Dance Web

from the Daily Breeze, A navel approach to improving girls’ self-esteem

A few shimmies shake any reservations away from Vanessa Klopmeyer, an 8-year-old San Pedro girl who has discovered a new confidence and a natural talent for belly dance.

Marking her spot at the front left of a V-shape formation, Klopmeyer remains perfectly synchronized with four other girls. The dance troupe members are eager to stay focused, but, as the two-hour rehearsal wears on, the giggles and playful banter between them increase.

from the explorer, Students, school officials embrace belly dancing.

“We wanted another place to practice,” [Katie] Leonardi said. She had been taking belly dancing lessons in downtown Tucson. “We thought, wouldn’t it be nice if we had a club here?”

The here that Leonardi is referring to is Ironwood Ridge. In the past, the high school has come under attack for restricting the way students dance at school functions.

from the bbc, with global reach, Egyptian belly dance ‘in crisis’

“The dance, from what I see, is at the moment rapidly fading in the background, whereas before, it was right up front,” she says.

“It’s very serious and I’m part of what’s going on. I’m part of the big decline that’s going on in the dance.”

“What you are seeing nowadays is just shaking, which is very Turkish,” she says.

“Egyptian dancing has many more brilliant movements, which is why there must be an academy to teach it, where I could lend my expertise.”

one of our very own dance from the heart events covered in the Falls Church News Press.

Belly Dancing From the Heart; N. Va. Women Raise Funds & Confidence

“It was pretty traumatic. I wanted to see what I could do,” she [Nazie Massoumi] said. She took the idea to [Katayoun] Hutson, who has in the past helped organize benefit performances. She said that she would definitely help, but because of numerous other commitments, the majority of the organizational work would have to rest with Massoumi. “It was actually more work than I anticipated,” Massoumi told the News-Press. Over the past three months, she has been designing and sending out flyers and posters, posting information on a variety of websites, arranging for the venue, insuring the event, and arranging advance ticket sales, not to mention practicing for her own performance.

Dancing for a cause, this time four-and-a-half hours involving some 200 members of the Glasgow Association of Arabic Dance for the Hikkaduwa Area Relief Fund (I hope that’s the right link….). Read more here: Belly dancers tsunami cash hits £3300 (with annoying non-standard web presentation)

No snakes, but a superstar in this year’s big show in Lansing. From the Lansing City Pulse, read Habibi Dancers snag superstar Bozenka, drop the snakes

Other concert highlights include a hagala (coming-of-age dance) from Libya; a Saudi dance featuring women in ornate thob’nachal robes; a classical Egyptian dance; a modern piece set to music by Transglobal Underground; a veil-and-sword dance set to Indian sitar music; and a Persian folkloric dance from Iran.

PURE is important enough that i dragged myself all the way to new york to see it get started (and missed everything). this is the real thing, and it’s making great progress. and now it’s available in a tribe.net space, and that means i can make it available here as syndication feed. so, PURE syndication is live. enjoy!