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Urban Guide Listings to plan your week by Egyptian faraonic dancers. Visions of Delight: A History of Belly Dance What are the origins of belly dance in America? Some would have us believe that it started with the release of Mankiewicz's Cleopatra--with Ms. Taylor in all her fierce glory--and the surge of the free love, hippie movement of the 1960's. But if the Middle Eastern Culture and Dance Association (MEDCA) has its way, you're about to discover that the roots of belly dance in America run pretty deep. Join them as they unfold the elaborate tale of belly dancing in America (diverse in culture and dancing styles) when they present, "Visions of Delight: A History of Belly Dance in the United States," a night of education, per-formance, and enticement. Travel through belly dancing's first introduction over 100 years ago at the 1893 Chicago World's Columbian Exposition where women caused a ruckus by dancing without the confinements of a corset, to its growing popularity in Hollywood during the 1920's after King Tut's tomb was discovered, to its decline after the Gulf War, and continuing with its resurgence in the 1990's and renaissance in the Bay Area when belly dance moved to the next level by finally carving its rightful place in American popular culture. Sat/24, 7pm (doors), 7:15pm (show). The Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St., Berk. $5-$12. www.mecda.org. (CS) Chinatown turns into a massive block party this weekend. Oakland Chinatown StreetFest 2002 Chinatown already hustles and bustles, so imagine what happens when Chinatown's Chamber of Commerce puts on a block party and hosts the largest Asian festival in the Bay. "The Year of the Horse" celebration marks the festival's fifteenth anniversary of putting on something for everyone, by representing everything Asian sprinkled with Americana. Party planners team up every year with the Oakland Museum to design the Cultural Village, which hosts Korean paper folding and calligraphy demonstrations by master artisans, an Origami workshop, and hands-on card making and Chinese dough figurine-making activities for children. In addition to the cooking stage and the kids' stage, the popular stage features rock, jazz, and R&B performances by local musicians. On the cultural stage, see Chinese lion dances, Japanese Taiko drumming, martial arts performances, and Tahitian dances. Meander through over 300 arts and crafts, international food, and community resource booths, too. For those who know Chinatown well, see it in celebration mode. For those who don't, remember that the horse in Chinese astro-logy loves the unknown in big crowds. Sat/24-Sun/25, 10am-6pm. Franklin from 7th to 11th, and on 8th and 9th Streets between Broadway and Harrison, Oakl. Free. 893.8979. (EP) The life and work of spiritual guru Ram Dass gets documented in "Ram Dass: Fierce Grace." Fine Arts Cinema re-opening How can we miss you if you don't go away? The Fine Arts Cinema is beginning a six-month encore after its death scene. The owners of Berkeley's beloved independently programmed movie house, anticipating the destruction of its building, presented their "last" screening at the end of June. Now they are turning the lamps back on and popping corn again. The original idea to tear down the building and put up another one with a new, improved Fine Arts Cinema by 2004 has been postponed by the landlord, developer Patrick Kennedy. Now programmer Keith Arnold and projectionist Josephine Scherer have until the new year to do what they do--present unique, challenging, enlightening, and thoroughly entertaining movies with the care and attention to detail that discriminating cinephiles and film-freaks have come to expect. And make some hay before they eventually have to turn up the lights for a 2-year intermission. On August 22, a new calendar begins with a documentary on the hippie spiritual guru and expulsed Harvard professor Ram Dass: Fierce Grace, double-billed with an old Fine Arts favorite, Moebius, a 1996 Argentinean high-concept thriller about a subway car that gets metaphysically lost in the underground tunnels. They may or may not be able to re-stock the concessions counter with those coveted Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist chocolate bars, but film buffs have been granted a few more months of nourishment by this badly needed East Bay rep cinema. Thu/22--Sun/1, 5:40 pm (Moebius), 7:30 pm (Ram Dass: Fierce Grace). Fine Arts Cinema, 2451 Shattuck Ave., Berk. $4-8. 848.1143; www.fineartscinema.com. (PC) Picks by Peter Crimmins (PC), and Erica Pedersen (EP), and Cicely J. Sweed (CS). [ East Bay | Metroactive | Archives ]