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

Greetings!

March is always a big month for us.  I saw so many wonderful faces looking back at me on the stage at Rakkasah for the Bal Anat show.  I was so proud of each and every one of you and I thank you for your time and dedication in the months of rehearsals.  You did great Bal Anat!  Shukriya once again did an amazing job of hosting this wonderful community building experience at Rakkasah.  We are truly lucky that this woman has dedicated so many years to this event and I am proud to be a part of it all.  I also want to  thank Fathi for once again arranging the music for my performance on Sunday that rocked the house.  I had to keep reminding my self to dance since I just wanted to sit on stage and listen to the music.  And…. Kendra and Tiffany…. It was an honor to share the stage with you both.  You have made me so proud.     

And then Bal Anat went to St. Louis. I’m not sure if sharing the stage on Saturday night or entire weekend of parties was more fun, but it was a close call.  Thank you Lois and Ken for a wonderful job on the first “Suhaila Tribal Festival”.  You all contributed to making it a huge success.  I also want to thank Alex for a fantastic weekend in Virginia.  Thank you for believing in me and my format enough to host a “Suhaila Experience” in your home town.  I look forward to next year. 

Now for the big breaking news WE ARE EXPANDING TO LAS VEGAS!  Yes, you heard it right… we are opening a “Suhaila Salimpour School of Dance” in Las Vegas.  We are so excited!  Our dream just got bigger.  So we are expanding the school, staff, and vision to Las Vegas and so much more to come.  Our Northern California school is still going strong and our commitment to our first and most loved school is still there so no worries, we are not leaving Northern California.  We are building the studio in Las Vegas to suit our own personal needs and I can’t tell you how excited we all are.  Yahoo!!!!!

So with building the new studio, Spring Caravan, and Spirit of the Tribes coming up this month…. We can hardly contain ourselves around here.  Once again I want to thank you for all your continued support.  It is with you that we can achieve our dreams and hope that you will now visit another mother ship that has just landed in Vegas baby right along side the flying Elvises… don’t ya love them!

Editorial by Suhaila®

When the phone rang, the second I heard my mothers voice, I knew something was uncomfortable. I was worried something was wrong with her or she wasn’t feeling well, but she quickly assured me that she was fine. She then began to explain that she heard a male voice outside our gate calling my name “Suhaila” with a thick Arabic accent, as he was trying to climb over our fence. She wasn’t scared but more curious. This male voice kept calling my name and saying that he just wanted to talk.  My mother tried to hide in the house so as not to be seen and still be able to listen to the words of this man, she told me it was the owner of the club I worked at in Lebanon. “What does he want” I asked my mom. “I don’t know, but I’ll call you back” and she hung up the phone.

No one believed, especially the owners of the clubs, that I just quit working in nightclubs cold turkey. Everyone thought that Andre, being the Arab/American, asked me to stop dancing in nightclubs, but it was my idea. I was 27 and felt that I was on this endless tea cup ride that both made me feel sick to my stomach and full of adrenaline all at the same time. I wanted off this ride and felt that my dance was going to have to go to another level in order for me to become creative again. I wanted to open my school, begin teaching my format, and raise the level of the dance. There was always this desire to have my own dance company to be able to explore all the creative options that my mind had been percolating. 

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Working in the Middle East                 

Working In the Middle East

by, Sabriye

For nearly two years now I've been working in the Middle East as a belly dancer and while its beyond a doubt that I've had some of the most exciting times in my life it is not something that I would recommend to others. It's contradictory, I know. It's not that I want to be discouraging, but I just want to be realistic. First I should perhaps explain how I work. I have an agent out of Lebanon who finds dancers and singers contracts. The contracts vary in length from one month up to six months, but more often they are under three months. Unlike dancers in Egypt, I don't have my own band, rather I and the singers that are on the same circuit work with the house bands at whatever place we are at. Ninety-nine percent of the gigs are in restaurants inside hotels and 90 percent of the time we live in the hotels that we work in.

Those of us who discovered bellydance outside of the Middle East are blessed with a lack of cultural references to the dance. Even though we have to battle silly stereo type images of genies and/or the comparison with erotic dance, few, if any of us would fear that we would be equated with prostitutes. Here the situation is reversed, in most cases one does get lumped into that category. (I do want to make a slight disclaimer here, and note that many, many other women get thrown in this category but that is the subject for a whole other article!) This attitude manifests itself in various ways and it is rarely, if ever, blunt. For example people will call and invite you out to "dinner." Or someone might say that they want to give you an expensive gift....in person. You get the point. Sometimes the things people say are utterly ridiculous and I'm forced to mess with them a little. For example one man called and said that he liked me very much and wanted to meet me. When I asked him why he liked me he stammered and blurted out, "uuuuhhhh.....I like your hair." At which point I went into a twenty minute monologue about general hair care and what type of shampoo I used. He never called again. I had some fore warning about this attitude of assuming that dancers were for sale, but call me naive, it still floored me during my first few contracts. I couldn't help but assume that these men wouldn't be calling if it never worked, i.e. part of the reason bellydancing has the image that it does in the Middle East is because in some cases, sadly it still is a gateway to prostitution. After a while it doesn't shock you, and you learn to cope with it, but I find myself in manic, alternating states of emotion either feeling hurt (how could anyone think so badly of a job that I love so much?) or thinking, "screw them, " I'm doing what I love and that's all that matters.
The other hardship that I would warn people about goes hand in hand with the nature of traveling. I have no home but I do have about 200 pounds of cargo that I lug from country to country. Every two months on average, I hang up my costumes, layout my make up table, pin up the pictures of my family, etc. and equally often I have to pack everything again. Every gig is a new set of rules of operation to get used to, if not a new dialect of Arabic, currency, managers, and musicians, ah the musicians. That is another subject which requires its own article. Perhaps I'd title it "Egos Galore", including hard learned tips on how to get them to do what you want. On the plus side of things, this constant movement is very exciting. I've been on a camels back in the deserts of Dubai, I've seen the ruins of Carthage in Tunisia, I've haggled in the souks of Morocco and I've been interviewed by the police in Syria (the police was not so fun, but it was certainly exciting). I've also met the most wonderful people, other dancers, singers, hotel staff, and other ex-pats. But again, to be realistic, day to day life can be quite lonely. Working nights makes it hard to socialize with anyone who doesn't work nights themselves. The earliest I've ever finished work is 12:30, but more often I finish around 2am and don't get to sleep until 4am....ok maybe 5am. So many of my awake hours are spent when others are asleep. Also, coming back to the previous issue, since so many think that you are of "loose virtue" you become really secluded, either self seclusion to protect yourself or people feeling that it's not appropriate to hang out with you. The third fact of reality of working in any entertainment industry in the Middle East is the fixation of appearance. In the West we cheer bellydance as being an art form that embraces women of all shapes and ages, just look at the old Egyptian movies from the 40's and 50's right? Unfortunately plastic surgery has found an insatiable market in the Middle East. More and more artists are expected to fit into an increasingly narrow image of beauty. I worked with the most wonderful manager who was amazingly sympathetic to the needs of the artists. He always insisted that dancing was to be held in higher esteem than it normally is, but even he said (with a twinge of regret in his voice), "The most important thing a dancer has is first looks, second dance, and third her costumes." Many other managers I know would have listed dance last, if they mentioned it at all. In my experience people are very blunt about looks, and unafraid of stating their opinion or for that matter offending. One man told me I should get breast implants, to which I answered that I wouldn't but that he should get a toupee. So why do I keep doing this? I ask myself that often. What it comes down to is that I have an insatiable love of live Middle Eastern music and to me there is nothing like dancing for a Middle Eastern audience. I love to travel, and although I don't like being alone very much I can deal with it. So for now the sacrifices are worth it.....for me, but they won't always be I can't really in good conscience recommend it to anyone else. I promise more positive stories and antidotes to come!