Belly dance is a Western-coined name
for a “Traditional West Asian” dance,
especially Raqs Sharqi.
It is sometimes also called Middle
Eastern dance, or Arabic dance in the
West.
The term “Belly dance” is a misnomer as every part of the body is involved in the dance, with the most featured body part being the hips. It basically originated from Middle East.
Belly dance was popularized in the West during the Romantic movement of the 18th and 19th centuries, when Orientalist artists depicted romanticized images of harem life in the Ottoman Empire.