Welcome to Suhaila Unveiled, the official e-newsletter for Suhaila Salimpour, the Suhaila Salimpour School of Dance, and Suhaila Productions, LLC.

Greetings!

January was a fresh start to a new year.  The new schedule in the studio is working great with time in-between for breathing and answering questions.  Finally level 3 is 90 minutes after much nagging from many dedicated students.  Ask and you shall receive.

The weeklong workshop was fantastic and the students strong.  Congratulations to all the new certified members and especially those from Europe.  Now that is dedication!  I can’t wait to be giving level 3 weeklong workshops in Europe…. Someday we will “Zigma” in all countries around the world.  That is an inside joke of course……

Looking ahead I’m excited for the first “Suhaila Tribal Festival” in St. Louis March 30 though April 1.  We are gathering sisters from all over the U.S. to join Bal Anat in this rare performance in the Mid West.  Tiffany will be also teaching Layering Taqseem, Kendra will be teaching Belly Lock, and Rashid will be teaching Salimpour fusion as well as myself teaching Jamila Salimpour technique (Traditional Tribal) and Folkloric Fusion.  A rare film/documentary will also be shown in the Saturday night performance of my mother teaching and the original Bal Anat.  Join us.   But before all that we have Rakkasah on the way and I can’t wait.  Until then, see you in a workshop or master class soon. 

I also want to take this moment to congratulate my aunt Nabila and uncle ChiChi for their 28th wedding anniversary.  I look forward to being as happy as you both as Andre and I celebrate out 28th wedding anniversary as well.  Thank you for being such an inspiration to us all.  

Editorial by Suhaila®

We got out of our car and I knew something big was about to happen.  Andre had kept my “birthday night” a secret,  knowing it was my big “40” would make him go all out.  He never spares any expense to make me happy and this year would mark a memorable one.  It was just the two of us on a “date night” which is always special and rare so I was very excited.  As I turned around and looked up at the marquee I froze.  It was too good to be true…..  Prince was here?  No way… the man that is rarely seen these days, let alone barely has a name to pronounce as well.  Maybe it was a new Cirque De Soliel show using his symbol of both feminine and masculine  but it just couldn’t be “the PRINCE”, my idol. 

We walked into the Rio hotel,  not only was it him playing with his new band, but he also has his own club and restaurant in the hotel as well.  Las Vegas is amazing and I have never seen such both grand and intimate performances done on such a high scale in my life.  We first went to the club and secured getting the best seats the old  Italian Vegas way  (tipping the Maitre D’) and we were assured the best seat in the house.  The club  held less than 1000 people and only a few tables were placed around the edge of the club.

Andre made sure I would be able to see his sweat.

The restaurant was amazing. The menu was designed by Prince and his personal chef who made sure the meal was multicultural and eclectic.  The lighting was  fantastic which, of course I noticed after all of my years of being photographed and filmed.  Even the napkins looked sexy.  No one needed blush in this place and the bathroom made you look even better. 

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Rashid's Old School Corner                  

Baby Dancer and the Business Card

     by Rashid

  My first exposure to any belly dancer was my first real girlfriend at sixteen, Cynthia.  She dressed in pantaloons and coins and ethnic jewelry.  Living in a prominent arts community, there were overlapping reasons to appreciate the art, history and design in this exotic dance.  I was taken!  Cynthia had studied from Bert Baladine and was herself a working artist (in several mediums) and teacher in the community.  She said to me, “If you like what I can do you should see this troupe at the Renaissance Faire. 

Everyone in the arts communities of the early 70’s in northern California was into “authentic ethnic” and its many early renditions were interpreted at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire.   Cynthia had a wench’s costume complete with much bosom and lacing for the Fair.  She was a seamstress and designer and we made my first Renn Faire costume.  It was peacock in theme and hand made down to the shoes, hand stitched (that was the idea then…) of green and blue leather.  They had long pointy toes I stuffed with aluminum foil to stiffen and curl.  Had matching bloomers of velvet ribbons, one green leg, one blue and a brown felt hat with a peacock feather on the side. 

There were a handful of us who went religiously as both a good time and for artistic participation.  In those early days you couldn’t get into the Faire without costume and there was a minimal expectation for everyone to participate in the theme and theatrics.  I have one tiny photo of myself in the parking lot at the Faire, in Elizabethan costume, with the cars in the background.

Of course, after that first experience of Bal Anat at the Faire, the costume theme got a little more exotic and no more Elizabethan.  The bedspread from Cost Plus Imports disappeared and turned into pantaloons.  My burgundy velour bathrobe was tailored and fitted into my first Ottoman coat.  Belts varied in the moment but I remember one early item I used was a Guatemalan belt and a polyester shawl worked together. 

Costume production became locating everything that we could authenticate as within the Arabic/Middle East dance genre. Cynthia introduced me to Leon Bakst, Costume designer for the Russian Ballet circa 1925 and Nijinsky.  Bal Anat reflected this authentically interpreted style which could be seen in Bakst and other classical, romantic artists.  The Renn Faire and Bal Anat were a conscious effort to respectfully interpret with as much authenticity as possible and after that, have fun with romantic images.  We hunted for striped fabric of all kinds.  They were more prolific in those days.  Costumes we designed where often built around an authentic piece of jewelry or garment.  There was a pattern company which specialized in ethnic garments from around the world and we collected all the appropriate patterns to make Egyptian galabias, Syrian and Turkish coats.  We were all interested in history and design.  Weave of fabrics and authentic materials were important to us. 

Over a single season of the Faire our costumes changed several times and as much as we could upgrade our interpretation.  The more authentic and appropriate the costumes was, the better.

Each season of the Faire and Bal Anat performances was inspirational.  I tried never to miss a performance.  The nature of the Faire called for theatrical spontaneity and each show held a magical quality only experienced in that moment.  I had my work organized around the weekends in order to get to the Faire all day, every weekend without fail.  It was painful if that schedule was broached and I had to work a Saturday or Sunday. 

We would get together in the north bay area “provinces” and practice movements we remembered from Bal Anat dances or some Casbah Club dancer. Looking back now, we were lucky to have had so much Bal Anat to observe since what we saw in club dancers was basically the same but slowed down. We took it for granted that it fit together.  We practiced at least once a week.  Practice naturally included any research, new materials or costume stuff or dance interpretation we’d researched for traditional authenticity.  With starting to know the local restaurants within an hour’s drive and did our best to perform and infiltrate the local “tribes.”  There have always been political lines and styles of interpretation.  We searched out anyone who knew anything more than we did about that Renn Faire troupe.  There was a dancer named Sula in the Walnut Creek area then.  While we were covered with Renn Faire authenticity, she was the epitome of half naked club dancer.  Even then, for our own interpretation she was on the edge of acceptable more or less because of our own taste.  She was actually very fluid in her movement, classical floor work but not much solid technique on her feet.  Yes we were becoming ethnic snobs early on.

One afternoon at the ’74 season Faire, I meandered to the Caravan Stage for the 1pm show and there front and center among the hay bales was a camera set on a tripod ready to go.  Slightly surreal but minimal as interference, we sat to the right of it and watched the performance.  It came back with the later show that afternoon and we repeated our move, sitting just to the right. 

There were sometimes substitute dancers for Bal Anat over the season when Galya or Aida were not present to finish the show.  Rebaba was a strong finale’ but some were less mentionable.  In the background of the film from that time is one of those dancers who made it in the film by default but was replaced by Galya in the final cut.  I remember because during the filming she sat watching the show with her apparent boyfriend as Galya finale’d.  I remember her as club dancer caliber but don’t remember anything unique of her performance.  I do remember though a conversation she had with her friend about another dancer’s costume.  She wanted one similar except with large jewels and pearls all over it.  I thought, ugh!.  How could she say that coming from this company of coins and stripes.  It seemed almost sacrilegious.  I didn’t realize I’d later be eating my own words with similar ideas for designs. There’s a whole story there for later archiving.

The best part of that 1974 Renn Faire season was the primitive technology that surfaced that year.  Fortounately Bal Anat was recorded on film and Jamila upgraded on her end with actual business cards advertising her school with music and dance classes. Some of the dancers handed them out after shows and I grabbed one like it was gold.   Finally there was no more speculating or questioning about who or where these folks were.  We’d made a direct connection.  471 Broadway was the studio address in San Francisco.  Sounded familiar…Why it was just upstairs from the Casbah, where we’d had our first club exposure.  Didn’t realize Aida’s picture on the marque was so close to home. 

From there it was all a matter of figuring out how to get to San Francisco and classes from the “provinces.’ You know we did it, finally connecting to the matrix of the dance as we knew it.  It was a very Dorothy coming home sort of thing.  It was the beginning of learning to tie together pieces of information and structuring my understanding of historic, interpretive and authentic differences.  It seemed to have taken a long time to connect but finally we could practice together the movements and interpretation we received from Jamila directly.  We’d connected to the Goddess of the dance.  It seemed I’d made it to where I wanted to be.  I never realized it was only an early mile stone of a journey still in progress.  Fasten your seatbelts….