I had a friend who performs sword swallowing. He tells people before he puts the sword in his mouth that he does this to get rid of the butterflies in his stomach before he performs. Now, this might be a stretch for most of us. Especially those of us who can’t swallow a sword to...
I have a confession. I love playing finger cymbals (zills, sagat, hellspawn carried on the fingers, whatever you wish to call them). They can be considered a very noisy instrument, but if played well, they are musical and a great addition to a dancer’s tool (prop) kit. As a dancer and my body is a...
Being a belly dancer can sometimes seem like all hard work and shaking jingly stuff at customers… but there are some magical moments too. Read on for the top 10 best moments, both large and small, in every belly dancers’ dancing life. 1. Getting off stage after your first solo performance. 2. Nailing a difficult...
Continuing our belly dance hacks posts (see all the posts here), in every group of dancers, there’s always the one who has a huge bag filled with everything all the others have forgotten… hairpins, safety pins, bandaids, make up setting powder. So today, I thought I’d open up my dance bag and show you guys...
Feels a little like an oxymoron right? Doing less with more. We are continually encouraged to do more – buy more, be more, see more, do more, but how often do you read something telling you take your more and do less with it? Welcome to today’s blog entry! When was the last time you...
I don’t know about you, but my favourite performances change over time. I look at what I had saved in my YouTube playlists from 4 years ago and it’s a world of difference to what I’m saving today. But today, I’m here to share a few of my favourites with you, but I don’t want...
We have talked previously about how important your eyes are in dance. We scratched the surface on a topic I feel strongly about – how we look at ourselves. How we see ourselves is often not the same reflection that looks back at us in the mirror. Dance class provides an amazing space where we...
It is said that your eyes are the gateway to your soul. That you see everything (not that we can always remember what we see), and that by looking into another person’s eyes you can get to know them. We hate not feeling seen and a caught glance between strangers can make someone feel amazing....
Suhaila Salimpour is Director of the Salimpour School of Belly Dance in San Francisco(1). Daughter to Jamila Salimpour (often considered the ’mother of Tribal bellydance’), she began her dance tuition at the age of two, began teaching at the age of fourteen and has been a professional performer and master teacher ever since. She spent ten...
Have you ever found yourself wondering why you can’t get things done? Why it seems like such a big issue to get in and practise? It could be because you have too many options on what to practise. But it could equally be that you don’t have the mental space to work because of your...
