Trust me, a Belly Dancer will happily dress just as skimpy and flashy – and will dance with just as many wiggles and undulations – for an all-female audience, as they will for an audience that includes men. In fact, most of the dancers I know would rather dance for the all-female audience any day.

More recently, she saw a belly dance show performed by Suhaila Salimpour, a Kensington resident with a dance studio on San Pablo Avenue in El Cerrito. She e-mailed Salimpour (who professionally uses her first name only) and the two became friends. Somewhere along the way, an idea for a reality show was hatched. They spent this week at the studio filming material for a television pilot.

“I spend a lot of time working on reality shows,” said Lorene Machado, a television and movie producer who works closely with Cho. Machado said her reality credits include “Bridezilla” and the “World’s Wildest Police Videos.”

“This clicked immediately,” she said. “It has so much potential. You can’t keep it in the box. It’s kicking at the box to get out.”

could it be the end? or a new beginning?

On a recent Thursday night, a 25-year-old belly dancer known as Asharah, who learned her first moves as a Princeton University student, winds her way up and down the narrow aisle between tables, snaking her arms through the air and eliciting catcalls with her Turkish drop, which takes her from a 90-degree backbend to the floor.

And you thought librarians were stuffy

Opening tonight at the Obz Cafe Theatre is Bellylicious, a dynamic exposition of the various styles of the sensual Middle Eastern dance, as performed by the belly-dancing schools in Cape Town.

Belly dancing helps build pre-school

MORUYA Pre-school has found an innovative way to raise funds to enclose the back verandah of the Campbell Street building and create a new and very functional additional space for the school.

When the pre-school’s fund-raising committee decided to take on the challenge and raise $7000 for the project, Amber Paisley Top volunteered her skills as a belly dancer to run classes for the rest of the year.

Forty-four women and girls, aged between 12 and 70 years, signed up to take a 10-week course during term three, choosing either a beginners’ or intermediate level class. That way $3000 was raised.

Dr. [Anthony] Shay [dance historian at Pomona College in California] says the West’s “pink and blue syndrome” when it comes to dance moves isn’t shared by other regions of the world, pointing to the similarities in female and male movements in salsa and Polynesian dancing.

“The idea that these movements are only appropriate to women’s bodies is wrong,” he says. “We think when a male articulates his torso he is somehow being effeminate, but that is really a culturally specific notion held by Anglo-Americans.”

big dance (modern)
big moves – Phat Fly Girls (hip hop) / Mass Movement (modern)
Danza Voluminosa (ballet)
The Fatimas (bellydance)

Cuba’s Danza Voluminosa is also covered by ap Obese Dancers Break Stereotypes in Cuba

… but there’s a guy in the mix:

Shayne Dempsey, attending with his wife Allison, was the only man in the group. He had previously taken belly dancing classes while living in another state.

“I like it. It’s fun,” said Dempsey. “It teaches you to use muscles you didn’t know you had. It doesn’t matter what age you are. Anybody can learn to do it.”

and appreciated:

An untrained eye could become hypnotized by the music and body thrusts, but the dance in its basic form is both beautiful and breathtaking.

Neena Nour was diagnosed with mild cerebral palsy when she was 6. Doctors said she would be unable to dance, roller skate or balance.

Her determination proved them wrong.

Nour, 20, whose real name is Christina Pope, dances in the classical Middle Eastern belly dance tradition, known as raks sharki, and has been practicing her profession for four years.
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On Friday, the Mesa resident and several other dancers will perform at Mesa Women’s Club in a benefit for United Cerebral Palsy of Central Arizona.

“My mission in life is to inspire others,” said Nour, who had to overcome her difficulties and develop alternate paths through various therapies.