Angela Belle Shikany

Angela Belle Shikany's Autobiography

Posted on June 14, 2005

My mother, Gita, and my sister Mary, Zayin, had started studying belly dance a few years earlier while I was still living in New York City.

I was a tattoo artist then as well as a free-lance writer and photographer (I studied at The School of Visual Arts). I studied belly dance in New York City with Serena Wilson, but only in a workshop setting.

My first dance class teacher was Shebba. Mother, Donna Snape (the future Jasara), Mary, and I were all in class with Shebba at this time.

A highlight of those years was my first opportunity to meet Ibrahim Farrah when mother and I attended his workshop in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1979. I was 8 months pregnant with my second child.

My interests have always ranged widely. Those concerning costume history and design, linguistics, photography, physiology, music ethnology, tattooing (I was featured in a national belly dance magazine in 1978 with Khadija in an article about the new (!) phenomenon of tattooed belly dancers), world mythology, and art as both concept and performance have played a role in my involvement with belly dance.

I have been a Dream Dancer since 1996. In 2003 I first began teaching, initially simply to help my mother during an illness, and have found it a wonderful learning experience.

I am probably the most “goddess” oriented belly dancer in the family (there are 5 of us currently active in Dream Dancers). The extreme antiquity of the dance, roles of spirituality and physiology in torso articulation and muscle isolation dance, and the healing power of dance and trance when accompanied by the Afro-Asiatic rhythms I have loved since hearing them in childhood, are all relevant to me. All artists who have experienced Tarrah and Flow can understand how fulfilling this type of creativity can be.

The professional dancers I have admired most are Dahlena, Serena (I still refer to my battered autographed copy of her book The Belly Dance Book), Jadaya, Ibrahim Farrah, Sohair Zaki, and Delilah. I also have a deep respect for the dancers/dance ethnologists Laurel Victoria Grey, Aisha Ali, and the incomparable Morocco.

These are just a few of the beautiful dancers who have enriched my life as a student and aficionado of the dance.
Dancing in and of itself is pure pleasure to me; it is an autotelic endeavor. Performing in front of an audience is another issue entirely!

I don’t dance to perform. I perform because I dance and many times performance anxiety has kept me from performing in public or in front of strangers.

My ideal of belly dancer is one who uses extremely clean, controlled isolations, inspired zil playing, and a relaxed uncluttered improvisational style.

One of the great pleasures of my life is watching my daughter Jemina dance in that way.

We are one of the many pairs of mother and daughters who share a special relationship through the dance just as my mother and I do. May it continue through generations to come!

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Last Updated on June 20, 2008