[zumarrad]

Reda's dance was created in the late 50s I think.

It's my understanding that interest in modern Egyptian belly dancing really kicked off in the US during the 1990s, after Shareen el Safy (and others) came back from Cairo. Since Shareen was publishing Habibi I imagine she got to promote the style pretty hard. So as interest in modern Egyptian dance grew, more and more dancers would have been keen to attend any workshop with an Egyptian star dancer and to present dances they thought of as particularly authentic.

I get the impression that belly dancers picked up the idea of dancing with the melaya and ran with it (to borrow an expression from rugby) which is why things like the gum chewing and more "earthy" personality were added by individual dancers. THere's quite possibly an element of snobbery in some of their presentations of a beledi woman.