Carrara Nour
Belly Dancer for Weddings and Events in Orlando

I’m sure this blog post will land me on the National Registry of Belly Dance Haters. I’m sure I’ll anger the Correctness Police. Perhaps, I should send my boyfriend out to the Army/Navy Store to buy me a flak jacket to wear to my gigs.

But I think it’s time for the Cheesy Belly Dance Show to die.

We’ve all seen the James Bond movies and the Monkees music videos, with the dancers (in bad-ass vintage bedlah!) playing the femmes fatales. We’ve all been to bad Middle Eastern restaurants and touristy dinner-and-a-show attractions, seen some sort of circus-inspired spectacle with fire and snakes and acrobatics and wondered what on earth we just saw. Some of us have even been to …

Without a doubt, the one type of gig I do the most are birthday parties. The most popular request?

“Help me keep this all a surprise!”

We’ll talk about that later. But first, a recap of last night’s adventures:

Last night’s Top Secret mission sent me to the gorgeous Heathrow neighborhood of Sanford last night, where I helped Maria pull off a perfectly timed surprise for her husband Greg. This wasn’t a typical “sneak in through the side door and hide in the powder room” surprise, but a rather crafty one , timed and executed with military precision. I was absolutely wowed by the amount of thought and care she put into surprising her husband on his special day.

It …

You don’t need a reason to hire a belly dancer. “Just because” is a totally thoughtful reason in and of itself!

But as a multi-cultural entertainer, I find that a lot of my most memorable and meaningful work takes place when I pair up with a client who has a vision above and beyond just a beautiful show. After all, a good belly dance show can offer so much more than just an opportunity to put the Guest of Honor in the hot seat and dazzle the crowd with tricks. If done right, a belly dance performance can also be an enlightening experience that brings people of different cultural groups together!

On December 30th, I brought some Florida sunshine to …

A change in latitude brings a change in attitude. What happens when you leave the diverse, multi-cultural belly dance scene  of the New York metro area and find yourself in a smaller, younger, more fusion-based market without a teacher and without many opportunities to take workshops in the more classic and folkloric styles?

You save your money, honey. (So you can travel for workshops). And in the mean time, you get creative, set goals, and use your time wisely.

For better or worse, I’ve accepted that from this point forward, I will have to find ways to thrive and grow between workshops as a “self-taught” dancer. No, scratch that. A self-starting dancer. I hate the term “self-taught,” because it implies …

November is here, and while all my Yankee friends back home are slowing down, business is picking up in my new Florida home! Fall is a pretty busy season for parties here.

This past Saturday was no exception! I did not one, but two fabulous 40th birthday parties, and each was totally fun and unique in its own right. A quick recap of the weekend’s events, to hopefully inspire your next milestone birthday celebration:

Rolanda’s Surprise 40th Birthday at City Tropics Bistro in Indialantic:

This crew had such a bad case of Booty Shake Fever, it’s a good thing they were “quarantined” in the wine cellar room! All joking aside, these guys were my dream audience – fun, crazy, classy …