Great thread for me! I've always hated arabesques. The way I've been taught, they look ungainly and feel awful. It's been all about swinging the unweighted leg around straight, high and showily, apparently in a reinterpretation of the way Keti Sharif teaches it. But done as a natural consequence of pivoting on the weighted leg, as demonstrated by Raquia, much nicer to look at and more like belly- rather than (pretend) ballet dance.