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Ansuya Rathor glides to the center of Bha! Bha! in a rustle of beads and chiffon. She strikes a dramatic pose on the makeshift dance floor, waiting for her music to begin.

She looks like the archetypal belly dancer: long, coffee-colored hair, eyes exaggerated with thick, black eyeliner. Above her eyebrows she’s painted an arch of black dots, mimicking a Eastern facial tattoo. Between her eyes is a bindi: In her case, a decorative nod to Hindu culture. And in a sparkling costume in red, blue and gold, the slender belly dancer looks like an exotic Wonder Woman readying herself for combat.

The first notes of an exuberant Middle Eastern song fill the room and Ansuya’s hips begin to shake ferociously. Her body breaks down into separately moving spheres, stomach rolling in exaggerated waves, hips bouncing sharply from side to side as if ricocheting off invisible objects. Her face alternates between joy and almost painful concentration as her fingers clap out a percussive double-time on the tiny brass cymbals strapped to her fingers.

Dinner stops as the roughly 20 diners, clapping in time to the infectious rhythm, watch her. As she works, Ansuya looks everyone directly in the eye and some people look away, uncomfortable in the intensity of her gaze.

At a round table off to one side of the restaurant, a petite woman with long gray hair and a silver nose stud the size of a freckle watches. Janaeni Rathor, Ansuya’s mother, lets loose a “lalalalala” that sounds like the call of an incensed songbird. The ululation, known as zaghareet, catches the dancer’s attention, and Ansuya looks over. She flashes her mother a quick smile before twirling off.

Although the diners at the North Naples Persian restaurant don’t know it, this is a very special performance. It’s Ansuya’s first local appearance since she and Janaeni, also a professional belly dancer, moved to Naples from Miami on Aug. 1. Together the two women represent a belly-dance dynasty that has stretched nearly 50 years, from the theaters of Japan to the Lollapalooza stage. You may not know her name, but Janaeni was one of the first American women to popularize belly dancing in the 1960s.

Now, it’s Ansuya who carries on her mother’s legacy, crafting a reputation as one of the art form’s most revered dancers.

“When you connect to the music,” she says of her work, “your job is just to go along for the ride.”

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Ansuya came to belly dancing very young, taking the stage in the “artsy, hippie” town of Ojai, Calif., at age 4.

“She was in the studio from the beginning,” recalls Janaeni. “Even when she was a babe in arms, her father would carry her.”

“She put me in the advanced class when I was a kid,” Ansuya remembers. Wandering between her mother’s students and imitating their graceful moves and isolations, Ansuya first absorbed belly dancing in the same way her mother had, by watching.

But while Ansuya was born into it, Janaeni stumbled upon it by mistake.

Living in Oakland, Calif., in the early 1960s, Janaeni met some Lebanese boys while waiting in line for a movie one evening. When she and a friend accompanied them to a party at a local college’s international student union, Janaeni had her first encounter with belly dancing, watching a woman perform for the crowd.

“I had no name for it,” Janaeni remembers of her first reaction. “I had finally seen on the outside everything that I’d been feeling on the inside.” She was 16 years old.

When she finished high school a year later, Janaeni packed her bags and moved to New York City where, despite her blond hair, blue eyes and skinny frame, she found work dancing alongside professional Greek, Turkish and Middle Eastern belly dancers at a Greek nightclub.

“No one was political,” Janaeni says of the thriving belly dance scene in New York. “Everything was a beautiful blend. It was like curry.”

She retired 14 years ago at 48. Now she watches her daughter work.

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Clean-faced and calm, Ansuya, 31, sits at the wooden dining room table in the East Naples home she shares with her mother. The room smells of scented candles and fresh air. The sound of running water from a pool in the backyard mixes with soft music drifting from a hidden stereo.

Although they’ve only lived there for a month, Ansuya and Janaeni’s home is filled already with souvenirs from their travels. A basket in the dining room overflows with juicy-looking oranges. Three thick paprika candles sit on tall bejeweled pillars by the door. Instead of couches, two high-backed daybeds in the living room are strewn with shiny pillows in rich turquoise, purple and magenta tones. Wearing a swinging pink skirt and a bright pink top that reveals an enviably flat stomach, Ansuya adds another shade to the already colorful space.

“I need to have lots of pillows,” Ansuya says, laughing at her own eccentricity. The beds, she adds, are for lounging like a goddess. In a belly dancer’s home, it’s all about creating a sensual environment.

Ansuya uses the word “sensual” a lot. Not just about belly dancing, an art form that celebrates and showcases female sexuality, but about nearly everything around in her world. Costumes, music, relationships: They’re all meant to be touched and explored.

“Live colorfully,” she says. “It’s not cream and taupe and beige; it’s red and purple together.”

For Ansuya, belly dancing has always been more of a lifestyle than a genre of dance. The emotions, strength and grace of belly dancing go beyond the classroom or the stage, she explains, and seep into all arenas of a dancer’s life. For Janaeni and Ansuya, this has proved especially true.

“The mother-daughter connection with belly dancing is really dreamy,” Ansuya gushes.

“For me, I get to live twice when I watch her dance,” says Janaeni, a smile stretching across her face. “She’s taken my work and evolved it way beyond I could have because my time ran out.”

Within the belly dance world, Ansuya is, as Janaeni was in her time, an innovator. Known for her mastery of both technique and interpretation, Ansuya has developed a style that incorporates moves from the different schools of belly dance — for instance, traditional Egyptian and tribal — and from genres as distinct as flamenco and hip hop.

“I do all of them, because I can’t resist,” she says.

Ansuya’s unique performance has earned her numerous awards, such as the Golden Belly award and the International Academy Middle Eastern Dance’s best cabaret dancer of the year in 2001. To date, she’s appeared in at least 13 instructional and performance DVDs.

“Everyone in the belly dance community knows her,” says Anita Shek, a 26 year-old Naples resident and belly dance instructor known by the stage name Asaya. “She’s one of the biggest superstars.”

In 2003, record producer Miles Copeland made it official when he invited Ansuya to join his elite troupe of belly dancers called the Bellydance Superstars. The group gathered some of the biggest names in American belly dancing to create a show targeted for a mainstream audience. They toured the world from Japan to Spain, even dancing in front of 25,000 people as part of the Lollapalooza tour in the summer of 2003.

“We went on between Jane’s Addiction and Incubus,” Ansuya says, laughing. “Perry Farrell once said, ‘You’re working harder than us.’”

But the sheer intensity of the tour schedule took its toll.

Janaeni remembers frantic phone calls from her daughter from all over the world — Ansuya, lost and lonely.

“Unfed,” Janaeni says, scowling.

“I was on a rock tour. That was how it felt,” Ansuya says. “Somewhere along the line I realized, ‘I’m not aligned with what I’m teaching.’”

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After 10 years on the road teaching, performing and touring, Ansuya is ready to settle down.

“I’ve gotten to a point where my DVDs are doing well and I can actually stay at home for a while.”

“We wanted a quieter, more balanced life,” Janaeni says.

They chose Naples, they say, for the warm weather and the big city sophistication without the big city problems.

But they’re not slowing down. Janaeni and Ansuya have big plans for their new home, like converting their garage into a dance studio and building a stage in their spacious backyard. Janaeni is even considering coming out of retirement to teach a belly dance class for local seniors at the Naples Woman’s Club.

On Sept. 23, Ansuya will begin teaching at the Naples dance studio called Etudes de Ballet. Her workshop, called the Magic of Bellydance, caters to beginners. Over four four-hour sessions, the class will cover various elements of Ansuya’s belly dance lifestyle philosophy, teaching stage makeup, costuming and, of course, dance. The workshop will culminate in a private solo performance from Ansuya herself.

“My goal is to make sure every single woman on the planet knows about belly dancing,” Ansuya says. “I would love to become the Jane Fonda of belly dance.”

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On the Net

www.ansuya.com

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A little history

While belly dancing is widely associated with the Middle East, its actual origins have long been a subject of debate. Theories abound regarding its birth and development, some attributing it to religious ceremonies in Egypt or India, others claiming it descended from native folk dances of ancient Middle Eastern tribes.

There is probably no single correct answer to this ongoing question; today’s style of belly dance is fusion of different elements and has its roots in multiple, if not many, places.