Belly-dancing is not just fascinating and a lot of fun to do, but very relaxing as well.
It doesn’t matter if you are small or tall, big or thin, young or old, everybody can learn it.

Since the last couple of years belly-dancing is starting to become very popular again. It is not so strange to see that in our emancipated society there are more and more highly educated and independent women enjoying themselves practising belly-dancing as a hobby or even making it their (second) profession.

In 1997 the foundation “Dans van de Morgenstond” was established.

This foundation’s goals are to help spread and develop the art of oriental dancing and to develop a new dance style called Belly Break. The following activities are part of ‘Dans van de Morgenstond’:

• Organizing bellydance courses in several places in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.
• Training professional bellydancers and teachers. For this purpose, two 3,5 year-long trainings are held in Eindhoven (NL) and Liege (B).
• The foundation also takes care of the exchange of teachers and belly-dancers in the Euregio via the ’BELLY-DANCE CENTRAL’.

Since 1999 the foundation “Dans van de Morgenstond” organizes a yearly “INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF ORIENTAL AND BELLY-DANCING” in order to :

• Contribute to the foundation’s goal : spreading the art of oriental and belly-dancing and give it a place in western society.
• Strengthen the self expression of amateurs by giving them the opportunity to practice and perform.
• Encourage the cooperation between amateurs and professionals.
• Lower the threshold for visiting cultural events.

In organizing the yearly festival the foundation strives to incorporate a mix of performance acts by amateurs and professionals, interchanged by funny intermezzos and specials (like percussion acts) and handing out the certificates for the dancers who graduate from the professional training in Eindhoven or Liege.
Every year the program is attuned to a different theme, created and developed by the participating professional and amateur dancers.

Four times a year foundation ‘Dans van de Morgenstond’ publishes their newsletter for oriental and belly-dancing “DÉVOILÉE”. It contains news, updates, links and articles about activities and developments on belly-dancing and is free for all students of the foundation.

GIOVANNI BIASIOLO is the designer of costumes that works with the foundation. His goal is to create belly-dance costumes with a western orientation style for dancers.

In today’s society belly-dancing is becoming increasingly important ; for relaxation, as an awareness process or as a creative art form. Belly-dancing is constantly developing.
Its youngest form, BELLY BREAK, is a dancing style that especially addresses the younger and/or more progressive belly-dancers. This new belly-dancing form has been created and is constantly being developed by the foundation and integrates western cultures and backgrounds.

The foundation “Dans van de Morgenstond” strives to give belly-dancing its own identity, on the artistic field as well as seen from the entertainment point of view. She doesn’t want to train its dancers to become a (often bad) copy of other oriental dancers, but looks at each and every dancer’s own identity. The foundation’s members show a big variety in age ; the youngest and oldest member are respectively 9 and 70 years old! Also the social background is very diverse, from housewives to lawyers and doctors.
Our foundation counts approximately 1,000 members who actively practise belly-dancing as a hobby.