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I'm not active on social media, so I don't know who this is about. It's a free country, which means the government doesn't prosecute people for Orwellian thoughtcrimes. It also means other people are free to hold your opinions against you and not support you. There are certain lines you can't...

LOL, I like listening to everything that isn't belly dance records! Other dancers always freak out when they hear me say that, like I'm some kind of troglodyte who isn't sufficiently respectful of tradition, but then they realize I mean "I'd rather listen to the originals than elevator-music...

Unfortunately, I'm not much of a video person. I stopped buying them years ago, when I realized I'd watch them once like a TV show and I'd never go back and actually dance with them. WDNY has some shimmy content, including "Shimmering Hips..." by Shahrzad and a shimmy workout by Sarah...

Thanks for the kind words, Zorba! I didn't learn anything with this name, which doesn't mean I didn't learn it as some other name, but I've barely done any Persian, just a mini-workshop class at a dance festival so long ago it was taught by Shakira Al Fanninah when she was just "Shakira"...

So much of the current Egyptian music just mushes together in a big, repetitive, Auto-Tuned blur for me. I suppose if you can speak better Arabic than I do, at least the lyrics give you something to differentiate between the songs...unless it doesn't matter, because I sort of feel the same...

And the fall of the Mubarak regime knocked Egypt's mainstream music industry back on its heels. Almost overnight, artists of the "al Jeel" era like Amro Diab, Mustafa Amar, and Ehab Tawfiq were struggling for relevance, and even second-wave singers like Tamer Hosny and Mohammed Hamaki could no...

This is just my personal intuition, but I assume the mid-century ME experience was similar to what was going on in the US, which I have second-hand familiarity with via my mother, who graduated from high school during WWII. There was a large, dominant segment of media and most people...

Gather around, ya sohabi, while I pontificate for thousands of words across multiple threads... Pop-culture media is usually targeted at the middle of the bell curve, and young adults tend to have more time and interest to pursue frivolities than middle-aged people with families, or older...

Professor Swedenburg recently uploaded a link to his 1992 article on the history of the Kufiya, if anyone is interested. http://swedenburg.blogspot.com/2023/11/my-kufiya-article-from-1992-seeing.html And here's some mood music to read by--Palestinian singer Mohammed Assaf singing "Ala al...

I think she's actually doing multiple shimmies throughout the demonstration, and her explanation isn't very clear or accurate. She starts out sort of doing a bit of everything at once. When she's bent forward (~8:48), she is moving both her knees AND dropping and lifting her hips. If I bend...

Her passing is truly a loss for all of us. I took a weekend workshop with her many years ago. She was a beautiful dancer and a very good teacher.

I'm curious about what you disagree on--looking to learn, not argue. We're all sort of like the blind men with the elephant in the old fable here. No one can see the whole picture when there are so many possible valid positions and opinions across cultures, subcultures, socioeconomic strata...

Come on, ya sohabi! I'm not writing a blog here. If the forum is ever going to get back to being viable, somebody else has to start a thread. So the other night, I'm trying to remember that clip of the dancer in the apartment and the woman is singing and the guy downstairs from the singer is...

Eh, nobody has anything else to post? These are a little old, but they're something to talk about... Traditional Christian hymn sampled in a wedding song about a beautiful bride... راشد الماجد - أجمل عروس Rashed al-Majed - Ajmal Arous Song about a guy being released from jail repurposed as...

Good to confirm it's a one-piece thobe. That advanced the knowledge a bit. I wish there was more specific information in the description. I decided to dig a little more yesterday, and I found this dude in a similar outfit (skirt's narrower, but it's the shorter length with the trousers)...

I honestly don't know how their costumes are made. I would have guessed it was a style of one-piece thobe, but the bottom half twirls like a circle skirt, so I'm not sure how you would get that much action unless the skirt was bias-cut separately (attached to the top or an independent...

My browser autofilled the site URL in this morning, and I was surprised to see it back! I found this video a while ago and never got around to sending it to Zorba to ask if he'd seen it, so let's start a conversation... http://bellydanceforums.net/threads/saudi-skirt-dancing.20200/

This clip is described as "Amazing Music Dance performance of Saudi Arabia at Saudi Pavilion," and as far as I can tell, it was filmed in Dubai. I don't think I've ever seen this kind of dancing with skirtwork before. I wish I had more information about it... Saudi Arabia Traditional Dance...

This was the original link https://wwd.com/fashion-news/fashion-scoops/gallery/rock-roll-hall-of-fame-2022-red-carpet-photos-1235411695/2022-rock-roll-hall-of-fame-induction-ceremony-arrivals-5/ It has an enlarge feature, but when I click on it, it just opens a new window with the photo by...

I finally got around to watching this year's Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony yesterday. Is Lenny Kravitz wearing assuit here? (I don't think it's some sort of problem if he is. It's just not the "lewk" I'd have personally styled him in to induct Lionel Richie.)...