Program for 2023 to be announced

AMANDA ROSE

Amanda Rose is an internationally acclaimed instructor and performer based in Barcelona, Spain. Known for her technical precision, emotionally captivating performances, and insightful instruction, Amanda Rose has made a name for herself in the worldwide Middle Eastern dance community. Her approach to dance, art and pedagogy is greatly shaped by a background in sociology, almost 2 decades of experience with Middle Eastern dance, and a master’s degree in Dance Movement Therapy. She has received wide recognition for Amanda Rose Online, where she has been offering high quality online instruction for over 7 years.

Instruction includes pre-recorded and live online classes, creative process and artistic development coaching, the Choreography Creation Intensive, BellyLAB projects, competition training, unique comprehensive personal feedback, and exploratory and experiential movement classes. Focusing largely on more advanced class material, her students from around the world enjoy classes that provide clear and detailed instruction while being fun, insightful, and in-depth on a variety of topics.

ANOUKH

As a dancer, Anoukh started off in Indian folk dance and Bollywood with the Ghentian Bollywood troupe Gori KaDance. But after a hip injury forced her to stop performing, she ended up back to taking occasional classes. That’s when she discovered the softness of bellydance and the positive effect it had on her body. Under the guidance of Sofie Baeckeland and Badriyah, she found joy in dance and performing once again.  

In her daily life, Anoukh works as content marketer for a Belgian web agency. In her talk, she brings together her two passions of dance and marketing. 

In a 10-year long career in communications, Anoukh worked as a translator, language coach, communications officer and content marketer. Helping companies such as American Express, Omega Pharma, Ghent University, Sensoa and Carglass.

AUBRE HILL

Aubre Hill is an international dance artist, choreographer, educator, and event producer. Aubre has been a professional dance artist for over twenty years with a focus on transcultural and Arabic dance built on a broad foundation of dance forms and study. Her art explores the crossroads of cultural identity and expression in global space, to bring empowerment to individual voices and shared experiences. She has choreographed full dance theatrical productions as well as is the artistic director and choreographer for the Lumina Dance Company, the Qabila Foundation, and the Beyajja Dance Theatre.

Over her career Aubre have been a part of various collaboratives to bring creativity, culture, and community together in new ways. Additionally, she has produced a wide range of events bringing the community together in celebration of Middle Eastern Dance including monthly haflas, dance festivals, workshops, and more. Aubre is currently pursuing her Master’s in Arts Management at Claremont Graduate University and offers a full online education program on Patreon. Her teaching is known for her deep understanding of anatomy & kinesiology while embedding cultural context, history, and artistic expression for a rich educational, and inclusive experience.

BADRIYAH

CERA BYER

DHARA

EBONY

ESMERALDA

My name is Esmeralda Colabone and I dance since I was 4 years old.

Ballet, Jazz, Hip Hop, Brazilian Folk and Popular dances were my thing till my 16th birthday when I saw belly dance for the first time. 

“Raw with brown eyes, like the bedouins, the old people” defined me a Syrian musician back in 2004 – at Le Meridien Damascus, one of the places I was blessed to work in.

So far, 22 years of my life has been dedicated to Dance, most specifically, to Arabic Dance.

From 2002 till 2014, I was chosen by Omar and Olga Naboulsi from BellyDance Brazil to be part of La Maison de L’Artiste from Lebanon – the biggest entertainment agency from the Middle East at that time, directed by Mr Toros Siranossian. I lived the Arab Life and danced in the best 5 stars hotels and restaurants of the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Syria and Lebanon. These places were my home and a one of a kind school!

Today, I’m a Master Teacher, choreographer, producer and CEO of A Bailoca – hoping to contribute more and more to the Dance Community worldwide.

CHRISTINE YAVEN

Dubbed, ‘Indonesia’s bellydance icon’, Christine has almost 20 yearsexperience training and teaching Oriental dance. As the pioneer of Oriental dance in Indonesia, she founded Bellydance Jakarta, Indonesia’s premier Middle Eastern Dance Center. Christine has captured the interest of local and international media and is known as one of the region’s trailblazers. She is often invited to perform and teach throughout the archipelago as well as internationally throughout Asia, Australia, Europe and North America. Christine’s performances are mesmerizing, a perfect fusion of liquid motion, subtle sensuality and exquisite musicality. Her talent is only rivalled by her teaching abilities which not only spans precise technique, but also the soul, values and heritage of Oriental dance. She is a firm believer in artistic creativity and expression and works tirelessly to teach dancers how to be unique, creative Oriental dance artists. Currently Christine teaches classes and workshops online, and is a highly sought-after instructor and performer at multiple international events.

JASIRAH

Professional international dancer, teacher and judge, organizer of Raks Glam Festival in Poland. For over 14 years she has taught regular classes of oriental dance in Poland and master classes around the whole world. You could meet her already teaching and performing in Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, China, Cyprus, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Italy, Morocco, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Russia, Spain, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United States. Since 2014 member of Bellydance Evolution. In 2016 she played main role of Cheshire Cat in”Alice in Wonderland” during 3 month tour in China, in 2017 she played main role of Mermaid and Florist in “Sheherezade 1001 Night” Show during United States East Coast Tour.
Multi Awarded winner of competitions included:
* 1st place – Champion of Champions 2016 – California USA
* 1st place – Bellydancer of the Universe fusion category – California 2016
* 1st runner up – Bellydancer of the Universe props category – California 2016
* 1st place – Etna Bellydance Festival 2014 in Sicily
* The winner of the People’s Choice Bellydance Evolution “Alice in Wonderland” European tour … and more

Jasirah has 10 years of experience in ballroom dancing, which gives her strong technical background and makes her performances full of energy. She uses ballroom dance education a lot in her choreographies creating fusions with tango, samba and other styles. Learning from the best ballroom dance masters and legends of oriental dance makes her a mix of huge oriental dance and folklore knowledge with great background of classical technique and skills to explain every movement in details. Well known for her outstanding drum solos, elegant classical technique, double assaya and
double veil skills.

JESSICA PRESTES

Jéssica Melo Prestes has a degree and a BA in History from PUCRS, having carried out research on the historical Black Territories of the city of Porto Alegre and the modern Urban Quilmbos. She is a specialist in Inclusive Education at Censupeg and has ongoing training in Oral History at NEHO/USP. She works as a Social Educator in a project to strengthen bonds. She has 09 years experience as  dancer, researcher and 04 years experience as teacher of Roma Dances. Also she develops independent research on the history of Roma from different territories of the world. Today, she is part of two projects which involves historical research and dance technique of the different Roma Dances.

JRISI & TRISTAN

JULIA FARID

KHADIJAH

KAMRAH

KARIM NAGI

Karim Nagi is a native Egyptian immigrant to the USA, and a true crossover artist uniting the Arab tradition with the global contemporary world. He has released fourteen CDs, ranging from traditional Arab music to fusion and electronica. He has authored instructional videos for Arab percussive instruments and Arab dance styles. As a dance and drum teacher, Nagi has taught in dozens of festivals in the United States, Asia, Europe and Cairo, as well as most major Arab Culture festivals in the USA. He is also a public speaker with a TEDx talk.

He taught at the New England Conservatory of Music for 5 years, and has lectured and presented at Harvard, MIT, Yale, Bowdoin, Princeton, Stanford, Berea, William & Mary, Georgetown, plus Bunker Hill & Attleboro Community Colleges. He has lectured internationally on Arts & Diversity at Kaoushiung (Taiwan) University, Beijing University, and University San Francisco de Quito Ecuador. Additionally, Karim Nagi’s Arabiqa program has conducted over 400 school assemblies across America, exposing young audiences to Arab traditional arts.

His most recent project “Detour Guide” incorporates English language storytelling with Arab music & rhythm, along with graphic & video art, to describe the experience of Arabs life & culture. Over the past 4 years Nagi has been the beneficiary of two Doris Duke Grant for the Islamic Arts through the Virginia Tech “Salaam” project and Young Audiences of New Jersey “United We Create”. He has also just been re-elected for a second term to the board of directors for Chamber Music America. In September he gave a TEDx Talk “The Tambourine, My Partner is Diplomacy & Disruption” which can be seen on the official TED website.

KARINA

Karina Chistova (Moscow) is one of the best experts of Egyptian folklore in Russia, and is a frequent guest as a teacher and judge at many major festivals in Russia and abroad.

Since 2007 she has been a teacher of Oriental dance. The winner of the competition of the festival Nile Group 2012 in Cairo. Since 2016 Karina Chistova has been actively touring in Russia, and beyond. She has presented her work at various festivals in Russia, Egypt, USA, Indonesia, Korea, Czech Republic, Latvia, Estonia, Greece, Poland, Spain, Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan.

The only dancer from Russia who has visited many cities in Egypt, including visiting oases and studying Bedouin culture. Since 2012 she annually visits Egypt and researches Arabic folklore on her own. Karina has been to many cities and personally researched folklore there, met with local artists, visited ethnographic museums and searched for costumes to create original and authentic dance numbers for the stage, which would reflect the culture of the local population with great accuracy.

Karina is a stage costume designer and collector of original folkloric costumes and Arab country jewelry.

Since 2012, there is an educational online project bellydance-online.com , where she shares to this day her research in the field of Oriental dance and Arab folklore, presenting her lectures and choreography online to a wide audience. In 2020, she compiled all her knowledge into a year-long online course on Egyptian folklore in Russian. A book is planned to be published soon. Many dancers of Oriental dance in Russia and beyond use the theoretical developments of Oriental dance and Arabian folklore and perform choreography created by Karina Chistova.

She has created a unique method of teaching Egyptian Folklore on the basis of dance-movement therapy. At the present time Karina is continuing her research work on the integration of psychological methods into the teaching of Arabic folklore. A book about Egyptian folklore and scientific publications are planned.

KATIE SAHAR

MERCEDES NIETO

Mercedes Nieto is an internationally acclaimed oriental dance artist form a Hungarian-Spanish family, based in Budapest, Hungary. World famous of her delicate, elegant, yet passionate dance style, which is innovative and unique. Her drive is her willingness to share, her main inspiration is the dancer’s ability to express feelings and connect people and worlds.

She has spent a decade touring around the World: since 2009 she had been teaching and performing in more than 50 countries at around 30 different oriental dance events worldwide yearly. While constantly traveling and sharing her knowledge, passion and personal vision of belly dancing, she kept organizing the now internationally highly acclaimed CAIRO! Fest Budapest. The festival attracts hundreds of dedicated dancers to Hungary from all over the world every spring to share and connect.

Mercedes is producing Middle-Eastern music specifically for oriental dancers since 2012: creating music in Cairo, Egypt, in collaboration with some of the best musicians and composers the scene has to offer, producing and releasing the material in Europe. She has released five albums that continue to inspire dancers all over the World. The newest one “Zikrayet” has just been released in 2021.

Meanwhile focusing more on her international career, festival and music productions, Mercedes is still teaching in Budapest in her own dance studio called the “Nimfeum” whenever she’s in town, performing annual shows with her students, organizing charity galas as well as directing the professional oriental dance company “The Nymph Oriental Dance Company”.

During the pandemic times she has started her RAQSoul project: a series of online workshops and weekly classes for dedicated dancers to stay connected and inspired.

She believes in the power of dance as a personal language that meant to express something beyond dance itself, let it be joy, pain, love or life.

NISAA

PANAYIOTA

Panayiota, an Anatolian Greek American, lives between Greece/USA. She hails from present day Turkey (and Sparta) from a refugee surviving peoples. As a fourth generation artist, with a double major university degree in Dance and Psychology, she has been able to understand and gather both dance history knowledge and the psychology of her people, as this dance traveled across many borders. One of her greatest and most respected achievements is developing the first and only codified approach to Tsifteteli – Greek Bellydance, since 1997. As the director of HAFI, she enjoys organizing events, teaching/performing internationally and decolonizing dance ethnography. Her life revolves around performing, teaching, ethnography, translating and most importantly as an archivist. She loves to integrate energetic healing methodologies into her practice through dance somatics, dance fitness, acupuncture and reiki. Panayiota’s contributions involve adding the H to MENAHT, creating a massive Greek music translation collection which is featured exclusively on Shira.net, among others. With over twenty five years in the industry, she is the most sought out specialist in Greek Bellydance history, technique and its politics. Panayiota loves to share her Middle Eastern heritage to those who have a curiosity, open mind and love for piecing together a puzzle of which creates a colorful mosaic of the existence of our beautiful ancient dance!

RAÏSSA LEÏ

Raïssa Leï is a versatile Moroccan dancer and choreographer based in Paris. She is also a scientific engineer and Executive Coach. She is Amazigh (Berber) from a Zenet tribe from Eastern Morocco. 

Her dominant styles are Waacking and Amazigh dances from which she created a fusion with her own signature more than 10 years ago. She traveled across Europe, USA, North-Africa, Middle-East, India and Japan to improve her knowledge and to enter competitions but also to perform, give conferences and workshops.

Passionate about her Amazigh roots she recreates her heritage in her dance universe, through amazigh tattoos, jewelry, outfits but also to question colonial history and art decolonization. She is always evolving around influences between modernity and traditions.

Raïssa Leï created in 2017 Kif-Kif Bledi dance group that specializes in what she calls alternative dances from MENAT. The group is composed of immigrants and children of immigrants from Africa and the Middle-East who share their heritage with authenticity and tradition.

She is also involved in organizations in Morocco and the French Waacking community since 2010.

SAMANTHA KARIM

With education in ballet, modern, salsa, ballroom, free-style, and belly dance, Samantha has harnessed the art of fusion dance while still recognizing the importance and beauty of traditional performances.

Samantha’s passionate performances inspire an authentic relationship with her students’ and her audience.

A sought after instructor, Samantha’s skilled, effective, fun, and compassionate teaching method are one-of-a-kind.

Her commitment to her students’ success involves opening them up to a journey of discovery and to not only inspire, but to also challenge them to “let their dancer out”.

Some awards, accomplishments, acknowledgements, or whateva…

• 2016 Belly Dancer of the Universe Egyptian Champion and Fusion People’s Choice Winner
• USA Belly Dance Queen Pro-Soloist 2013 Winner
• Featured on TLC’s Four Weddings
• Nominated for Arizona’s Favorite Cabaret/Oriental Artist in 2012

SHAHRZAD

SHARON KIHARA

SHEYLA

Sheyla devoted her dance path in connecting and educating the community in her homeland, the Czech Republic. She is one of the pioneers in bringing Egyptian folklore to the knowledge of dancers and teachers in the country, and abroad. Falling in love with Egypt in 2004 brought her to oriental dance and soon Egyptian folklore studies. Her teachers were also a legends such as Kharia Mazin, Mahmoud Reda, Nesma, Mohamed Shellaby, Fifi el Saed, Kamal Naim, Sahra Saeeda and many more. Thanks to her work and research she could be part of cultural projects organized by EU, Ministry of Interior and Center for foreigners with aim to educate youth about cultural differences, doing lectures and exhibitions for public and activities for foreigners. Sheyla founded and directed an international festival called Tales of Sahara for 8 years with aim to create a safe space for dancers to connect, create together, perform and learn.

Sheyla performed and taught classes in many countries such as India, South Africa, Greece, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Korea etc. She founded a folklore group Al Fayyum Dancers with whom she got honoured by many awards, Awaleem Performing Arts group with whom she focused on vintage or golden era dance style. Currently she is working with group Aphrodisia Dance Company on cabaret and public shows.

Sheyla is continuously awarded not always with prizes but with passionate students and audience she love to perform for.

SHINING

Shining is a performer, instructor and researcher of Egyptian traditional dances, whose work reflects a strong emphasis of the cultural and historical influences on the medium of dance in and from Egypt. She is internationally recognized for her historical recreations of early Raqs Sharqi and the candelabra-balancing dance named Raqs el Shamadan.

Over the last 17 years Shining has studied dances from the Middle East, North Africa, Turkey and Central Asia with a variety of instructors foreign and native to these cultures, but in order to gain a deeper understanding of dance in the context of Egyptian society and conduct research on the disappearing traditional entertainment styles, she moved to Egypt in the summer of 2021.

Her first project in Egypt (www.banatmazin.com) was founded the following spring, in cooperation with Khyria Mazin (from the famous Banat Mazin family of entertainers) to create a website dedicated to the legacy of the Mazin family which includes recorded lessons, interviews, song translations, family bios, streamable music and more; enabling the international dance community to learn directly from Khyria now and far into the future.

SHRUTI

Shruti aims to spread her passion for the art form of Raqs Sharqi through carefully curated knowledge and out-of-classroom initiatives for the community such as “Beyond Bellydance – A Lecture Series” & – “Raq and Read By SODC – An Online Book and Video Club”. With over 12 years of performance and teaching experience to her credit, Shruti has a keen interest in the socio-political, cultural and historical aspects of the dances and spends a great deal of time working on historical reconstructions of dances from the early 1900s, choreographies and dances inspired by Golden and Transition Eras and Egyptian Folklore. Shruti was recently awarded in the “TOP 100 Women Icons of India” and has been recognised by the Fox Network for her contributions and work in the field of Bellydance in India. Shruti is the Founder and Artistic Director of Samai Oriental Dance Company – a performance house and academy focused on imparting knowledge on Oriental, Egyptian Folklore and Andalusian dances

SIOBHAN

Siobhan Camille is a multi-award winning belly dancer and the founder of Greenstone Belly Dance. Her love of music is equaled only by her love of movement, making belly dance her perfect match. Her joyful movement and 1000-watt smile captivate audiences across the globe. Her dance training is primarily in Egyptian raqs sharqi, but she also has extensive training in American Cabaret and fusion styles.   

Siobhan’s precise movement and playful style have been winning her dance accolades since 2014, most notably a 3rd Place and Judge’s Award for Excellence in Presence in the Professional category at the Hamilton International Belly Dance Competition in 2020. In 2021, her hard work earned her the amazing opportunity of joining the cast of Bellydance Evolution’s performance of The Wizard Of Oz in Copenhagen as part of the Oriental ensemble.⁠

Siobhan Camille has an extensive background in exercise science with postgraduate level degrees in Exercise Prescription and Rehabilitation Science. She takes a particular interest in the safety, strength, and performance of dancers, and conducted the first-ever formal research on injury incidence in belly dancers. She draws on this background to emphasise safe dance technique and teaches her students how to find and activate muscles to create clear movement.⁠

SIGRID VAN ROODE

Sigrid van Roode holds an M.A. in Egyptology from Leiden University, The Netherlands. During her studies in Egypt she was introduced to the history of traditional silver jewellery and has been researching jewellery ever since. She is currently working on her PhD into jewellery and ritual, also at Leiden University.

Sigrid provides consultancy to museums and collectors about traditional jewellery with her company Bedouin Silver. To her, jewellery is a historic source and cultural heritage, not simply adornment. Raising awareness about this aspect of jewellery is her main driving force: she curates exhibitions, authors books and gives talks and workshops both online and offline.

In 2021, Sigrid started a new initiative to ensure collected jewellery items have a long future as heritage. Her non-profit organization The Qilada Foundation brings jewellery that has been collected decades ago into its care, offers research and educational possibilities and transfers collections to museums (preferably) in their countries of origin.

YALIA