsewhere. The term "belly dance" is a westernized name that originally referred to traditional Middle Eastern dancing. The earliest forms of belly dance were the Egyptian ghawazi dance during the 19th century, and Raqs Sharqi, an Arabic dance of the 20th century.
Middle Eastern or Eastern bands took dancers with them on tour, which helped spark interest in the dance. These included a Turkish dance, and Crissie Sheridan in 1897, and Princess Rajah from 1904, which features a dancer playing zills, doing "floor work", and balancing a chair in her teeth. The popularity of these dancers subsequently spawned dozens of imitators, many of whom claimed to be from the original troupe. Victorian society continued to be affronted by the dance, and dancers were sometimes arrested and fined. The dance was nicknamed the "hoochie coochie", or the shimmy and shake.
Several belly dancers in Egypt are leading a campaign to preserve their traditional dance from whom they describe as intruders that have sexualized the dance performance. From the sexual act to conception, to birth, the center of activity and emotion is the belly. Though she remains relatively stationary, she is always in motion. Undulating, twirling, shimmying and swaying, she can express the range of human emotion with dignity and grace.
To express herself well, a belly dancer needs a certain amount روبي - قلبي بلاستيك of concentration and discipline. As far back as the ninth century, a great belly dancer was defined to Caliph Mu' tamid as one who had "loose joints and a great agility in twirling and swaying her hips" (Dance Perspectives, pgs. 7, 8,). Alla Kushnir – She is one of the greatest belly dancers who, with a happy disposition, seemingly goes crazy when she starts performing. She is the most resourceful of all modern belly dancers and was taught this art by Tarik Sultan.