The person who inspired me to start bellydancing

Silfida

Silfida

New member
I think many of us can remember the person who inpired us to start bellydancing or who's art we admire.

My inspiration and my beloved teacher is Amira Abdi, the bellydance star of Ukraine with Algerian background











She has degree in choreography from National Academy of arts and she is the founder of the first bellydance school in Kiev.


Amira Abdi is also Ukrainian oriental dance champion of 2004, 2005 and 2006


Who inspirated you to become a dancer ?
 
LilithNoor

LilithNoor

New member
I saw this at Gothla Uk in 2007, and this was definitely the piece that made me sit up and think 'I want to do that'.

Lilith can't work out how to embed a video :(

I'd been dancing for over a year by then, but had only been exposed to cabaret styles and a spot of ATS. Gothla was pretty much a revelation to me in terms of fusing dance styles and expressing different aesthetics.

I've since taken several classes and workshops with Fulya; I love her blend of belly dance and burlesque, and how careful she is about combining the two.
 
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Sherezade

Sherezade

New member
As to me, I don't think I was inspired by a person, or at least not when I first thought of bellydance for me. I remember once being at a disco with some friends and feeling I couldn't dance at all, but would love to. For some reason, bellydance was the first type of dance that came into my mind, maybe because I find it much more natural than ballet, for example, which I think is too acrobatic AND not suitable for someone who has just turned 31 and whose bones aren't very flexible. Then I ordered "Luscious - The bellydance workout" with Neon, Blanca and Sarah Skinner and though difficult to get some moves right, I loved it so much and found these two dancers so graceful (especially Blanca, whose movents are so soft) that I thought I'd like to try what they do. Maybe I'll never be as graceful, but if the question is who inspired me to bellydance, then maybe it was these three women.
 
Elfie

Elfie

New member
This is Damiena, a Maryland belly dancer, and personal friend of mine.

Damiena dancing to Beledi Helwa - YouTube


I used "Shimmy" the tv show for a long time as a workout routine before I met her. But I was a little bleh... didn't much care for the way the show was set up and never took it seriously.

Damiena and I are both horror writers, and go to the same forums for writers. When I found out she was a pro belly dancer, and I saw how in shape she was, I was like, "Yup. This is how I'm getting my body back."

The dance itself is what took me beyond just wanting to get in shape.
 
Amulya

Amulya

Moderator
When I saw a belly dancer for the first time. No idea who she was, but I wanted to be able to dance like that.

But I shouldn't ignore my family's past that played a role; my grandparents were writers and visited Egypt 52 times! They wrote a lot of books on Egyptology and wrote two articles on belly dance for magazines. They also did some photography for those articles, amazing pictures of dancers in the late '60's in Egypt.
I had heard stories about these so called belly dancers, but could never picture what they were, until I saw one.

It's a shame that I can't remember the name of my first teacher and there is no way of finding out who she was. She fell ill after a few months and her classes were taken over by another dancer who I stayed with for quite a while. I remember her very well, she was a great teacher, being able to explain everything very clearly and always bringing the 'latest' combinations from workshops in Turkey she used to follow.
 
BellaBohemian

BellaBohemian

New member
Amulya said:
When I saw a belly dancer for the first time. No idea who she was, but I wanted to be able to dance like that.
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This is the same for me. And I too was also inspired to dance prior to seeing this person though. Also my heritage inspired me to dance. I am half Romani and I learned shortly after beginning formal classes about the Turkish belly dancers. I was really inspired by the fusion of the two styles of dance. I knew I always wanted to use elements of Roma dance in my style so learning that a form of it already exists was just the push over the edge that I needed. :D
 
Yame

Yame

New member
I think what inspired me to start belly dancing were Ansuya's videos



Interestingly enough, I moved on fairly quickly to prefer different styles... but it was her videos that made it fall in love in the beginning.
 
Sirène

Sirène

New member
I've always loved Middle Eastern music. I heard it in movies and on tv and I just ADORED it when I was little. Which was maddening because when I was young it was impossible to find — the only dance music in my house was of the disco variety thanks to my parents, and as a teenager you just didn't find it in American music stores which was all I had access to.

God bless the internet, because I was finally able to get my ME musical fix as an adult. It was through ME music searches (mostly on YT) that I discovered the wide world of bellydancers. However, it was this video that made me think, maybe, just maybe I can learn to bellydance too:



For a long time I was convinced that I couldn't do dance because of my size and because I didn't start at age 3. Then along comes this young lady. She's only a little younger than me and she's larger than me, but even though she's fairly new to BD, she gets up on stage and rocks a solo choreography. I'd seen and had great admiration for dancers before her, but she is the one who inspired me most to stop watching and start dancing.
 
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Sherezade

Sherezade

New member
Sirène said:
For a long time I was convinced that I couldn't do dance because of my size and because I didn't start at age 3. Then along comes this young lady. She's only a little younger than me and she's larger than me, but even though she's fairly new to BD, she gets up on stage and rocks a solo choreography. I'd seen and had great admiration for dancers before her, but she is the one who inspired me most to stop watching and start dancing.
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Really loved your post and your video, Sirène. I couldn't watch it to the end because my internet is slow at the moment but I think this video and this dancer are the proof that even not so slim people can be graceful. Although I'm slimmer than her, just like you, for years I also had the idea that dancing is for slim people and if you want to be a good dancer, you must start when you're 3 or 4. I had never tried because this was what was always on my mind. That I was too fat (which I'm not) and it was too late to start. Maybe this is why I constantly feel the "hippo feeling" (a thread I started in another sub-forum here) around me. And hey, how many people didn't think when this dancer went to the stage "What does she think she's gonna do?" :confused: I guess our minds are full of stereotypes and we tend to associate beauty and elegance to a certain type of bodies.

Really loved it, thanks for posting it, Sirène, once again. :clap: Maybe it can help other women who feel they're not suitable for dance just because they are overweight overcome their fears. :)
 
Imeera

Imeera

New member
I only have one video that made me stop watching and start dancing as Sirène put it! That was this video: Sadie BellyDance - YouTube

You guys have probably seen it mentioned a million times! It was her control and technique that make me think "I want to do that and I need to do that". But as I started diving deep into this world. Dancers that have had more of an impact surfaced and became more immortant. I went though different phases as I saw different dancers like Sadie, Blanca, Autumn Ward, Rachel Brice ect but then I came across Egyptian style. I fell in love with it, the music, the emotion, how it made me feel. No other style made me feel how Egyptian style does. It was partly because I started classes in Egyptian style, and I have a deep interest for the Ancient culture and more recent Arabic culture of Egypt, and partly because of these three videos;

Fifi Abdou - YouTube
Egyptian Belly Dance - YouTube
Eygptian bellydancers - YouTube

Also, not really one of the main ones but still a large impact and I have no idea who she is or what style she is but I think she is AMAZING;
BELLY DANCER STAR IN "" ahlla we sahllan "" - YouTube
 
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Amulya

Amulya

Moderator
Shakira is not really a belly dancer in what she does (she can belly dance though and did have classes), but she inspired a lot of my past students to come to class :) She definitely brought it more into mainstream and it was very good for us teachers at the time.
 
LadyLoba

LadyLoba

New member
Yes...I imagine "Shakira" is probably a pretty common answer to that question. I love her belly dance inspired stage wear too... in one clip I saw of a live performance, she does a drum solo that segues into her singing in a costume that I want :D
 
Aniseteph

Aniseteph

New member
No one really inspired me to start - the classes were there, I thought it sounded fun, and got hooked. Though having a really good teacher inspired me to keep signing up for more.
 
Chani

Chani

New member
Aniseteph said:
No one really inspired me to start - the classes were there, I thought it sounded fun, and got hooked. Though having a really good teacher inspired me to keep signing up for more.
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Same here. I never though to look bd up on youtube. My teacher was so inspiring and encouraging that one term for fun turned into a passion.
 
XelaHayam

XelaHayam

New member
Imeera said:
I only have one video that made me stop watching and start dancing as Sirène put it! That was this video: Sadie BellyDance - YouTube

You guys have probably seen it mentioned a million times! It was her control and technique that make me think "I want to do that and I need to do that". But as I started diving deep into this world. Dancers that have had more of an impact surfaced and became more immortant. I went though different phases as I saw different dancers like Sadie, Blanca, Autumn Ward, Rachel Brice ect but then I came across Egyptian style. I fell in love with it, the music, the emotion, how it made me feel. No other style made me feel how Egyptian style does. It was partly because I started classes in Egyptian style, and I have a deep interest for the Ancient culture and more recent Arabic culture of Egypt, and partly because of these three videos;

Fifi Abdou - YouTube
Egyptian Belly Dance - YouTube
Eygptian bellydancers - YouTube

Also, not really one of the main ones but still a large impact and I have no idea who she is or what style she is but I think she is AMAZING;
BELLY DANCER STAR IN "" ahlla we sahllan "" - YouTube
Click to expand...


Aw I love Sadie - But she's so expressionless in the face :/

the dancer who is inspiring me right no is Alla Kushnir - I love the faces she pulls (though her costumes are a little skimpy for my taste)

Alla Kushnir - professional belly dance - Sexy Belly Dance - YouTube
 
Duvet

Duvet

Member
Not sure if it was inspiration, but the first bellydancer I remember seeing was in the James Bond film "The Man With the Golden Gun". It must have impressed me, because the image stayed with me for over thirty years before I actually took up the dance form.
I've re-seen the film recently, and must admit the memory is far better than the reality!! I must have been really impressionable!
 
Aziza_UAE

Aziza_UAE

New member
I'd been taking classes for a year or so and had been to several video nights put on by my teacher where she showed videos of impossibly slim utterly gorgeous Lebanese dancers in 'to die for' costumes doing endless drum solos and Turkish drops etc etc. Lovely to watch but I knew all of that was totally beyond me...then one night she showed this clip of Hala al Safy and I had a 'eureka' moment. I knew that *this* was what I wanted to do and I've been working at it ever since :)

 
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