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Special Salimpour School Events in June
Join us in June for a week of belly dance! Train with Suhaila during the day, and then enjoy performances, gatherings, and much more in the evening! Monday – Friday, June 13…
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Maharjan: The Marvelous “Middle Sister”
Suhaila choreographed three pieces in high school, in which she experimented with the techniques that would become integral elements of her belly dance format. These three pieces—“Joumana,” “Maharjan,” and “Hayati”—showcase her intricate…
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What You Don’t Know About Jamila Salimpour Step Names
Sicilian/Greek-American dancer Jamila Salimpour is known for many innovations in belly dance (a dance form also referred to as oriental dance, raqs sharqi, raqs baladi, among others), but is probably best known…
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Sheherezade: Storytelling For Wider Audiences
In the Beginning… of the 2000s Belly Dance Boom In 2003, belly dance in the United States was on the verge of an explosion of popularity. Since the 1980s, interest in the…
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Suhaila Solo: The Art of the Nightclub Show
In our previous explorations of Suhaila Salimpour’s performance video catalog—“Banat Iskandaria,” “Pharaonic Suite,” 1991 BC, and Unveiled—we have followed the development of her choreographic work to recorded music. What we haven’t seen is…
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Unveiled: Revealing an Integrated Approach to Belly Dance
If you’ve been in the Salimpour School for a while, you are probably already familiar with at least some of the choreographies on Unveiled. And if you are newer to the school,…
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1991 BC: Suhaila Plants Seeds for the Future
The last time we saw Suhaila on film was her deliberate, architectural, and experimental choreography on Dances for the Sultan. There she had just begun her innovative work of integrating hard contraction…
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Erte, Experimentation, and Irony: Suhaila Salimpour’s “Pharaonic Suite”
When looking at the total of Suhaila’s recorded performances, you might notice that the “Pharaonic Suite” on the 1988 production Dances for the Sultan is different. The movements are highly stylized, bound,…
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“Banat Iskandaria”
What to Watch for in Suhaila Salimpour’s “Banat Iskandaria” It’s easy to look back at a dance and only see it though a historical lens. We can identify certain movements as “dated”…
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What is “Jamhaila”?
The Salimpour School’s “Jamhaila” concept is important for our students to understand. Abigail Keyes wrote a short explanation that we provide below. A longer version of her explanation that includes historical background…
