<Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> This section needs additional citations for verification . Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources . Unsourced material may be challenged and removed . (October 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) </Td> </Tr> <P> 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 . </P> <P> Although there were dancers of this type at the 1876 Centennial in Philadelphia, it was not until the 1893 Chicago World's Fair that it gained national attention . The term "belly dancing" is often credited to Sol Bloom, its entertainment director, but referred to the dance as danse du ventre, the name used by the French in Algeria . In his memoirs, Bloom states, "when the public learned that the literal translation was "belly dance", they delightedly concluded that it must be salacious and immoral...I had a gold mine ." </P> <P> Authentic dancers from several Middle Eastern and North African countries performed at the Fair, including Syria, Turkey and Algeria--but it was the dancers in the Egyptian Theater of The Street in the Cairo exhibit who gained the most notoriety . The fact that the dancers were uncorseted and gyrated their hips was shocking to Victorian sensibilities . There were no soloists, but it is claimed that a dancer nicknamed Little Egypt stole the show . Some claim the dancer was Farida Mazar Spyropoulos, but this fact is disputed . </P>

When did belly-dance become popular in the us