Egypt is the home planet of belly dancing, so when Shakira, the Colombian-born pop star with the centrifugal hips, came to Cairo on March 28 to give a concert, there was some anticipation she might do a, hmmmm, belly flop.

On the contrary, she conquered the audience and experts for whom belly dancing is as commonplace as dust in Cairo.

“She knows how to shake,” said Rakia Hassan, a dance teacher and former member of an Egyptian troupe that toured the world. “I was skeptical, but she does something truly good for this art. A lot of people around the world have signed up for belly dancing because of her.”

Belly dancing isn’t exactly what Shakira does. She augments the typical alternate slow grinding motions and fast shimmying with dashes across the stage in bare feet, tosses of her ample curly hair in all directions and impressive performances of jackknife hip thrusts.

Shakira’s appearance is part of a tour that began last June to promote her album “Oral Fixation.” In case you are wondering, the title comes from “the fact that I have always lived through my mouth,” she told reporters in Mumbai during her stop.

Uh-huh.

Anyway, her father was Lebanese and she took up belly dancing to overcome shyness, she said in India.

Nile Style

Shakira, 30, certainly isn’t shy now. Not that the Egyptians are unused to seeing this kind of seismic activity. If you walk down the Nile, teen performers shake and rattle to recorded Egyptian music, which features brass and heavy drums. Their belly- buttons, however, are generally less exposed than Shakira’s.

Contrary to reports abroad that Islamic influence has forced tummies into hiding, Egyptian belly dancers are not forbidden by law to show a love handle or two. “There are laws that prevent nudity and sex, but belly dancing is an art form, not striptease,” said Rakia Hassan. “We see girls on the street showing their bellies all the time. Why would we cover ours?”

The Cairo venue offered the contrast of audience girls in headscarves, a show of Muslim modesty, swaying while a half-naked Shakira sang her hits, “Hips Don’t Lie” and “Whenever, Wherever.”

Boys in low-slung jeans bumped and grinded rather more enthusiastically than their girlfriends and yelled out, “I love you” to Shakira.

In the days leading up to the concert, a few dissenting guardians of morality spoke out. “Freedom must have its limits,” said a letter to the al-Ahram newspaper. “I write this after hearing that the international pop star Shakira, famous for her shameless song and dance, will perform.”

Back to Sphinx

The performance took place at the Pyramids in Giza, themselves a nighttime spectacle. Besides being floodlit on one side, they glowed faintly in the three-quarter moonlight. The Sphinx sat just down the hill, back to Shakira. The show was sponsored by MobiNil, an Egyptian telephone company that was celebrating having reached a 10 million subscriber threshold.

For most Egyptians, the prices were steep, the equivalent of $80 to $130. Many of the less well-heeled spectators trekked across the desert in the shadows and waited for the moment, about two-thirds into the show, when cops on camelback disappeared, guards on foot evaporated and the way opened to the hollow where the stage was set. Thousands of spectators appeared from nowhere.

The Musicians Union cashed in, although its members weren’t performing. Under Egyptian law, foreign troupes must pay 20 per cent of their fees to the union as a kind of instant dues. That would have meant a $120,000 bite out of Shakira’s $800,000 earnings. The union, in carpet-bargaining mode, reduced the demand to $30,000 and settled for $20,000, union leader Hassan Abul Seoud said.