What challenges have you faced in popularizing belly dance in Italy, especially considering initial cultural misunderstandings?

This was very difficult. The first difficulty was getting rid of the name belly dance (danza del ventre in italian), which I still haven’t completely managed to do today. The second difficulty is linked to the fact that I am mainly a lover and a dancer of traditional popular dances (folklore) and it has not always been easy to combine a Fallahi or Nubian dress with the orientalist expectations of the public and of the clients who expected Salomè on stage : )

The third difficulty was about approach and vision: if I have a shamadan on my head and cymbals in my hand and for me it’s awalem, while in the Italian entertainment industry (now the situation is improved and there is much more knowledge but once upon a time, fifteen years ago, it was weird), the candelabra meant mysticism and exotic buddha bar atmospheres. It was very complicated but it became a sort of mission for me.

Belly dance often combines cultural traditions with personal expression. How do you maintain a balance between honoring traditional elements and introducing modern interpretations in your performances?

This question needs a book to answer! 🙂 a few lines cannot be enough to explain something so complicated. It’s a topic that has closely involved me for many years now. IT’S HARD! To combine the need of personal expression and personal creativity with a respectful representation of the culture “of others” and of the community they represent. If I had to summarize, but it is an absolutely partial answer, I would say that every artistic creation I wish to bring to the stage should be able to respond positively to some criteria and questions:

1) Is it honest towards myself?

2) is it representative of the culture of origin and does it contribute to conveying it in a correct and respectful way?

3) Am I culturally appropriating the heritage of others for my own aesthetic purposes?

4) Is it useful to me AND the community?

5) Is it respectful?

I understand and experience firsthand the difficulty of combining the “I” with the “We”, but it is necessary because we have a huge responsibility in this part of the world, handling a culture of countries that  have been colonized for years . A culture that has been narrated only through a western point of view mystifying and sometimes demonizing it. It is up to us today to take responsibility for repairing this damage.Sometimes we also have to start from the assumption that native artists unfortunately do not always have the right or privilege to proudly represent their own culture and cultural heritage nowadays.

I’ll give you an example: seeing an established and very famous professional today doing dabke alone, on stage, inserting elements of fusion, without a kofiyeh, to show himself is totally inappropriate and disrespectful for me, and regardless of the aesthetic/artistic/technical performance, he doesn’t talk to anyone except to himself . Here’s the thing: seeing something like this today, with Lebanon and Palestine under bombs, for me is not only useless but also harmful!

Beyond the ethical aspect and speaking for myself, i still find complicated to combine cultural authenticity with my expressive needs. But i made the choice to start working on an alternative line, which is the aesthetic one. I like the idea of revolutionizing the aesthetics of clothes by marrying sober minimal lines without decorations. It is something that represents me very much in terms of taste and that does not alter the narrative in an important choreography or a music composition, such as Abd el Halim or Oum Kalthoum music. I’m also trying to move away from the Reda-style stage costume in folklore, trying to bring authentic traditional clothing to the stage. So: My expressive needs,  the desire to narrate myself and the historical time in which I live, combine each others in a compromise that goes through form, costume and aesthetic choice.

Can you share a transformative moment in your dance career that had a profound impact on your artistic journey?

The moment that represented a profound transformation in my dance journey coincides with a breaking point and a moment of profound transformation also in my private and personal life and that is the loss of my father. When it happened, in 2017 I fully realized what are the most important things in life, which is something we all say but don’t deeply realize until something bad happens. . I had to rely more on my strength and I realized that I was much stronger than I thought, I learned to say no and disappoint people expectations because life is short and you can’t spend it pleasing others, especially if don’t it make you feel good, I learned to cultivate more what was really important to me. This was inevitably reflected in dance and in my work: my path changed completely because my awareness and priorities changed.

As a teacher, what is the most important lesson you try to impart to your students about the deeper meaning of belly dance?

When I started to design my path in dance in my own way and according to my criteria and values, the way I dealt with dance changed and my way of teaching also changed. Today I dedicate myself to research, to history as much as to dance practice, I think that the most important thing for me is trying to convey the right notions to my students, so they can have a “toolbox” to approach dance in an ethical and conscious way in their future. I also really like the idea of ​​transmitting the concept of acceptance to the people who study with me: being physically as you are is fine, having sober tastes that are sometimes opposed to the excess of sequins in our environment is fine, and being introverted or shy is not a crime and it’s fine too. I like to put them at the center, work on what are often considered defects and help them realize that we were not born just to adapt ourselves or “to fit”. I care about this so much because it is what I missed the most in my career as a student and an awareness I had to achieve alone.

talk by Nada Al Basha

What advice would you give to aspiring belly dancers who want to explore both the artistic and cultural aspects of this dance form?

Big names don’t always correspond to a solid foundation of knowledge and good teaching skills. The circulation of the same figures in our star system is often due to many different factors which unfortunately are not always related with meritocracy (in terms of ethical approach and knowledge). My advice for future students is:

-go further, investigate,

-look for sources beyond the mainstream,

-research and not consider any information as an absolute truth but prove it several times,

-always be ready to question your own knowledge,

-seek out native teachers and musicians first: Support the culture and economy of countries that give you the privilege of dancing and representing their own culture,

-Find out about the history and society of the countries from which this dance was born,

-above all: spend time in those countries beyond the tourist dimension, experiencing its essence it is essential to understand the context of origin and the development of this art form,

-be authentic but respectful in re-proposing it.

Tell me that one show/performance that you will never forget!

There are two moments on stage i will never forget actually, both recent. In 2021 I brought on stage for the first time with my company a show entirely dedicated to Egyptian folklore, called “yalla bina” (because it was set up as a journey through the various Egyptian regions). Mahmoud Reda had been dead for a year and Italy was just beginning to return to normal life after the pandemic.

This show was prepared for a really long time and in very difficult conditions: scattered groups divided due to social distancing rules in dance schools, a lot of online work… when it was finished, during the final greetings, the girls started running and they came to hug me tightly. a circle of beautiful women, on stage, in front of the audience, united by a great passion who had just accomplished a small but great feat of cultural dissemination. It was a touching moment, which I will never forget.

The other was this year at the closing show of my festival, Meya Meya Raqs Festival. we danced Palestinian dabke with a choreography of baladi center (a Palestinian professional group) and we presented the choreography with an introduction of Darwish’s poems: seeing those kefieh waving around me, hearing those words pronounced with pride in a silenced context like the European one, in which demanding justice and raising our voices almost seems like a crime, made me feel proud and above all lucky to be able to count on a company of dancers who are not only good dancers but also sensitive and intellectually honest human beings. I felt like i made something useful and concrete and I believe this, in the end, is exactly what every artist is looking for.

It is not a coincidence, I guess, that on both occasions it was the popular traditional dances and not the single and performative ones that gave me these precious gifts. In a world where the “I” seems to dominate without restraint, I like to feel that I am cultivating an “us” and a sense of community and belonging.