I know a lot of people wonder what tribal belly dance is and how it is different from the traditional egyptian or oriental styles of belly dance. I am not saying I know everything there is to know about tribal belly dance, but it is a question I get asked a lot. Lets talk about it :

1. Costume(i’m going with most noticeable here not most important): Now when I do an online search for belly dance the above costume is not what I see. I usually find a costume that is bright colored, covered in beads and sequins and shines like a firework at New Years, and that’s great. Its not tribal. There are many kinds of tribal dance and here at Tiger Claw Dance we celebrate all of them. We celebrate the dark Gothic tribal, the snake-like modern fusion tribal, the pop and lock hip hop fusion tribal and even the colorful full skirted improvisational tribal. The one unifying concept between all of the forms is that the costume breaks away from the traditional. As often happens in tribal, there is a brake from the norm.

2. Music: Belly dance is very much an ethnic form of dance and traditional Egyptian belly dance uses music from the middle east generally Arabic. Tribal again breaks from tradition and uses anything it wants. Tribal music often still uses middle eastern rhythms, but there is a techno mix or beat track played with it. Sometimes the music is not from the middle east at all. The key is that with tribal there is freedom to explore the music that the dancer/artist would like independent of the musics origin.

3. Influence: This is one of my favorite things about tribal because there really are no rules when it comes to influence for the dancer. Dancers are artist and it is freeing to know that any form of dance can be used and interpreted into tribal. I have seen modern, ballet, lyrical, hip-hop and African fusion just to name a few. The main thing that make tribal so wonderful for this is it is a more conducive environment for fusion because of the fact that the audience is already expecting a non-traditional belly dance performance.

These are just some of the basics. There are many others so please comment or visit my questions page.

Tribal belly dance at Tiger Claw is about innovation. Students are taught a strong technical background with a base in traditional western dance and various forms of Tribal and Tribal Fusion.