At first glance, there is nothing unusual about the belly dance workshop being led by one of Egypt's most famous dancers, Liza al-Laziza. Yet although the class is taking place on the soil of one of the Arab world's cultural capitals and the students are being taught an art form dating back centuries in Egypt, all of the hundred or so young women who patiently follow the svelte, Iranian-born al-Laziza's expert guidance are expatriates. And the makeup of the workshop is symptomatic of a larger trend -- while belly dancing has become hugely popular outside the Arab world, it is, in Liza's view, something of a dying art in its spiritual home. Like so many non-Arab belly dancers, coming to one of the places in which the sultry, ancient discipline is said to have originated, was a lifetime dream for Liza. But upon arriving in the Arab world's largest city, al-Laziza found that belly dancing was in decline and often frowned upon by an increasingly conservative society. Liza, who...