Aziza Sa'id's FAQ - Dancers in TV Series U-Z

Title	Dancer	Description
unknown		[unknown B&W movie or TV series, circa 1965 or prior] featuring a belly dancer dancing around a man fastened to a stone slab on a Mayan-looking temple top, before he ended up inside the temple in a room full of snakes
USA Up All Night	Benedene Cannata L. Sharon Capo Nesma Demopoulos Shantal Riley	3/6/93, Gilbert Gottfried with Benedene Cannata, L. Sharon Capo, Nesma Demopoulos and Shantal Riley, bellydancers from Cleopatra, a restaurant in NYC
V.I.P.	Pamela Anderson	The most recent episode of not only features Pamela Anderson in full bedleh, but she also "dances" (sort of) with two dancers (who actually looked like they had at least some rhythm)
View, The	Veena and Neena Bidasha
Wayans Brothers, The	Veena and Neena Bidasha
Who's the Boss?	Najwa
Wild, Wild West		[TV-Series]
Xena - "Cradle Of Hope"		laugh if you will, but she does a terrific dance, which includes a "Turkish drop".
Xena: The Warrior Princess	Lucy Lawless	TV shows Hercules, Xena, and The Adventures of Sinbad often feature snippets of ethnic, pseudo-, and maybe even real ME dance with interesting/colorful costuming. The snippets, though short, add nice touches of ethnicity, dance and color to the shows. "Two TV shows that have the occasional Bdance scene and use ME-sounding music are 'Hercules' and 'Xena'. I was channel-surfing one evening and came to a screeching halt when I heard the music on 'Xena'. How often does one hear ME music on TV? Not too often in my neck of the woods. The costuming is 'fantasy' but fun to look at anyway." --Joya The "Xena, Warrior Princess" episode, "Who Is Gurkhan?" In this one, both she and Gabrielle "get down" Med-style, though as I have only stills and not yet the actual episode I can't comment on the dancing. - Paul B "On at least one show there was some interesting-looking group choreography done by the Amazon characters...it looked vaguely African dance style to me..." Also..."On the episode entitled 'Cradle of Hope', Xena poses as a dancer to sneak into a castle. She (and the other dancers) do lots of snake arms, spins, and 'drama' though not much else. Xena does do, at one point, a kneeling backbend to the floor with snake arms and she is wearing a harem-like outfit: red/gold bustier (so her midriff is covered), blue harem pants, and gold belt with long fringe in the front and back center (though there wasn't really any hip action going on). Oh, and yes, she was also wearing a brief, shear face veil which was supposed to disguise her. All in all, it was clearly ME dance and music that was going on, though not expert but then the character isn't supposed to be an expert in it. On the plus side I thought it added a nice bit of color and a bit more than usual (the backbend) for this sort of thing; dancers were 'dramatic'/vampish rather than being slutty. On the negative side, the dancers were dancing for men only, the leader of whom would pick one of the women to sleep with that night, so it was a bit of the old dancer as sex object/whore thing. One gets tired of that being the only way or context in which ME dance is shown." --Kim Re: Gabrelle in "who's gurkhan??" on Xena - I really liked it. I think Renee O'Connor looked lovely in a harem outfit and with veil. Problem was her dance instantly disinagrated into a typical "hollywood harem" dance with her doing flips. I didn't care for xena's. -- Michael
You Bet Your Life		A Persian contestant does a small bellydance for Groucho, who can't resist joining her for a moment. -- Paul B
You Don't Know Jack	Ansuya	On Wednesday, June 20, ABC debuted a new game show - "You Don't Know Jack", a TV version of the popular computer game. It features Paul Reubens (formerly known as "Pee-Wee Herman") as "Troy Stevens", the host. They showed two episodes back-to-back. It's a silly parody, but the game, contestants and the money won is real ("Troy" himself said so...probably necessary to comply with FCC rules). At the end of the first show, a dancer did a short performance, in lavender/hot pink bedlah...being accompanied by...a Mexican mariachi band. It looked like Ansuya from Ojai, CA. --LG
Young and The Restless, The	Michelle Stafford	(1996) - Michelle Stafford as Phyills Romanalti dances the dance of the seven veils for her husband Danny Romnalitti (Michael Damain) in an attempt to seduce him. She does and they soon head for the bedroom. -- Michael
Young Indiana Jones - "Chapter 15 - Daredevils of the Desert"	Catherine Zeta-Jones	Catherine Zeta-Jones as a dancer in a "Young Indian Jones" episode (1995) It's available on tape. - Paul B "On the other hand, I just saw a (taped from TV in, oh, October) movie that featured Ms Catherine Zeta-Jones, a lovely actress who has some grace and can apparently acquire physical skills (horseback riding AND fencing for "Zorro..."). It was one of the "Young Indiana Jones" adventures, and she was a WWI spy who danced for a regiment of Turks in an occupied Egyptian town. It was embarrassing to watch -- they taught her all of one hip movement that was used repeatedly with much arm wiggling and smoldering looks. sigh It's not as if she can't dance (or at least be taught) -- she did a HOT tango-sort of thing in "Zorro..." It was simply poorly choreographed/staged/scripted. This was SOO far below the usual standards of the studio (Lucasfilm/Amblin) that I was quite annoyed." - Laurie "Yup. I think that episode has made it on to Australian TV twice now. Last time I caught it I had to stop myself from rolling around on the floor laughing. She was b-a-a-d. Definately got taught one move and told to do lots of smouldering looks. Costuming (from memory - it was a while ago) was quite pretty though." - Nadira