American Tribal Style Belly Dance is a community based style of belly dance. It is a  fusion of urban, folk, and ritual dances celebrating the community of women. ATS, like all forms of belly dance, is aesthetically pleasing, spiritually grounding, physically rewarding.

The general category Tribal Style is accredited to Jamila Salimpour who fostered a fusion of folkloric dances styles from the Middle East and North Africa and began teaching what she knew and performing all over California and the West Coast. Utilizing traditional folkloric dance elements and costumes inspired by traditional and ethnographic traditions, she presented on stage through Bal Anat a colorful dance company which included musicians, singers and dancers to create a "souk" or almost circus feel. Taking what she herself had learned from native dancers from Morocco, Algeria, Turkey, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon who were dancing in the United States, she began to catalogue "belly dance movement" and began creating a basic repertoire terminology which is still the basis for Tribal Style and American Tribal Style repertoire.

Tribal Style dancers (like Raqs Sharqi dancers) often use finger cymbals, but the focus is on the group as opposed to emphasizing solo performance. Tribal Style does feature solos within the group as well as call-and-answer performance with another dancer (duets), or as a whole group. Often there is a chorus which provides a "drone" in the background while the featured pod is the focal point. Both the pod and the chorus are improvised in the moment. Staging for the pod and the chorus is also formalized within the ATS form to maximize dancer visibility on behalf of the audience and likewise maximizing group visibility of the leader.

Two teachers offer ATS dance lessons - Amy and Kate.