Cairo Retreat with Luna Belly Dance Workshops

Sun 20 May, 9:30 am-1 pm. Gainesville Retreat Center, 1551 SE 51 Street, Gainesville, 32641. Leela Corman, 718-687-7433. Belly Dance with Leela - [facebook][email][events]

Hosted by Najmah Nour and Oralia Kolaczkowski.

Gainesville Florida Welcomes LUNA OF CAIRO in her first ever Florida retreat style workshop and fundraising event!!! Workshops and available lodging will be at Gainesville Retreat Center, a gorgeous 108-acre Wildlife Refuge.

LUNA OF CAIRO BIO
Luna is an international belly dance star who has performed in Egypt's top hotels and Nile cruises for the past nine years. She has an exceptionally exciting style of dance, and has been featured on Egyptian television channels such as El-Tet as a star dancer. Luna has also appeared in the music videos of some of Egypt's most popular singers, including Higazi Mitqal, Mahmoud El-Hosseiny, Simsim Shehab, Ragab El-Prince, and Ahmed Salah, and was a featured dancer in several movies.

In addition to performing, Luna is in high demand to teach belly dance workshops around the world. She has taught all over the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, England, Poland, Japan, and Egypt, to name a few. She is also a regularly featured teacher at Raqia Hassan’s Ahlan wa Sahlan Festival.

Luna also holds a Master’s degree in Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University, where she studied radical Islamist movements in the Arab world. She is fluent in Egyptian Arabic, Spanish, and English, and holds a B.A. in journalism and political science. Luna keeps a blog about her experiences as a foreign belly dancer in Cairo. You can keep up with her and her crazy adventures at Kisses from Kairo* (www.kissesfromkairo.blogspot.com). You can also buy some beautiful costumes from her at www.kairokloset.com.
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SCHEDULE AND TOPICS

SATURDAY MAY 19TH
10:30-12:30 Technique and Combos
In this workshop, Luna will be teaching her own personal technique along with standard Egyptian technique for traveling, combining movements, creating choreographies and improvising.

1:30-3:30 Tarab
Luna is known for her unique approach to tarab. She works with musicality, lyrics, gestures, emotion, posture, and technique to create a piece that accurately expresses the music. Her style is personal and ‘understated,’ yet full of nuance and meaning. Take this workshop to develop your interpretation of classical Egyptian music.

SUNDAY MAY 20TH

9:30-10:30
Yoga/Pilates with Rona ($5 donation)

11:00-1:00 Modern Shaabi
Shaabi dancing is the child of Egyptian street culture. Like raqs sharqi, it is an improvisational dance form, however the movements borrow heavily from hip-hop and Egyptian street dance. Learn about this fun(ky) style with Luna as she teaches a choreography that incorporates fun technique along with typical Egyptian gestures.

Egyptian Technique and Combinations
Luna will teach some typical Egyptian-styled movements, as well as some of her signature ones that she invented over the course of her dance career in Cairo. She will explain how they differ in emphasis, genesis, and meaning to American-flavored movements, as well as demonstrate how to string them together into unique and intelligent combinations. Luna will also break down the movements into "families" according to their qualities and explain how to use that categorization to develop your own unique technique.

Um Kulthoum Choreography
In this workshop, you will learn how to interpret a well known Um Kulthoum song. Emphasis will be on the relationship between lyrics and tarab, and on how to express the song without over-dancing.

Classic Shaabi
Shaabi is a dance form originating from the lower class neighborhoods of Cairo that has become extremely popular in the workshop circuit. But did you know that it's at least as old as some of the classics we're used to dancing to? In this workshop, Luna will choose a more classical piece of shaabi music and explore the relationship between the lyrics, the instrumentation, and tarab. She will demonstrate how to adjust posture, gestures, and expression to capture the feeling of this genre of shaabi music.