Egyptian style Bellydance in Manchester, UK
This week I've been looking back on the last year of dance, and actually, I am very pleased with how my own dancing has developed. My focus this year was grounding; presence; sensuality; expression (and of course, the eternal task of finding good uses for my exceptionally long and noodly arms). And filming myself this …
Continue reading "Some brief reflections on a year of dance, 2024"
This Summer I set out to create a dance course based on something I hear from dancers in my classes all the time... Many of you have been telling me that you'd love to start to perform solo, or create your own dance for a hafla - but somehow, you never quite seem to get …
Continue reading "What song should I dance to? How do I choose???"
As I begin a new term of classes, I've been thinking about what I promise to you as your teacher if you ever come to a bellydance class with me - beyond the obvious one, that I will teach you to dance to the best of my ability! These are a few of them: I …
Since I decided to call my new workshop series "Raqs to Infinity", I wanted to elaborate on some of the concepts from the first workshop, and talk more about the concept of infinity and why it's relevant to dance. The chances are, when I say "infinity" you think of something huge. Infinite distance. The vast …
Continue reading "Dance Infinities and the Secret to Seamless Transitions"
I've been geeking out about Arabic music a lot in the last year, including listening to a lot of different things, reading loads of books, and even learning to play the oud. And in that time, I've realised that there's a bit of misunderstanding of muwashshahat (singular muwashshah) in the bellydance world. What we learn in …
This post is part book review, part essay, and part personal reflection. This week, I finished reading the excellent "Making Music in the Arab World: The Culture and Artistry of Tarab" by A.J. Racy. This book has been on my 'to read' list for a long time, and I was finally spurred on to buy …
The great thing about learning an art form from another culture is that it can be a gateway to appreciating a culture other than your own. It can help you to see the world from other perspectives, and learn to see people from that culture as three-dimensional individuals, instead of through the stereotypes we grew …
Just a little rant for a Tuesday morning, on a subject that just keeps coming up... 😉 Westernised fusion dance is not "more modern" than Middle Eastern bellydance. But I often see it described as being so in the dance community - 'traditional' bellydance vs. 'modern' fusion - as if dance in the Middle East …
"Feminism is the radical notion that women are people." - Marie Shear I am a feminist. Now, I've heard it said that you should keep quiet about your politics when you are wearing your 'professional hat'. But I don't see this as politics. It's who I am. I'm a woman, working in a female-dominated industry …
How often have you seen dance and fitness classes advertised as 'empowering' for women? It's one of the biggest clichés of modern marketing - since the 'girl power' era of the 1990s, the idea of female empowerment has been used to sell just about every product imaginable, until it's become almost meaningless... But as dance …
Bellydance by Rachael 
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