Another Saturday Belly Dance Video treat for you.
Zeinat Olwi (stage name Zurah) was a famous Egyptian Belly Dancer in the mid-20th Century and appeared in many Egyptian films.
Tag Archive: legends of belly dance
Legends of Belly Dance: Tulay Karaca
This week’s Legend of Belly Dance is another Turkish dancer: Tulay Karaca.
Known for her vivacious style and her skilled zills playing, Tulay Karaca was at the height of her fame in the 1970s.
This video shows just how skilled she was with the zills:
While here she is performing a drum solo:
Legends of Belly Dance: Ibrahim Farrah
Ibrahim Farrah (also known as Bobby Farrah) is best known as a pioneer for Belly Dancing in the USA. Born in Pennsylvania of Lebanese descent he went on to become famous as both a performer and a choreographer, as well as publishing the international ethnic dance magazine Arabesque.
In the early 1960s Farrah taught at the Internation dance School at Carnegie Hall and in the 1970s he set-up the Ibrahim Farrah Near East Dance Group. He was particularly influenced by the more traditional dances of the Lebanon, Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries.
Farrah died from a heart attack in 1998, but his legacy lives on in his writings, teaching materials, research and photographs (known as the Ibrahim Farrah Papers) as well as in the skills and choreography he taught his many (sometimes famous) pupils.
This video shows a tribute to Farrah from 2000, performed by Morwenna and Walid Assaf:
Legends of Belly Dance: Princess Banu
This week’s Legend of Belly Dance is Princess Banu, who was one of Turkey’s most famous dancers during the 1970s and 80s.
After being discovered by famous dancer and choreographer Kudret Sandirali, Banu danced in nightclubs in Istanbul and fulfilled her ambition to be a movie actress in films such as Cilgin Arzular and Ver Gulum.
Princess Banu became famous throughout Turkey and Europe and, although she often danced in an Egyptian style, she was infamous for her daring costumes (often taking her top off and wearing just pasties on her nipples).
This video shows her dancing in a more Turkish style – with her hips pushed forward and featuring some floorwork:
Legends of Belly Dance: Dina
This week on our Legends of Belly Dance series, we are featuring Egyptian Belly Dancer, Dina.
Dina is currently Egypt’s most famous dancer. In fact, due to the ever increasing laws and religious restrictions surrounding dancers in Egypt, she is one of the few native Egyptian dancers still performing in Cairo. Newsweek magazine called her the “Last Egyptian Dancer”. She also travels the world performing and teaching.
Unfortunately, in the past decade, Dina has been dogged by scandal, with a video being released of her in bed with her husband, subsequent court battles and a brief retirement from dancing.
Here she is performing back in 1990:
Legends of Belly Dance: Jamila Salimpour
In Style Saturday last week we looked at American Tribal Style, so now seemed like a great time to feature Jamila Salimpour on our Legends of Belly Dance series.
Jamila Salimpour is credited with developing a style of Belly Dancing that set it apart from other styles of Belly Dance and gave it an “American” identity, paving the way for the development of what became American Tribal Style. She has been hugely influential in the world of Belly Dance in the past 50 years.
Jamila was born in 1926 to a Sicilian family in New York and began a career in dancing in 1942, when she worked for the Ringling Brothers Circus. As an acrobat and dancer she developed a variety show that blended elements of Oriental dance with her own creations. Of course, the audience often mistook it for authentic Belly Dance (because they didn’t know any differently).
This evolved into the style of dance that she began teaching in the late 1960s. She created her dance troupe Bel Anat (Dance of the Mother Goddess) to perform at Renaissance Faires.
Jamila Salimpour has a strong foundation in traditional Middle Eastern dance and has studied and performed many different styles of dance throughout her career. As well as the development of an American style, she is also credited with formalizing Belly Dance by breaking down the moves and giving them names.
This video gives a much more detailed account of Jamila Salimpour’s life in dance:
There are now 3 generations of Salimpour’s making waves in the world of Belly Dance. Jamila’s daughter Suhaila is a world-renowned performer, choreographer and teacher, and her own daughter Isabella is also developing her talent and performs with her mother.
You can learn more about the Salimpour legacy at Suhaila Salimpour’s website.
Legends of Belly Dance: Morocco
One of the most respected Belly Dance instructors, performers and historians/anthropologists is Carolina Varga Dinicu, better known in the Belly Dancing world as Morocco.
For over 40 years Morocco has studied and researched the dances of the Middle East, Mediterranean and North Africa (and their origins and culture), as well as created a dance school to teach these dances and a dance company – Casbah Dance Experience – to perform them.
You can learn more about Morocco on her website. Here she is performing a Bahlam Beek and Drum Solo in New York in 2006.
Legends of Belly Dance: Nesrin Topkapi
So far, our Legends of Belly Dance have been mainly classic Egyptian dancers with a few modern legends thrown in for good measure (because those are the dancers I know the best), but it’s only fair to cover the best dancers from other countries and styles.
Nesrin Topkapi was one of the biggest Turkish dancers of the 1970s and 80s, and became the first dancer to perform on a Turkish TV show. She is famous for her grace and elegance, and performs a style she calls Oriental rather than purely Turkish.
Nesrin became very popular in Germany and in the 1990s she set up a school of Oriental dance there, and continues to teach in Turkey and Germany.
Legends of Belly Dance: Naima Akef
Born in 1929, Naima Akef spent her childhood years performing as an acrobat in the family circus. When the circus disbanded she became an acrobatic performer in the clubs of Cairo.
Her talent for singing and dancing soon emerged and she went on to become one of the most popular stars of Egyptian cinema in the 1950s and early ’60s, after being discovered by director Hussein Fawzy, who she later married. Naima was also a member of one of the first professional folkloric dance groups in Egypt – Lail Ya Ayn.
Naima stopped acting in 1964 to take care of her son by her second husband, Salah Abdel Aleem, and sadly died 2 years later of cancer.
Here you can see Naima Akef’s graceful style as she dances in the film Ahibek Ya Hassan ( “I love Hassan”).
Legends of Belly Dance: Nagwa Fouad
Like many of our Legends of Belly Dance, Nagwa Fouad, born Awatef Mohammed El Agamy, ran away from her home to Cairo to pursue a career in dance. She started out in small nightclubs but was soon recognised for her style, grace and musical interpretation.
Nagwa married renowned musician and composer Ahmed Fouad Hassan who encouraged her to study hard to nurture and develop her obvious talent. They divorced 6 years later because she was unwilling to start a family, by which time she was one of Egypt’s most famous dancers.
Nagwa studied a variety of classical and modern Western dances and incorporated them into her performances. She was especially clever at bringing together great musicians to play in her orchestra.
As well as dancing, Nagwa also went on to act on stage and screen, and became a movie producer. Here she is dancing in the film Ismail Yassin Fee El Tayaran (“Ismail Yassin In The Airforce”) from 1959:
