A new dance troupe is entertaining audiences at restaurants in Seattle's Pioneer Square.

But "Amira's Dancers," which started their live performances in February, isn't just another group of performers.

They are from Burien-and they are belly dancers.

Members of Amira's Dancers have been practicing two days a week for the past year in a dance studio at Southwest 152nd Street and 21st Avenue S.W.

There, instructed by Amira the Belly Dancer, also known as Joy Bueling of Normandy Park, they have been learning a style called Egyptian cabaret.

Now they're on stage, dancing in front of live audiences, three to four nights a week.

The debut of Amira's Dancers was part of a show staged by Middle East Arts International, a nonprofit organization that promotes Middle Eastern performing arts.

Another venue where Bueling and her dancers plan to perform soon is the Burien Strawberry & Arts Festival June 16 and 17.

Bueling, who has been belly dancing for 12 years and already was a regular performer at Pioneer Square restaurants, is managing director of the organization.

She has come a long way from where she started.

Her inclination toward belly dance developed when she took her first lessons from an enthusiastic instructor named Zaphara in Fremont.

"I took the class on a whim," Bueling recalled. "I was taking kick boxing and flying airplanes and I thought 'belly dancing, it'll fit right in. I could be an international spy.' And I just fell completely in love with belly dancing."

That experience-a turning point in Bueling's life-led her to study Middle Eastern dance at the University of Washington, along with Middle Eastern cultures and the Arabic language.

It is difficult to pinpoint the origin of belly dance, Bueling explained, but in Egypt, her primary area of interest, it started in the 1920s.

"It became more meaningful to me as I went deeper into studying Middle Eastern culture," she noted.

"What I realized is whether I want to be or not, I've become an ambassador of the dancing culture, of the local Middle Eastern-American culture ... I'm working as hard as I can to honor that."

She used her background in Middle Eastern studies to begin teaching belly dance in 2002 at the Normandy Park Community Center.

"I noticed a lot of people were teaching belly dance, who I couldn't tell if they had been taking for very long," Bueling said.

"I thought it was really important to have someone who was teaching belly dance who knew it really well who had been taking from master instructors."

Bueling has been teaching intermediate classes at Abyssinian Dance Center in Burien since Marie Corkin and Kellie Bassen opened the studio.

"I started renting from them for my Saturday morning class about a year ago, and since then I've been hired as a regular instructor on Thursday nights," she said.

"I also teach in Mercer Island as well, and that's a beginning class and an intermediate class."

The style of belly dance Bueling teaches incorporates what she has learned. Faster music calls for improv, or freestyle, and slower music gives more leeway for choreography with props like veils, finger symbols, swords or candles.

She uses a stage name, Amira, when she is teaching and performing because it is a tradition among Middle Eastern dancers.

It also grants anonymity and makes the name easier for others to say and remember, Bueling added.

Her class size has grown from a humble beginning.

"I had one student and I stayed with that one student the whole first quarter, Bueling said. "And then all of a sudden, the next quarter all these other people started showing up and most of them now have been with me for four years."

Laurie Johnson, one of Bueling's long-term students, said, "One of the things I enjoy most about Amira's classes [is] that people can become more confident at their own pace.

"It's like this constant invitation, if you feel confident you could feel a little more confident. You could be a little more sassy and confident."

Her students have multiple reasons for taking belly dancing.

"It's fun. It's the most fun form of exercise," said student Melissa Tomlinson. "It's a great community of women. It's just supportive and empowering and encouraging and affirming of women."

Student Anne Davis emphasized the back muscles belly dancing exercises.

For her, belly dancing helps "work out the 'I'm going to kill my boss' kink right here. The significant other's [kink] over here. The kids' are right here."

Bueling, who initially was drawn to belly dancing by positive relationships among women, observed, "I end up having friends who are age 16 to 70. You don't get that in very many places in our society.

"We're constantly cooing over each other and telling each other how beautiful we are, all shapes and sizes and ages."

Yet after years of belly dancing, Bueling and her students say they have more to learn.

For instance, at a recent Thursday night class, Tomlinson had a belly dancing epiphany.

"She (Bueling) said, 'We're doing a down-up-down,' and I said, 'I've been doing a down-up-down for years now,'" Tomlinson recounted as she demonstrated. "It's subtle, but I just figured it out tonight."

Bueling added, "Well even for me, I've been doing this for 12 years and traveled around the country learning it and I still feel like I'll be age 100 and I still won't have it all down, so there's always more to learn when you grow with this dance."

In 2003, Bueling was a finalist in the Belly Dancer of the Year Competition in California and placed third in a national competition in Virginia.

Last November, she went to Los Angeles to film a belly dance video with the International Academy of Middle Eastern Dance, a group that usually makes one or two videos each year and distributes them nationally.

The video will be released next month.