Mother’s Day Weekend at AFBD

Our volunteer archivist spent a Saturday morning at Atlanta Fusion Bellydance during their holiday special. It was quite a beautiful experience. Read more…

AFBD had a wonderful Mother’s Day weekend special where every class was 50% off. My friend Haylee was very interested in taking some intro classes to Raqs Sharqi so I decided to take her there and let her meet the raqs community in all its glory. The first class was a drop-in class on the Salimpour method. This class is really technique based and was led by Faaridah assisted by Jamie, two amazing and very dedicated members of the Atlanta’s Raqs Community.

I was impressed not only by the warm up but also by the way in which the class was taught. It was filled with several new people including veterans and experts in the field. They used a mix of different music including some hishibishek classics like Shick Shak Shok. The students caught on to the style very quickly and seemed to enjoy the material. Both Faaridah and Jamie were thorough and easy going making for an extremely pleasant environment. Even some of our international community members who were shopping at MissBellydance.com’s warehouse for the day spoke about how comfortable they felt with the environment as well as Faaridah and team. Kudos to them for making it easy on all in their midst.

Following that class was Hadil’s 6 week class for beginners. The music chosen for this class was the real deal. Hidden gems like Cheb Mami were played as well as other pieces of material from my late teens early twenties. While those years aren’t that far away, anyone that knows raqs sharqi can certainly appreciate hearing voices from the Maghreb in a raqs course for beginners given that so many are throwing their students to everything but Middle Eastern and African music as a start to their raqs education. I also want to commend Hadil for the thorough and thoughtful class. It was fantastic!

We are grateful for the insight to classes and courses in the city. We’re also grateful that our partners, AFBD, are right next door. Be sure to check out their site. You can also visit ours for Mother’s Day savings of 12% off orders of $75 or more with code “mother” at check out. Be sure to send us photos of you and your parents and mother figures in your life. We’re gladly giving away prize packs in a Mother’s Day drawing to take place this week.

Much Love to All of You!
Team MBD