Workshops

Descriptions

Morning Workshop: Musicality and Muscle Control

Musicality is the essence of what makes a dancer an artist. It is the process of using movement vocabulary, movement concepts, and muscles to interpret music. In this workshop, Amirah will focus on major concepts of how to interpret music, ideas about how to apply these concepts, and ways to start interpreting music in your own way/style. She will drill and discuss advanced accents, such as dime stops, pops, locks, and hits. Amirah will also show you ways to draw lines that connect smooth moves to keep motion traveling to create slow and gooey movements. This workshop will help you hone in on your own musicality and style, while introducing new ways to interpret music.

Afternoon Workshop: Texturization!

In this workshop, Amirah will introduce the concepts of musicality she uses to create her style of tribal fusion. Various dance concepts will be introduced from different styles of dance, as well as tips on how to apply these ideas to create textures that mimic popular belly dance music trends. Accents and smooth lines from the musicality workshop will be incorporated into combinations that can be modified to fit many different complicated rhythms and styles.
Register for Workshops here

About Amirah

Amirah began her dance journey at the age of 3, and has passionately explored the art form ever since. As a competitive gymnast for 10 years, she extensively studied ballet, modern dance, and hip hop. She continued modern dance while at college, studying under Hilary McDaniels-Douglass. It was at this community center she heard the jingling of hipscarves for the first time. In 2002, Amirah began studying belly dance under Shuvani of Oasis Belly Dancers. From there, she and fellow students went on to co-found Mirage Bellydancers, a Purdue University Official Student Organization, in 2004. Amirah has served as secretary and president, and is currently the head instructor.

While she mostly performs tribal fusion styles, Amirah enjoys studying and performing all styles of belly dance. Her personal style is a fusion of modern dance, hip hop, and pop and locking, with tribal and cabaret stylizations. As an instructor, Amirah focuses on technique and muscle control as a foundation to all forms of the dance. She concentrates on teaching her students concepts which they can apply many different ways to help inspire them to hone in on their own style. Amirah is also quite passionate about playing music, and has been a member of Indy’s 16th century rock band, Il Troubadore since 2007, with whom she dances and plays Middle Eastern clarinet, dumbek, and riq.