Irida is a professional French oriental dancer, and also a business woman who manages her own company and her non-profit organization. She owns three web sites in French, devoted to oriental dance: Irida, Baladi and La Porte d''Ishtar.

As in some other European countries, the recent development of Oriental dance in France is not a passing trend. We are witnessing the birth of French oriental dance as a popular movement. It is one of the effects of the cultural evolution of French society under the influence of oriental culture.

Unfortunately, statistics about the development of Oriental dance do not exist, because there is not yet a federation or trade association which would bring dancers and teachers together. Moreover, Oriental dance is one of the rare activities that is not supervised by the French State, omnipresent everywhere else. However, we can recognize select facts which show a recent growth and a spectacular future craze for Oriental dance.

Oriental dance courses grow in numbers and teachers see more students flocking to them each year. There are also more Oriental dancers who offer their services in restaurants and parties. Today, an oriental restaurant would not take the liberty of not offering a dance show to its customers.

The stores that sell oriental dance supplies are improving. Let us take for example the two stores in Marseille that offer these kinds of products. A few years ago, they mainly sold oriental wedding and ceremony dresses and supplies. Oriental dance represented a small proportion of their sales. Progressively, this proportion grew and today it makes up the majority of their income.

As the owner of a site devoted to oriental dance, which is almost always in the first result page of Google, I notice a permanent and steady increase of visits and a more active use of my forum, which attracts more and more women who want to share information about the dance. There are already more than ten French forums of this kind.

Bellydance Articles
Home
Guest book