Souher Zaki (سهير زكي)

Hello Dancers,

This weeks post is again aimed for my Beginning class but will be enjoyable to anyone who loves belly dance. We were talking about the different styles of shimmies in class on Monday and I mentioned Souher Zaki (سهير زكي) as one example of shimmying and I wanted to share a clip to illustrate.

This clip is also really useful because it shows some different instruments that might be unfamiliar to new dancers: kanoun, riq, tabla, etc. Plus it has backup dancers in lots of fringe! (For those reading on email, click here for the clip).

In other news, my Classes Page is updated with new offerings for October and November. I’m excited to have both finger cymbals and veil classes at convenient weekend times!

And then I am really looking forward to Virtual Sirens Fest this weekend. SirensFest is a wonderful belly dance festival in Sebastopol, CA but of course this year we are online. I am looking forward to watching the great lineup and my own performance will be shown a little after 6PM. You can buy your Sirens Fest ticket here.

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That’s it for this week but I am still working on a very special post which I hope to have ready very soon. Have a great week.

Follow me on Instagram @alisabellydance to stay up to date!

Souheir Zaki & Ahmed Adaweya

As I mentioned last week, we are going to be working with Shaabi music in my virtual belly dance classes through the South San Francisco Parks and Rec (you can still sign up and join us!*).

I do often play Shaabi music in my classes because I love it, but we will be studying it more closely. Shaabi music is the music of the regular people and we will talk more about this in class.

In honor of that, I thought I would show clip of the ‘King of Shaabi’, Ahmed Adaweya (أحمد عدوية) and everyone’s favorite baladi dancer Souheir Zaki (سهير زكي). This is an old, blurry one but you will still have no problem appreciating the feeling of the beautiful singing and dancing.

Ahmed Adaweya is the first modern Shaabi superstar and his music is still beloved today.

I hope you enjoy the clip and enjoy dancing in class. We’re doing a more modern song in class but we will talk about the development as we dance, and maybe I will share some more Shaabi next week. I shared some cute clips of Dina dancing to a Shabbi song last week.

In other news, in addition to my regular virtual belly dance classes (info below), I am planning on doing a special fingers cymbals (zills) Zoom class on Saturday, June 28th at 2PM. I’ll post more information about it later in the week but you can contact me to register or with any questions.

* The South San Francisco Parks and Rec Department have made my online classes available to the public for free, but you do need to preregister at their online catalog so they can send you a secure invitation to join. Enter code SP1-471 in the box under ‘Filter’ and our class will come up - it’s called ‘Virtual-Belly Dancing’.

You can always contact me with any questions!

Wednesday Inspiration: Souheir Zaki

A classic clip today from one of my favorite dancers.  I think she is everyone's favorite, isn't she?

Egyptian Dancer Souher Zaki

This is just a short one, but I love it.  Beautiful costume, wonderful musicality and her characteristic sweetness all in one quick clip:  Enjoy!

And... normally I don't post on Thursdays but I do have an exciting announcement tomorrow about a new class starting soon.  Please check back tomorrow for all the details!