Jemina Shikany's Biography
Posted on June 14, 2005
Contents, Materials, Images © 2005-2007 © Jemina Kathaleen Shikany
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Gita
Jemina took her first dance lessons, which were ballet and
tap, when she was four years old. In 1996, when she was 11 years old, she
began studying Middle Eastern dance.
“I can remember sitting in my dad’s room when my mother, Angela, came in and said ‘Mother started teaching a belly dance class, do you want to come with me?’ I jumped up and off we went.”
This was the beginning of a life transformation. Being a Lebanese-American was part of her initial interest in the dance. “My mother and I had never discussed going to a Middle Eastern dance class until that inevitable day in history! I didn’t think twice about going when she asked me, it just sounded fun (and I hadn’t even seen the costumes yet!)”
Jemina
exhibited artistic talent at an early age. She comes from a family of artists
including her mother, grandmother Gita, and her grandmother Shikany who really
encouraged her creativity from the time she could hold a crayon. Jemina painted,
drew, and used various media in her artwork. She continued creating visual
art through childhood having her art exhibited in various galleries and offices.
She took every art class that was available in school and otherwise. She had
designed, created, and sewn her first costume at age 11.
Margo and Zada Al Gaziyeh taught Jemina’s first workshop
that she attended and Judy Cunningham sponsored it in March of 1997. She then
got the experience of a lifetime when she went to the First International
Conference on Middle Eastern Dance at Orange Coast College in California with
her mother and grandmother. She met Ibrahim Farrah, Jamila and Suhaila Salimpour,
and the beautiful Mona El Said. From the time she was 11 she has performed
with Dream Dancers as a soloist at festivals, nursing homes, street fairs,
and various local celebrations. At the age of 14 she performed for the first
time at a workshop show in Dallas, Texas in 1999 hosted by Tambra and featuring
Zahra Zuhair. Yasmine Alabbasi, a Springfield dancer/instructor who Jemina
took a 
few
classes with, was kind enough to set up a performance slot for Jemina and
they went to Dallas together.
Jemina’s most influential instructors that she has studied with, not extensively but in a seminar setting, are Morocco and Mona El Said. She got two incredible opportunities with Mona at the First International Conference in 1997, and 7 years later at a workshop hosted by Little Egypt in Dallas Texas in September 2004.
Jemina’s style is improvisational, fluid, natural, and graceful. When her mother’s friend Rita saw Jemina dance at an early age Rita said “She is so graceful, when she dances it doesn’t look like she has a bone in her body.”
“This art form feels natural to me, I can remember when I began dancing my movements seemed so easy and flowing. My mother always said ‘She dances that way because she has sand in her blood!’"
"I dance because I love the dance, I love my culture, and I love my family. There is no explanation for why I dance. To ask me why I dance is to ask me why I love. You can never pinpoint exactly why you love something whether a person or anything else because there are too many aspects, too much emotion, life, expression, passion, and beauty. I can never explain it. The dance is who I am, and I can not tell you who I am in so many words, but I can in dance."
Also check out Jemina's Picture Gallery
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Contents, Materials, Images © 2005-2007 © Jemina
Kathaleen Shikany
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P.O. Box 4581, Springfield, MO, 65808-4581
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This Page Last Updated on November 24, 2007