Thread: Chicago teacher - Egyptian style?

I have a lovely student who is moving to the Chicago area and wants to study with a good Egyptian style teacher. Do you all have recommendations for her, please?

Jasmin Jahal is a wonderful dancer and teacher. I fly in for her 5-day workshop each year.

Belly Dance Chicago

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmKko...eature=related

Raksanna.

Belly Dance classes for fitness and fun in Naperville, Aurora, Plainfield, Oswego, Sugar Grove, Joliet, Sandwich, DeKalb, Romeoville, Bolingbrook, Warrenville and Wheaton

Wow, that was fast! Thank you!

Accidentally deleted this with the intention of making edits. Surayah al-Muddaris is a fantastic Egyptian dancer whose mother, Sadiyah, also is a dancer from back in the day. Her classes also are full of the modern as well as traditional style. I would very highly recommend her.

Originally Posted by EternalStudent

Surreya al-Muddaris - surayahdance@gmail.c​om. From what I hear, she is fantastic. There is no further information that I have but if you e-mail her I'm sure she will answer your questions.

ha ha .. ! knew you would get here with info.. !!!

All the people mentioned above would be awesome.

Additionally, I'd recommend Sonya at Arabesque. She worked with Mahmoud Reda for a time in Egypt. Mahira is a good teacher, she does a heck of a cane dance.

Also, Erika Ochoa is excellent and she does shaabi too.

Thank you! It seems Chicago is a very rich area to study! Lots of choices. With all of these suggestions, I'm sure she will find something.

Originally Posted by EternalStudent

Delete.

Why did you delete your post? From the YouTube clips I've found Surayya seems to be a very good Egyptian style dancer.

All excellent teachers mentioned above. All but Suraya studied under Jasmin for years, as did I. I do teach Egyptian as well, but am pretty far West of the city in Elgin.

Originally Posted by Serpentine

Why did you delete your post? From the YouTube clips I've found Surayya seems to be a very good Egyptian style dancer.

Surayah Al-muddaris is excellent no doubt; the post was about me.

I asked that it be deleted because I don't consider myself Egyptian, at any rate not modern Egyptian, I do love Egyptian FOLKLORIC music and Egyptian classical.

I love the old stuff and dance to it; I can copy the modern moves but my heart isn't in it; plus I seem to be doing something else that is totally not Egyptian. Example the upper body, well Egyptian upper body is very different, I have almost a Flamenco upper body which is partly from the Turks and partly because I deliberately copied Flamenco starting in the early 1980's. So, the soft Egyptian hand and lower elbow that you see, well, I can copy it but it isn't me.

Plus I cover a really broad range of music in my classes and in my dance.

Plus I do zills. Last night though a Bedouin lady was in the audience and said my zills are not Egyptian, they are Bedouin, so.

In fact I found out recently that Surayah Al-muddaris' mom is Sadiyah, a dancer/teacher who was very influential in the 1970's and '80's in Chicago and had a beautiful Arabian style, so on that basis alone I'd recommend her.

So anyway I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Surayah, but also Christina, Raksanna, Sonya, Mahira, Jasmine Jahal, as mentioned above. I believe Charisse (Zohra) is also a fantastic dancer.

I would recommend me if you are looking for technique that would span several styles, a discussion of what distinguishes various musical styles, zills; I'd be good for somebody who is seriously into music, especially OLD music; because if it was written after 1492 I probably think it's modern;

And/or if you are seriously into performance art. That I think isn't limited to "Egyptian" or "tribal" or "Turkish," if you see what I mean.

And also, yes, there are many differences between Turkish and various Arabic styles including Egyptian - but there are also many similarities and of course due to the massive influence of the Ottoman Empire and also, the ongoing influence of Andalusian classical styles, plus other outside influences on Egyptian music and dance art, and Arabesque influences on Turkish music and dance, plus the Rom, Jews, Bedouin, Armenians, Copts, Silk Road and European cultures, African and so forth, the cross fertilization of styles has been ongoing for centuries at least.

However there's no argument at all that indigenous Egyptian social dances are unique and also that "Modern Egyptian" is its own style; the latter I do not do.

Hope this helps!

PS there are probably others who would be good too, apologies if you haven't been mentioned! Just, it's a real big city and I don't personally know everybody. Yet.

Originally Posted by Serpentine

Why did you delete your post? From the YouTube clips I've found Surayya seems to be a very good Egyptian style dancer.

See my former post. I meant to edit it but got interrupted so I deleted it instead meaning to come back to it at a later time but never got there. I had mentioned Sophia Gates as another Egyptian style teacher but realized that that was not correct, as Elibelinde has pointed out. Thanks!

Originally Posted by Elibelinde

Surayah Al-muddaris is excellent no doubt; the post was about me.

I asked that it be deleted because I don't consider myself Egyptian, at any rate not modern Egyptian, I do love Egyptian FOLKLORIC music and Egyptian classical.

I love the old stuff and dance to it; I can copy the modern moves but my heart isn't in it; plus I seem to be doing something else that is totally not Egyptian. Example the upper body, well Egyptian upper body is very different, I have almost a Flamenco upper body which is partly from the Turks and partly because I deliberately copied Flamenco starting in the early 1980's. So, the soft Egyptian hand and lower elbow that you see, well, I can copy it but it isn't me.

Plus I cover a really broad range of music in my classes and in my dance.

Plus I do zills. Last night though a Bedouin lady was in the audience and said my zills are not Egyptian, they are Bedouin, so...

And also, yes, there are many differences between Turkish and various Arabic styles including Egyptian - but there are also many similarities and of course due to the massive influence of the Ottoman Empire and also, the ongoing influence of Andalusian classical styles, plus other outside influences on Egyptian music and dance art, and Arabesque influences on Turkish music and dance, plus the Rom, Jews, Bedouin, Armenians, Copts, Silk Road and European cultures, African and so forth, the cross fertilization of styles has been ongoing for centuries at least.

However there's no argument at all that indigenous Egyptian social dances are unique and also that "Modern Egyptian" is its own style; the latter I do not do.

Wow... what an answer! Thank you. Now I'm curious, can you recommend a clip of yourself dancing? I want to see for myself.

As my students can tell you I teach Egyptian style dancing from the 1980s - not Modern Raqia Hassan / Reda dancing. It's very different. I personally don't like the modern stuff - or choreography. And I play wicked sagat. So did most of the Egyptian dancers I worked with at the time, except for Mona Said and Sahar Hamdi. But in the Egyptian style that I learned the posture is very upright and the hands don't move as they do in Flamenco. And there is no "vomit move" / reverse undulation. That is American of Turkish origin. So it's easy for me to see what style people do by looking at their posture, hands and undulations. And I do a lot of 3/4 down shimmies. That is what my student wanted to find - an older Egyptian style.

You must love the history side of the dance! It's good to know that there are teachers out there who do their homework and study the culture and origins of the dance. Personally, I think that enriches a dancer's performance. That was why I included so much history in the booklets of my CDs.

Thank you for taking the time to answer me.
Yasmin Henkesh

Originally Posted by Serpentine

Wow... what an answer! Thank you. Now I'm curious, can you recommend a clip of yourself dancing? I want to see for myself.

As my students can tell you I teach Egyptian style dancing from the 1980s - not Modern Raqia Hassan / Reda dancing. It's very different. I personally don't like the modern stuff - or choreography. And I play wicked sagat. So did most of the Egyptian dancers I worked with at the time, except for Mona Said and Sahar Hamdi. But in the Egyptian style that I learned the posture is very upright and the hands don't move as they do in Flamenco. And there is no "vomit move" / reverse undulation. That is American of Turkish origin. So it's easy for me to see what style people do by looking at their posture, hands and undulations. And I do a lot of 3/4 down shimmies. That is what my student wanted to find - an older Egyptian style.

You must love the history side of the dance! It's good to know that there are teachers out there who do their homework and study the culture and origins of the dance. Personally, I think that enriches a dancer's performance. That was why I included so much history in the booklets of my CDs.

Thank you for taking the time to answer me.
Yasmin Henkesh

Hi Yasmin!

Well, how I dance depends on the music mostly, what it says, etc, so it varies a lot from piece to piece. Plus if I am on the verge of falling down, etc.

So if it is ok I think you might want to scroll through a few, including the practice ones in the gym if you have time because I think out loud in there, with my body I mean, trying to find new things in the music. I love 3/4 shimmies and also like to play with various rhythms, including 6/8's, 10/8's, 9/8's etc.

Lately when I perform I kind of alternate, not really deliberately, between Arabic music and Turkic and/or Sephardic music, I love the various styles but they call on different resources, if that makes any sense. So it keeps it fresh for me and helps me clarify the music and ideas in my mind so I can pass it along. Plus if I choose a piece I try to find out as much as I can about it.

I only have about 21 videos up, they're at sophiagateschicago on you tube. If you go to my channel you can see them listed with the most recent ones on top.

Several are practices, some of those are pretty rough lol, but you can see the ideas. Some of the performances are definitely better than others, but oh well:)

The most recent ones I like the best, they're real performances, the one from last night isn't up yet, alas:)

But I like both Triton videos, the music is very different on each; the most recent Oak Park video, dated 10/30/11; the one with the date 10/22/11, that I like also, again the 10/30 video is Sephardic with the first piece being approximately 15th century and the other a little later, it's partly in Ladino and partly in Turkish. The 10/22/11 piece is back in the Arabian world.

Thank you so much for your interest!

QUOTE=Serpentine;926528]Wow... what an answer! Thank you. Now I'm curious, can you recommend a clip of yourself dancing? I want to see for myself.

As my students can tell you I teach Egyptian style dancing from the 1980s - not Modern Raqia Hassan / Reda dancing. It's very different. I personally don't like the modern stuff - or choreography. And I play wicked sagat. So did most of the Egyptian dancers I worked with at the time, except for Mona Said and Sahar Hamdi. But in the Egyptian style that I learned the posture is very upright and the hands don't move as they do in Flamenco. And there is no "vomit move" / reverse undulation. That is American of Turkish origin. So it's easy for me to see what style people do by looking at their posture, hands and undulations. And I do a lot of 3/4 down shimmies. That is what my student wanted to find - an older Egyptian style.

You must love the history side of the dance! It's good to know that there are teachers out there who do their homework and study the culture and origins of the dance. Personally, I think that enriches a dancer's performance. That was why I included so much history in the booklets of my CDs.

Thank you for taking the time to answer me.
Yasmin Henkesh[/QUOTE]

BLESS YOU! And here is one of Sophia's awesome videos:
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The clips were fun to watch. I could see flamenco hands and Turkish and a lot of what Artemis calls Vintage Orientale - American dancing from the 1970s that developed in the big Middle Eastern communities like Boston, Chicago, New York and Detroit that had great showmanship and a mix of Greek, Turkish, Lebanese and Syrian musicians, dancers and customers.

I LOVED the Sephardic music. That was a great choice. What album is that from?

Originally Posted by Serpentine

The clips were fun to watch. I could see flamenco hands and Turkish and a lot of what Artemis calls Vintage Orientale - American dancing from the 1970s that developed in the big Middle Eastern communities like Boston, Chicago, New York and Detroit that had great showmanship and a mix of Greek, Turkish, Lebanese and Syrian musicians, dancers and customers.

I LOVED the Sephardic music. That was a great choice. What album is that from?

I started dancing in 1973 so worked in major markets including Florida, Chicago is my home base though since 1976. Probably my favorite music outside the Turkic/Sephardic, which is mixed with Arabic, would be Levantine (Syrian/Lebanese).

Originally Posted by Elibelinde

I started dancing in 1973 so worked in major markets including Florida, Chicago is my home base though since 1976. Probably my favorite music outside the Turkic/Sephardic, which is mixed with Arabic, would be Levantine (Syrian/Lebanese).

So I got it right?

Originally Posted by Serpentine

So I got it right?

Well I told you I wasn't Egyptian.

Originally Posted by Elibelinde

All the people mentioned above would be awesome.

Additionally, I'd recommend Sonya at Arabesque. She worked with Mahmoud Reda for a time in Egypt. Mahira is a good teacher, she does a heck of a cane dance.

Thanks for the referral Sophia.

Originally Posted by MahiraRaqs

Thanks for the referral Sophia.

Any time my friend, you deserve it! PS see you at your birthday party!!!