The literature on female sexuality in the Middle East has tended to treat sexuality as the product of a homogenous discourse, examining dominant discourses that focus on religious identities, and treating women more as symbols rather than reflecting their actual behaviour or experience. Sexuality is usually essentialised, treated as inherent and fixed, as if it correlates to gender divisions, and is easily separable from them. Following Cornwall and Lindisfarne (1994), sexuality may be understood better as a fluid category that can be manipulated and interpreted according to changing social forms and differing perspectives, whether of men or women, dancer or audience, elite or popular. While marriage ceremonials can be seen as key markers of social status and sexual identities, divergent expectations and values associated with gender and sexual relations are also central (Tapper 1991, p. 15). A form of ‘popular’ music and dance, marked by the complex term baladi (see below), is central to the exploration of sexuality at Cairo weddings. Through looking at the ambiguous role of professional dancers (figures who orchestrate, conduct and ‘embody’ baladi musical forms), I have explored the way sexuality is created through performance: the body of the dancer can be seen as the site of multiple discourses on gendered identity, sexuality and power (see also Lorius 1996).