When I turned 17, I wanted just one thing for my birthday: belly-dancing classes. The dance's beauty, grace and creative costumes, along with its strong connection to Arabic music, made it a natural ...

“Here, there is a growing trend to invite foreign belly dancers to weddings, nightclubs and other events.” At a Cairo wedding hall, Russian belly dancer Anastasia Biserova shimmied to the dance floor ...

As belly dancing gains popularity internationally, young Egyptian performers are working to restore its reputation at home, pushing back against decades of stigma to reclaim the dance as part of their ...

While some prominent Arab and Turkish belly dancers plan to take part in upcoming festival in Eilat, others condemn idea as treasonous given Israel's ongoing abuse, dispossession of Palestinian people ...

As a trickle of tourists slowly returns to Egypt, the floating nightclubs along the Nile are back in business. And belly dancers are once again in high demand. The glitzy late-night shows attract ...

Giselle Rodríguez is the author of "Danza Oriental en Egipto", a Spanish-language book that traces the origins of oriental dance all the way back to the Pharaonic Egypt until today.

CAIRO, Egypt -- Egypt's foreign belly dancers have been given their marching orders. The government says it wants to protect homegrown practitioners of the seductive Middle Eastern dance form and is ...

How the Saudi influence is transforming Egyptian society. CAIRO, Egypt, June 20, 2008 — -- It was almost midnight at the five-star-hotel overlooking the Nile, but it was far from bedtime. The ...