World Belly Dance Day - Part 1

The Harmony Hafla Charity Event held in

Berjaya Hotel Grand Ballroom, on the 10th of May 2008.

Love those poses?

Badia, the Belly Dancer from USA, striking a pose!

The Exotic Sahara Night

Beautiful Sahara desert has always been mysterious and gives us a sense of exotic and freedom. Well that's my defination on the Dream of Sahara. I highlighted this event because it is a Belly Dance showcase perform by students of Zero fitness dance studio in Penang, and I happen to be one of them... :)

This is the auditorium that we performed in, the banner here states the Dream of Sahara which is an appropriate theme for our performances. The event was on the 15th of March 2008. A wonderful saturday night fill with lots of excitement for those who attend and participate. A night that we all waited anxiously.
This is a beautiful performance from the dancers. They had use those tinkling Zils, also zills or finger cymbals, (from Turkish zil, "cymbals") to perform in this belly dancing as well. The coordination was marvelous, the timing and the spirit was really wonderful. Love the costumes, really gives you the Sahara feeling! Lots of camel, and belly roll as well. Well done!
Here are those cuties! Kids belly dance performances! They really twist and turn and shimmy well! Love them all, they are so lovely and cute. Like they say everything start from young! Even the hair cut are soooo.... Egyptian too, wow!
So this is our performances, we called it "Momo" as it is the title of the song. Well our group practice real hard on this, we hope everything turns out well....:P

We have consider everything from top to toe as well...... the costumes, jewelery, make-up and even the tattoo at our belly.... hah! To all my fellow belly dance friends, well done and hi-fives to y'all. All the hard work was really fantastic! Hope we can do this all the time... keep going! We all love the dance and we have really put our heart and soul in it, Kampateh!

Finally here is our beautiful instructor and choreographer, she had patiently help and bare with our mistakes all this while, all the best to you Conny! As we will be having another big event soon on May in conjuction with the World Belly Dance Day, all proceeds will go to charity as well. Hope to have support from all. See y'all there!

For more info, visit here: http://zerofitnessdance.com/

Oh before I pen off, this is actually my favourite show of the nite. The Tibetian influence tribal belly dance. Quite an awesome display of strength, movements and creativity. Well, I have little exposure of tribal belly dance and I personally feel really tense and full of surprise whenever I watch the tribal belly dance, contrastly egyptian belly dance are quite feminine in a sense, the dance itself is full of curves and sensuality. Well, in short I just love the way that we have to move the muscle in our body, those muscle that you never know of!

Tribal Fushion anyone?

Well, went for my first experience of "Tribal Fushion Belly Dance Workshop". Sounds interesting eh? The workshop started from 10am till 6pm in the afternoon. Was really tired, interesting and fun too. It was worth it, love the experience. The whole experience kind of inspires me and I suddenly become more aware of all the moves I have learnt in my routine classes. It is another version of belly dance which I may venture into if I could get the correct muscle to work well. For now, maybe stick to the basic first. Hah....

Our beutiful instructor Sharon Kihara, came from San Francisco, America. She is also one of the Belly Dance superstar that I met. (Well, I attended Kaeshi's workshop too! She is also one of the superstar from New York.) Her moves are so slick and enchanting, wish I could dance a little bit like her. Well, we all did one of her Tribal Fusion Choreographies, and we did some warm-ups which is good. It is all to stretch and loosen our muscles and all, quite interesting fact to know for me who does not do any sort of Yoga, or Pilates..... hmmm... maybe I should.

Any of you interested to see her dance?

They call it snake dance?

So some of them call it snake dance.... yeah right! Well, in Egypt, it's called "Dance of the Earth";Belly dance is a name that we created because it uses the muscle of the belly a lot and it shows the belly part. In US, there is this Tribal dance which include styles of different belly dance around the world and gypsy dance. The moves are a fusion of belly dance and tribal dance. There is much more to belly dance, as in you have to be an expert to know the difference. Here the picture shows the use of hand-cymbals; whereby you click on it to give a (cling) sound, according to the music and moves. There are many different props that a dancer can use while dancing, like a veil, cymbals, sword, cane, candles, torch.. as in fire on it; etc. Amazing right?

There are many types of belly dance and they are different kinds of belly dance depends on the country. The famous ones that are widely shown on MTV are Egyptian Belly Dance. Nowadays you tend to see everyone doing the same moves not knowing where it is from... pathetic!