About My Classes:I teach Middle Eastern Dance classes in Mankato at the Mankato School of Internal Martial Arts. The style of bellydance that I teach is Fusion. It is a mixture of many styles of belly dance as well as other dance forms such as Persian, Ballet, and more. I have a wonderful time creating and teaching new choreography and improvisation. I love improvisation which was the majority of what my teacher Souraya Sadaka taught. She always said "Everything is a move". I also have taken Persian Dance classes with Leili Pritschet when I am able.

I have been belly dancing since 2000 and teaching for the past six years. I have studied many types of dance since I was 3 years old but this dance form really drew me. I trained under Bridget Donnelly at the Sun/Moon Yoga Studio. I was one of the two original troop members who convinced her to start teaching when she moved here. I had my first lesson from her while attending a boat party with some friends one of whom was another founding member. I had wanted a chance to study since I was very young and I saw a demonstration of it on a talk show. That is where I learned figure eights and snake arms. I will always be grateful to Bridget for giving me the chance to learn more. When she moved away I took over the position of teaching assistant and Jen Jutz moved from the assistant position under Bridget into the teaching position. I did this for about a year and then it was time for me to move on to my own classes. Since I was the first in the troop to do a sword dance I decided to specialize my classes in to teaching sword dance. I held at The Mankato School of Internal Martial Arts since many of my sword skills were learned there and the Sun/Moon Yoga Studio did not have any open class times. It seemed like the right place to go with these classes. Sword dances require some investment and experience with belly dance and so I decided to step back offering regular classes in this.

After Bridget left I continued to purse the study of the dance under Souraya Sadaka at the Sun/Moon Yoga Studio. She has been dancing since she was 5. I learned a many wonderful things from her and I was very sad to see her go when she moved back to Lebanon. It was from both Souraya and Bridget that I learned to really listen to the music and let it bring the movements. This brings me to the most important thing I learned from Souraya as she always said "Everything is a move".

As I continue to teach I also feel it is important for me to continue learning. I do this by attending classes and workshops around the area. I have gained a wide variety of experience by doing this. I have lately been training in Persian Classical Dance which shares some similarities to Middle Eastern Dance. I attend classes at the Cassandra School on an intermittent basis. I have attended workshops with Read My Hips (American Tribal), Cassandra (Floor Work), Jasmin Jahal, Dahlena, Delilah, Artemis Mourat, Sakira of Ohio (Sword and Shimmy), and Aziza Sa'id, Princess Farhana, Karen Barbee, Darshan, to name a few. I attended classes in many subjects at the Lilies War XXI and other SCA events.

I have a background in Tai Chi Ch'uan and Kung Fu (I especially like the Shaolin Double Sword form) which was a great help to me in creating my many sword dances and the portion of my Fire Dance.

You will find me providing Henna Tattoo's at some events such as the Historyfest and teaching henna classes at our local SCA event Lupercalia. Henna is something that just seems to go hand in hand with bellydance.

You may also find me making glass beads, small vessels and such at Historyfest. This is something new I started doing when I couldn't find what I wanted for some of my wire wrapped jewelry.

In my spare time I make bellydance costumes. Unfortunately I don't have much of that. You can find them at Kietzer Karaoke in Mankato, MN. You will also find hip scarves there.