Dear Anthea and Gang,
This is a great example of one of the issues that Jeanette Cool, Leyla Lanty and me, along with Morocco and a few others have tried to call attention to. In these movie clips we see, often the dancer is not dancing as she really would in a club or other true dance venue. She does what the director wants her to do, not what she wants to do, necessarily. We have to take these movie clips for what they are... movie clips that demonstrate the director's vision more than the dancer's dance skill in many cases. I read a dissertation by a Muslim film critic once. It was an academic paper and it talked about belly dance as a device in film in Egypt. Usually the belly dance scene was meant to help create a certain kind of background for the protagonist in angst, sitting in a nightclub, brooding, smoking and drinking, etc. Another common usage was the dancer dancing as a prelude to a sexual encounter that was not shown on screen, only hinted at with the dancer as the clue to the action that was not shown. The dancer dances, the door shuts on a couple about to do "You Know What". anyway, I think the clip is a really good example of the director's control over what the dancer did in all those movies.
Regards, A'isha