LISTEN closely to the voices, with their tales of clandestine

peformances, their mixed emotions at what they have witnesssed, and you

find that belly-dancers have -- for centuries -- been seen as veiled

threats to propriety.

Watch closely as the two performers, with their gauzy costumes, send

veils quivering with their rapidly shimmying hips, and you see why both

western sensibilities and fundamental Islamic codes have been set on

edge by generations of dancing girls.

Arab dancing is an untrammelled celebration of female identity, female

sexuality -- and that, in some quarters, is forcefully kept under wraps.

For Wendy Buonaventura, the history of the dance is every bit as

deserving of our attention as the dance itself. And certainly, the

recorded extracts -- taken from various memoires, mostly male, mostly

western in origin -- point up the ambiguity in attitude that has made

belly dancers such objects of lust and loathing.

The pity is that the recording is itself so dull, so devoid of

atmosphere. While Buonaventura and her associate, Jacqueline Jamal,

offer dance that is sinuous-slow or dance that is hectic with rapid hip

movement, the commentary plods.