Egyptian belly dancers are an endangered species. On the road to extinction. That is, if there isn’t a belly dance renaissance in Egypt sometime soon. This is ironic, considering that most of the international community imagines Egypt to be the “Planet of Belly Dance,” and that Egypt is the home of belly dance legends Samia Gamal, Fifi Abdo, and Soheir Zaki. There’s also at least 40 million Egyptian women living here. You’d think that with those numbers, this music and dance oriented country could produce a few more belly dancers. Yet the reality is that an ugly combination of economic and socio-religious factors is robbing this country of one of its greatest artistic achievements.
