Carrara Nour
Belly Dancer for Weddings and Events in Orlando

a) Toilet paper stuck to your shoe on a big date. b) A run in your stockings right before an important job interview. c) You’re around the water cooler with colleagues, quietly quipping about your boss’s bow tie – then Orville Redinbacher himself walks in. d) You’re at your own birthday party and a beautiful woman in an exotic couture costume comes out and performs an engaging and authentic Middle Eastern dance show, getting the guests up to dance.  

One of these things is not like the others. One of these things just doesn’t belong…

My PSA of the day? Life is full of embarrassing situations. Belly dancers shouldn’t be one of them.

Call me a belly dance elitist, but …

This is one of those beautiful blog posts that requires little introduction. For all you wise people who don’t watch television: Belly dancers Kaya and Sadie were on America’s Got Talent. They got booted. Everybody’s talking about it.

Without further ado, the belly dance blogger opines.

Perhaps, the most amazing part of Kaya and Sadie’s performance was not their performance itself, but the buzz around it, and the strong feelings the duo has stirred up within the dance community. The AGT thread on Bhuz is 13 pages long and growing. There have been countless threads on Facebook and Twitter. And there appears to be an exact 50-50 split between “If you didn’t love everything about Kaya and Sadie’s performance, and …

I recently came across this interview with chef/foodie Anthony Bourdain via my friend Najla and loved the message. Even though it’s about food, Bourdain’s thoughts on cultural authenticity (especially his response to Question #4) struck a very special chord with me:

 http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/thewrongstuff/

I am an American girl who lives, breathes and loves a Middle Eastern art. Like most of my peers who grew up immersed in American music, pop culture and social values, “getting it right” is something that rocks my personal Richter scale. Even American dancers of Middle Eastern heritage still have to contend with proper technique and stage presentation, even if they grew up listening to Oum Kalthoum, watching Samia Gamal movies and belly dancing socially at parties …

King Louis XIV once said that fashion itself is a mirror to history. Though I live in jeans and Polos when I’m not collecting exotic dance couture, I love to follow the whimsical world of fashion because it can be so revealing.

As with mainstream fashion, belly dance costuming is not immune to cultural macro- and micro-trends, either. For any “civilian” audiences reading this (and for any dancer who’s been living under a rock for the past 10 years), belly dance fashion has been stuck in a minimalist phase for quite some time now, thanks to the recent popularity of the simplistic Egyptian style. As Cairo is considered the Hollywood of the Middle East, Western belly dancers have slowly backed …

Together, Wendy we’ll live with the sadness
I’ll love you with all the madness in my soul
Someday, girl, I don’t know when, we’re gonna get to that place
Where we really want to go and we’ll walk in the sun
But ’til then, tramps like us, baby we were born to run

-Bruce Springsteen

I know, I’m a day late and a dollar short. After all, procrastinating on your New Year’s Resolutions is about as unamerican as, say, not liking Bruce Springsteen. But it was The Boss who got me thinking, Born to Run could be my anthem this year.

Gas prices are going up, consumer confidence is still in the toilet, and at the end of the day, …