Egyptian Dance Evening

What fun!

We had a really successful evening!  I thought we were just going to be a little extra at this school event, but oh no, we were 'it'! It was all very informal and relaxed, and you could tell at first our audience were a little bemused by us, pehaps they did not quite know what to expect.

Anyway we performed two of our group dances and then persuaded some of the mums and kids to join in. The kids were fantastic! They loved it. We encouraged more and more people up to join in and got them all dancing in lines, Nubian style, then we had an intermission and a few cold drinks.

After our short break we did another group dance, out latest and the audience seemed to love that one! Paulette then did her solo, which was really good. We then managed to get all the adults (They were all women - only 3 men there!) up to join us as well as the children. 

We arranged them in a circle and encouraged someone to come and dance in the middle in turn, of course the kids were there like a shot, but slowly the mums and other women came too.

The little lads were great they were fantastic at belly rolls, and wanted to show them off all the time. I was showing them how the men would dance with swords/sticks -- instead of the girly arms! They all really seemed to be enjoying themselves..

By the end of the evening it was organised chaos, everyone was up having a go at shimmies and hip circles etc, all saying how much harder it was than they thought. By then we could not stop the kids dancing... they all wanted hip scarves and we did not have anywhere near enough to go round! By the end of the evening each of us had a group around us that we were encouraging and we ended up dancing to ‘Shakira’ which of course everyone knew and enjoyed.. It was total mad, joyous, chaos.

We got huge cheers for ages at the end... we are still new to this and we knew that we were not quite perfect, but I don’t think our audience did. I think our enthusiasm definitely infected everyone and won the day!

 Everyone kept telling us it was the best night they had for ages, and I think they meant it too. It was such a buzz seeing everyone enjoying themselves so much, I overheard two people saying that it was fantastic fun!

 And the Head Teacher says she would like to start a bellydancing club!

 So we all came away feeling like it had been a roaring success as well as more money for our costume fund!

So next time you GOTTA be there!

Helen (Egyptia member)