7 Dec
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_bLEKuZ9Mo[/youtube]
There are belly dancers who are elegantly sexy and others who are brazenly so. And there are those who are cute and Kitty Fotsaty, who I have featured before and who is my choice for this month belongs to this camp. She is just adorable. Her smile seems genuine and her movement is gorgeous even if her shape is a little too lean for a belly dancer. She still manages to seduce, even more so in this clip from Bint al-Balad (the daughter of the country or the country girl depending on who is translating) with a fantasy New York skyline as a backdrop. I love how her dance starts en silhouette before she is fully lit and revealed to her elegant and entranced audience!
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11 Sep
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axUixg0RFaI&list=PL278F49D930BC2980[/youtube]
I nearly forgot about my belly dancer this month. It must have been all the fun I was having in the US. Anyhow, I thought I would change it up a little this month and give you a male belly dancer. He is not the most famous one. That honour goes to Tito Seif who is Egyptian and who I will feature soon but this one is Turkish and he is called Diva. His movement is pretty incredible but his straight shape interferes with the enjoyment of the dance as it is not quite so suited for belly dancing. Still, he is fun to watch, particularly against the camel mural!
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2 Aug
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0ioB9uMpQI[/youtube]
You are lucky today. You are getting three clips in one. Just found this on youtube without unfortunately much explanation but they all seem to be of a very young Tahiya, possibly before she became the huge star she was. Not sure. Anyone who knows, please tell me. In any case, she is particularly beguiling in the third dance where she is as always incredibly sexy without being vulgar, but there even more so with an element of purity which is not something you would normally associate with belly dancing!
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2 Jul
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmWpN3rpABg[/youtube]
Well, it is that time of the month again and very timely too given all that is going on in Egypt. I should really be featuring Tahiya who was very engaged politically but I had a picture of her and Farid in my previous post, so, am going with the other great dancer of that time, Samia Gamal, in a very early film where you also get some of the film action (sorry if you are not an Arabic speaker) and a divine dance with the camera focusing on her beautiful midriff to start then panning to her shadow then finally on her and the motley drooling men watching her. One of my favourite clips of hers. I need to find the film (Agaza fi Gahanam, 1949) and show it at Koshari Street. Very soon we will have screens in there to show classic black & white Egyptian films and street food scenes from around the world!
