Interview with Suhaila, first published in The Chronicles.

Dancer, Daughter, Mother:
An Interview with Suhaila Salimpour Khoury
By Renée Drellishak

Five year old Isabella Khoury finished her solo on the Rakkasah stage and ran to the waiting arms of her mother, Suhaila Salimpour Khoury. Suhaila led Isabella back to the center of the stage, sat her daughter down, and began to dance just for her. The vocalist sang about being advised that having a child might end her career, but choosing to have a baby anyway and discovering the love of her life.

Suhaila Salimpour Khoury is a busy woman. In addition to running a dance studio, teaching classes, choreographing and producing her new stage show, Sheherezade, producing a line of bellydance videos, and flying around the country for workshops and performances, she is also wife to Andre, mother to Isabella, and daughter to the legendary Jamila Salimpour. After several false starts attempting to write this article, Suhaila and I finally managed to connect via telephone. She was on her cell phone at the local pool with Isabella, and warned me, just as Isabella declared in the background that she needed to go potty, that the interview would probably have a few stops and starts. A perfect way to begin an article about mothers and daughters.

Most people’s mothers don’t belly dance, or didn’t, certainly, when you were a child. When did you figure that out and how did you feel about that?
It took me a while to figure that out, actually. [Laughs] I thought that everyone belly danced and listened to Ravi Shankar. I didn’t get it, you know. I think it wasn’t until kindergarten, which was really hard for me. It wasn’t just that my mother was a bellydancer; it’s that I was raised in the Islamic family structure. For my first day of kindergarten my grandmother had to henna my hands and feet in symbolic, protective, first day of school whatever. So here I was, six years old, named “Suhaila Salimpour,” everyone else’s name was Cindy or Janet, and I come to school with hennaed hands and feet. It was totally like a scene from My Big Fat Greek Wedding. My mom would pick me up in Bedouin dresses, and everyone else was wearing polyester, Easter bunny-color pants. And I had Bal Anat waiting for me in the living room. And that was real to me, that felt home to me. Going to school I felt like I was visiting a bunch of aliens.

Did you ever wish that you had a more normal upbringing?
I think when I became a teenager there were moments where I was trying to find a balance, and I think that that was hard. I wanted to be able to have a TV in the living room like normal people. My mom was writing her history books, so the dining room and living room were just full of books and her writing materials and her project. It was her life’s work, you know? And I didn’t get it. I took my mother for granted, completely, because she was my mom, so I didn’t get that she was doing this important thing. So we lived out of the kitchen and our bedrooms and the rest of the house was dedicated to the costumes and the book writing, the archiving.

My mom did it all alone. She had no help. She had no sisters or uncles or aunts or brothers or nothing, no help. And she wanted to raise me so she really only taught on the weekends as I got older, so she tried to manage on her weekend money. During the week she picked me up from school every day and when I came home the house was full of amazing smells, because she’s a great cook. But I wanted a more normal home setting. Our house was full of inlaid-with-mother-of-pearl furniture and couches that were Victorian that you couldn’t sit on, and Indian stools. Nothing you could live in. So she sold everything and we went and bought a normal couch and a normal TV and a coffee table. Now I look back and think “Damn, I wish we had some of that stuff!”

So as a teen you were helping your mom teach and you were dancing [at the Ren Faire] with her. Did you guys clash like most mothers and daughters?
[We] never really did. For me I just kind of followed the rules. My mom was so powerful, and she was the matriarch and everyone looked up to her and that really set the tone for how I looked at [her] as well. I saw how hard my mom struggled, really, really struggled, raising me alone back in a time when that did not happen. My mother did not even date let alone remarry after my father died. She asked me, “Would you like me to remarry?” and I was like, “No way!” I was traumatized by the concept. And she didn’t. That was it. I felt like she was sacrificing a lot for me so I tried to be as easy to handle as possible. My mom was the first to really do these big bellydance festivals and a month before the festival we ate out everyday, she couldn’t really keep up with the house, she was a mess, and I knew I couldn’t even really talk to her. She was unavailable completely. So I would just kind of take care of myself and then a week after the festival she would get a horrible flu and be in bed and devastated, and then she would slowly come back to being my mom. And those kinds of things were hard. But I knew that she was doing this great, groovy thing.

I never had those teenage years when I was out drinking or doing drugs. I always really valued the dance and I think my mom and I both got lucky that I loved to dance, because I don’t know what she would have done with me. That was how we got closer and that was also how we related, and I knew it. Of course, I wanted mommy to love me the most she could, and I’m sure dancing contributed to that but it wasn’t what motivated me to dance

Your mother made decisions that she felt were in your best interest, like not allowing you to go to Lebanon with Nadia Gamal. In retrospect, how do you feel about these decisions?
I think she made really great decisions. I think she was very protective of me. I couldn’t go to anyone’s house unless she knew the family, and I would have to call every hour and check up, and if I spent the night I had to call before I went to bed and call when I got up. I mean, she was very protective of me. I was her only child. I was her life’s work. I think all of the decisions she made were really responsible. It’s really funny because I was born and raised in Berkeley and I have a very northern California sensibility and it’s not until I’m outside of California that I realize how liberal my mother was, and how lucky I was to have that. I was raised with the most amazing drag queens. My mom used to take me to Gay Pride every year. So I look back and see that even those were choices that she made in parenting. She chose to have me extremely open-minded and really, really, liberal, but really guarded and safe at the same time. It’s interesting how she did that because it was not part of her generation. She had me when she was 40 years old in 1966—women weren’t doing that. With a Bedouin dress! I look back and I think she did try to balance things out in her crazy way. I was not raised normal and I’m not normal because of it, whatever that means. But what you see is what you get. I’m pretty much an open book.

You’ve mentioned in workshops the “mother-daughter betrayal” that you felt when creating your format and re-creating Bal Anat. Can you talk more about that?
For me a turning point in my life was when I was going to rewrite my mother’s book [The Danse Orientale]. My mom wanted me to, but I think that her idea was more re-editing. As I started to write it and include all of my knowledge, her book started becoming hundreds and hundreds of pages. I put her book on the side and I decided to isolate what I was writing and I decided to create a whole new dialogue and book. I was writing and writing, but I was writing secretly and I would hide the pages, and I didn’t want my mom to know what I was doing because I felt that she might feel betrayed by my new findings. Finally I decided it was coming time to tell her, because it was becoming really clear what I was doing, and I had to go up to her and I said “I’m working on this thing and it was supposed to just start out as your book, but I really don’t think we should change your book, for history’s sake.” I waited for her response, and I said that my approach was the muscles and emotional prep and music awareness and dance history and she looked at me and she said, “Well finally! Why do you think I threw you into all those other dance styles?” And I was just so relieved because the last thing I would ever want to do would be to disappoint my mother.

And that exact same thing happened when I redid Bal Anat. We were going to re-do Bal Anat and it was gonna be all exciting. So I’m watching all this old footage and I’m isolating all the choreography and I’m writing it down and I’m trying to redo it and I just thought, “I’m gonna die, this is so boring.” It was so cool for the 1970s and so not cool now. I had to go to her and I said, “Mom, I have something to tell you.” And it didn’t take me so long to come to her with this because we had our debut show in six months. I said “I want to know if I can change some of the choreography ‘cause it’s a little boring,” And she said, “Oh thank GOD, I was even bored with that back then!” So that was great.

She’s been very supportive. It really blows my mom’s and my mind when people try to separate us. “Oh, well I don’t do Suhaila style, I do Jamila style.” It makes us laugh because it’s like saying, “I do modern dance like the late 60’s and not right now.” or “Well I do ballet like court dancers did, not now.” The dance has moved on and we’ve gotten all this new information and why won’t people accept it? Or if they’re going to say it, don’t say “I teach Jamila Salimpour technique,” say “I teach Jamila Salimpour technique as I learned it in 1972.” [Laughs] That would probably be more accurate!

You encouraged your mother to start teaching her technique classes again at your school. What was your purpose in that?
My purpose in that was to make sure that my mom always felt valued and to have a sense of creative expression. And what a role model for my daughter to have her grandmother teaching. What more gift could I give to her? My mom is teaching and she’s coming up with new finger cymbal patterns every week, and she’s thinking of new combinations, and she’s not just teaching the same old shit. She’s coming up with new stuff at 78. It’s great. And to watch my students, my girls in my dance company take her classes—it makes me feel all fuzzy.

Are they implementing your technique in your mother’s classes?
Yeah, sometimes. And my mom likes it. I want them to do both. What’s really cool is to take my technique, put it into my mother’s steps, and take it in and out whenever you feel like it. So if you want to do a real retro style dance you can take out the technique. In fact when I danced at Tribal Fest, that was 70s retro. And I did it on purpose. It was fun, and I had a blast doing it, ‘cause I was there! My dream when I was six years old was to be the finale dancer and I became one.

You made a comment the other day about how if you’d known how much having a baby would change your relationship with your mother, you’d have done it sooner.
My mom is very powerful and she loves to be in control, and so do I. After I was the age of 18 and I was working in the nightclubs my mom had very specific ideas about the color costumes I should wear and the costumes I should buy, and I could feel that she was disappointed in me if I didn’t wear the costume she thought I should wear. Having a grandkid now, she can put all that energy into Isabella, because Isabella does need a lot more guidance and a role. Whereas I can listen to people’s advice but ultimately I‘m going to do what I want to do, which I think is hard. As a mom that must be very difficult. So having a grandkid is like, “Ok, stop bossing me around. Here, you can have this baby to boss around!” [Laughs] It really helped our relationship a lot.

Tell me about the piece that you danced to at Rakkasah, Lauryn Hill’s “To Zion.”
That piece was really a dedication to all women, from whatever role they were looking at [it]. Not everybody has children, but everybody has a mother, so whether or not people were looking at the piece through Isabella’s eyes or through my eyes, I think it touched every single person in that audience. Right now I think some of bellydance, not all of bellydance, is going through a bit of an identity crisis, and I think somehow we’ve removed all aspects of womanhood from the beauty of the movement and the dance. I worry that down the line it gets to just being a youthful, sexy, nightclub thing, and sure, I’m all of that, but I’m also maturing, a wife, a mother. [In] my dance company, Suhaila Dance Company, a lot of that work is all about fusion and conflict and shocking people, and it’s fun. I think people forget that there’s this aspect of me, that I’m a mother. I also improvised the whole piece, so that was important to me. And if you were to shut off the sound you could swear I was dancing to Um Kolthum. The way my body is moving is typical Arabic, old style

I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house.
It’s not a dance I could ever do again. The dance really was honest. I meant it from my heart. I wasn’t doing a show, and it wasn’t a choreography. It was really an expression of my soul and I think that’s what touched people, ‘cause I didn’t look at anybody, I was looking at my daughter, and she was looking at me and we were singing to each other, and I was thanking her. [Those] are the words in the song; I was thanking her for choosing me to be her mother.

This woman came up to me after my show and she grabbed my hand and she said that it meant so much to see me dance to that with my daughter, and she said “My son died, and the last thing I said to him was thank you for choosing me.” And I lost it. I held onto her and I was bawling my eyes out and she was bawling her eyes out, and there we were, just holding each other and we had just shared this dance together and it meant something to her and it meant something to me.

I know a lot of dancers are afraid to have children, and I know a lot of women are afraid to let their bodies go. I remember [when] I was having to tell my dance company members that I was pregnant, and at the time there was this girl who was kind of my right hand. When I told her her automatic reaction was, “Oh shit.” It was exactly what I was afraid of, and I lost a lot of key members of my dance company when I was pregnant because they figured, “Oh, well, Suhaila’s done, we’d better move on.” It was devastating for me. I felt really bad because that’s how our patriarchal society looks at women anyway and here I was getting that from my dance sisters.

The song was by Lauryn Hill and it was about her knowing that she had to have this baby, this angel, come through her, and everybody said, ”But what about your career?” And it’s like, What about your career??? Your career is an ongoing process of life, what does it have to do with a few stretch marks on your belly? Wow. If that’s what we’ve been reduced to, worrying about stretch marks on your belly or worrying if you’ve lost of gained 5-10 pounds… This business about women’s empowerment, that’s a bunch of bull if we can’t support our bellydance community through the birthing process. And not just support it but stand by it.

So how has being a mother changed your dancing?
Oh. My. God. I remember a few years ago when Kim Basinger won the Academy Award for best supporting actress and she was interviewed and somebody said “Well, what are you going to do now?” And she’s just won and is standing there with the Oscar in her hand, and she said, "Well, I’m going to go home and give my baby a bath.” And you know what? That’s exactly how I feel.

My dancing has grown because my life has grown, and I’m aging, and I’m maturing. It’s been the next evolution of what my life’s work is meant to be. It’s evolved into my dance. I feel like I’m fearless now—I’ve been through childbirth! I’m not afraid to go out on stage and rip out my heart and expose myself to an audience that might get me and might not. Probably the next day on the internet they’ll be mostly talking about my costuming, but I don’t care, I’m fearless. And she gives me strength because she looks up to me, and she loves watching me be Suhaila Salimpour.

Does she have a sense of who you and Jamila are in the greater bellydance world?
I think probably as much as I had a sense when I was little, which is that you know that something’s important but you really don’t get it. She doesn’t get really where her position is either. She just feels like a princess but she has no idea about that third generation—what a responsibility it is.

When I was pregnant, I was so afraid of having a little Suhaila because of what I went through, and not so much with my mother, but the public was very hard on me. When I was Isabella’s age everybody loved me and I was so adorable and so cute and the minute I started to become a teenager and started to come of age then came the criticism and the remarks. Now Isabella can’t do anything wrong and I see how the public responds to her, but this will change. And it breaks my heart, because she will feel the sadness. It’s almost like you feel the betrayal of your family. I remember when people started to talk about me. I felt less support and more criticism and that was devastating. As a teenager already going through your own awkward, uncomfortable moments…and I was the daughter of Jamila Salimpour, it’s not like I was the daughter of just someone who belly danced. There’s a difference between being a second generation bellydancer and being the daughter of Jamila Salimpour; you do not have the pressure of being the daughter of a pioneer. And everyone would look at me and go “Hmm. What is she doing?” I suffer every moment that my daughter enjoys her dancing right now because I know what will happen. And it’s my karma, I guess. I secretly thought well “Wow, maybe I could avoid this if I had a boy.” But no, of course not. I didn’t just have a girl, I had Mini Me!

Isabella has been dancing since she was 2. What are your hopes and dreams for her?
My hopes and dreams for her are for her to keep expressing herself. My mom was very clear about certain types of music I could and couldn’t dance to and costuming I could and couldn’t have, and I’m a little bit more open with her. I let her choose her own music. I might say, “Here are your choices, now which one do you want to use?” but I try to make her feel a little bit more connected to the creative process. The minute she’s not into it anymore, then it’s over. It’s fine with me. Our relationship is not defined by our dance. And I’m really trying to keep her well rounded. She’s taking karate and piano. I want her to feel that she can touch and access many different things in life other than dance, and then make her decisions and choices. I want her to feel inspired every minute of her day.

How are you raising Isabella compared to how you were raised?
Well so far the main thing that I’ve done differently is I’ve given her this really great dad. And that’s a really big difference. And I’m not saying that my mom didn’t give me a great dad on purpose, but even before my father passed away he was not a good dad. I don’t ever remember him even telling me he loved me. From the time I was three, when he got sick, until I was nine [when he died] he wasn’t present physically, emotionally. So what I see as the big difference in her is she has this amazing father. And she doesn’t see me go through the struggles that my mom went through, and I’m hoping that that gives her a sense of security as well. I don’t now how to say this without sounding too morbid, but I went through a certain amount of [emotional and physical] abuse in my household with my uncles and cousins that my mother didn’t know about, and Isabella’s not going thought that. And that’s not something my mom could have done differently, but those are the big differences.

Other than that I think my mom and I have very similar views on parenting and she’s really happy with the way I’m raising Isabella. And I’m happy that she’s happy, because I want my mom to approve of me and what I do. There are times that we disagree and it’s hard. It’s like a battle, like do I go do a workshop or do I stay home and take care of my baby? Do I teach at night or do I stay home and take care of Isabella? Sometimes my mom says, “When are you going to slow down?” And I really try, but I’m still trying to learn how to balance motherhood and my love for my art. And I don’t say career, I say love for my art, because it’s not a job, I don’t need the money, and I’m doing everything I do out of a complete labor of love. So how do I balance that out? And that, in my opinion, is part of being a good mom.

I need Isabella to see that I am this individual person, and that I don’t just live through her, that I have my own life. And it’s hard, because every day I feel like I’ve failed somewhere. I either fail with mothering or I fail with teaching or I fail with the dance company. But I then try to look at it as a success that I even tried. But it’s hard. I appreciate my fans and the people that support me with their understanding and knowledge of what I’m trying to do in my life as a whole. And then of course it’s very hard to accept people that, without even knowing me, have such strong judgments. Because we’re probably very similar, all of us, as women. We all have the same goals in mind. We just have different roles.

So how do you feel about traveling to workshops so often and leaving Isabella at home?
It kills me. But we always talk about it, that I’m going away, and that I’ll be back on Monday, and she knows what day it is and when I’ll be back. And there’s no way that I would even leave my home if I didn’t have the most amazing husband. He is the best father I’ve ever seen. I leave her with him and they have fun and they go to the movies and they go have lunch together and she goes to the park, and I know that she misses me, but she is not suffering. I come home and I bring presents, and then my long-term gift to her will be the legacy, and that I’m trying to maintain. And she knows what I’m doing. She’s been to workshops. I try to take her on as many as possible. But it’s really, really hard.

So in 20 years or so when someone is asking all of these questions to Isabella, what do you hope that she will say?
I hope that she will say that “my mother did her best.” And “my father did his best.” And I hope that her female power is so strong because of having her mother have her own distinctive identity that it will give her the strength, and I hope that she will be able to understand that and appreciate it and pass it down to the next generation. I hope that she will have a balanced life and choose to do whatever she wants to do and feel really really free and confident in that. I hope she feels as strongly about whatever she does as I do about dance. Then I will feel proud and that I accomplished something.

And I hope that she says about her grandmother that she was the glue that kept the whole family together. She really is.

But I hope that Isabella just remembers my efforts and the intentions that they’re coming from. And it’s all for her, my whole business, if she wants it or doesn’t want it. Whatever she wants.

I remember after making Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, and 1991 BC, I swore I would never make another video. Ever. My husband had to convince me to film Unveiled, and I didn’t want to! I was really against it and it was so much money, and then you know that everyone’s going to review it and people are going to love it or hate it but you hope that you sell enough copies to make your money back. The day of filming Unveiled I was on set from 8 in the morning and we finished filming at ten at night. It was nonstop and I was doing take after take after take. And at the end of the shoot it was ten o’clock at night and I had been dancing on concrete all day, and I was scared to make the video, and we had just gotten married, and it was literally all the money we had.

At the end of the video the director said “That’s a wrap,” and everybody clapped and all the cameramen started packing up and I’m standing in the middle of my set, and I am shaking, and I just want to burst into tears. Andre was shaking everybody’s hand and then he looks over at me and notices that I’m totally about to lose it; emotionally spent, financially spent, physically spent. And he leaves everybody and walks over to me and he grabs me and shakes me out of it and looks in my eyes and says, “Our grandkids are going to thank us for this.” And I burst into tears and I hugged him, because, exactly! I don’t care if I sell a copy. I don’t care if somebody on the internet says I’m too fat or too skinny. This is my life. This is my journey, and here it is. And it belongs to Isabella.

Is that the legacy you hope to leave for her?
I hope so, and I hope it’s one that she’s proud of. Or she might just go, “Wow, my mom was a nut. What am I going to do with all these boxes of videotapes?” [Laughs] One or the other, but either way, I tried.