Company
About Raqs Atlas
Raqs Atlas is a global platform dedicated to belly dance and the cultural, musical and professional world around it.
Most belly dance information online is scattered: a festival line-up on one social account, a dancer's biography on another, a song's history nowhere at all. Raqs Atlas exists to gather that knowledge in one connected place and keep it there.
What we are building
Rather than a blog with categories, Raqs Atlas is designed as a connected network. Every dancer, style, rhythm, song, artist, festival, school and article has its own page, and those pages link to each other. A dancer connects to the styles she performs, her teachers, the songs she dances to and the festivals where she teaches. A style connects to its rhythms, its history and the people who shaped it.
Our four commitments
- Discover — make it genuinely easy to find dancers, teachers, music, festivals and schools anywhere in the world.
- Learn — treat history and music as a sourced encyclopedia rather than repeated hearsay.
- Connect — give the international community a place to talk, review and recognise each other's work.
- Support the profession — help performers and instructors be found, booked and paid.
Where we come from
Raqs Atlas is an independent project. It is not owned by a festival, a school or a brand, and no dancer can buy a better place in the encyclopedia. Paid memberships exist to fund the platform and to give professionals working tools — never to change historical or editorial content.
Help us get it right
Belly dance history is full of conflicting accounts and lost records. If you find something inaccurate, incomplete or unfairly presented, tell us. Corrections from the community are one of the main ways this archive will improve.