The Amazing Amar Gamal

I was so fortunate to be able to go to the Habibi Dancer's annual Workshop!!! This year, it was headlined by my favorite dancer in the whole world...Amar Gamal! Not to sound like a complete groupie but she is more beautiful in person than in any of the videos. She is also as amazing a dancer as I expected. First of all, she is a native Spanish speaker (from Cuba) so we immediatelly made a connection. She is very down to earth and we instantly fell into a banter as if we had known each other for years.

She taught us 2 great routines with lots of foot work, amazing hip work and graceful arm movements. The cool thing about her choreography is that she not only uses classical belly dance moves (like Egyptian) but she also mixes just the right infusion of Afro-Cuban, Latin, Jazz and Ballet. This recipe turns belly dancing into a sensually delicious experience.

I haven't really belly danced full out in about 6-8 months because I was loosing the belly dancing demoness. You know...the one that posses normal, every day women and causes them to unenhibidatelly expose their stretch mark riddled bellies and compulsively shake their cottage cheese hips and thighs to exotic Middle Eastern Beledi drums. Yeah...that one. I signed up to this workshop as a last resort. I figured, if Amar cannot bring it back...I will have to put my hips to sleep forever. Well, I am happy to say that its all good and that I cannot wait to improve my game so that I can learn the world famous Amar Gamal shimmy!

Amar, you are an inspiration and the Isis wings just frame the Queen that you are!!