Gothla.UK

Tempest

Tempest is an artist, designer, dancer, and writer recently relocated from the Bay Area of California to the Jersey Shore/Philadelphia Area. Although she enjoys studying what tradition has to offer, Tempest loves exploring the dance through unusual music and creative costuming, pulling on her visual arts background to "paint a picture" with the dance; engaging the audience through dramatic embodied storytelling, passionate expression, and sensuous, mesmerizing movement.

She finds inspiration for her dances in many eras, places, and faces, from ancient cultures and spiritual myths worldwide, to the work of silent film star and original vamp Theda Bara, and turn-of-the-century dance goddess Ruth St. Denis.

She is most well-known for her Gothic Belly Dance performances and instruction, and is featured on the first ever GBD performance DVD produced by WorldDanceNewYork entitled “The Darker Side of Fusion”, and its soon-to-be-released sequel "Revelations". You can also see her perform on Peko's "Bellydance Underworld." She has an instructional DVD geared towards the alternatively-minded entitled “Bellydance for Beautiful Freaks”.

Sashi

Sashi is an internationally recognized performer, instructor and choreographer based in Orange County, California. Sashi has been a student of dance for seventeen years and began studying African Haitian and West African dance while a student at San Francisco State University.

In the following years, Sashi found Middle Eastern dance to be the style she was most drawn to as it spoke to her Semitic roots and aesthetic interests. She has studied many forms of Middle Eastern dance including American Tribal Style Bellydance, Tribal Fusion Bellydance, Gothic Bellydance, Egyptian and Lebanese Cabaret Bellydance, Israeli and Turkish Debke, Saidi, and Nubian Folkloric dances.

She is most recognized for her alluring and dynamic performances of Gothic Tribal Fusion Bellydance and Improvisational Tribal Fusion Bellydance. Inspired by the “Spirit of the Dance”, Sashi views bellydance as the honoring of the divine feminine by creating spiritual and physical unions through movement.

Visit her website for more information on upcoming performances, workshops, tour dates and collaborations.

Ariellah

Ariellah studied classical ballet with the Royal Academy of Dance of London for twelve years, beginning at age three. After a four-year break from dance that included two years in the Peace Corps on Africa's Ivory Coast, she returned to the United States eager to learn the dance of her Moroccan ancestry.

Ariellah performs tribal and dark fusion belly dance worldwide. She has studied and performed belly dance for the past seven years, both with Janine Ryle of Danse Mahgreb and as a founding member of The Indigo with Rachel Brice. Her style infuses many genres of belly dance, all with a modern dark flavour that is uniquely her own. She is featured on many DVDs, including the first of its kind "Gothic BellyDance" DVD and her first instructional DVD, "Contemporary BellyDance and Yoga Conditioning" and she also won first place in Siren's Insanity belly dance competition in 2004. She is considered a leader in the innovative new genre of Gothic Belly Dance and is known for her strong technique and precision of movements. www.ariellah.com

Deva Matisa

Deva Matisa began a 3-year training for oriental dance in August 1989. Within a year, she had won the first prize as "Berlin´s Bellydancing-Queen". In 1992 she participated as a dancer in several shows of the "Oasis Dance Ensemble".

As one of the first dancers in and beyond Germany´s borders Deva Matisa danced the "Fantasy Dance", for which she officially won the first prize in the category "Fantasy Dance" in the junior competition at the "Orienta" in Frankfurt/Main.

Her repertoire includes Spanish, Oriental, Indian and Modern Expressive dance like the "Fairy Dance" or her secret passion, the "Vampire Dance".

Deva Matisa worked up to the top of the best and best-known dancers of the scene and stood her ground by a constantly high artistic quality. She sets decisive trends in movements and presses forward interesting projects others wouldn´t dare to deal with.

This has led to a very personal style, which has by now made her unique both in Berlin´s dance scene and internationally, for example she was invited to Turkey, Finland and Moscow, Russia as a lecturer.

Additionally to her dance-career she works as a free-lance writer for the oriental magazine "Tanz Oriental" and will publish her first book about functional-anatomic healthy movement in 2006. Simultaneously she is the developer of the woldwide first and unique training program "Provedmove®", which started in Germany/Ulm - Havva Tanzoase in August 2007.

Morgana

Morgana's family is native to Tangiers in Morocco. Her mother was a jazz dancer and teacher. Her first teacher of Eastern dance was Fathy Andrawis, choreographer of the National Ballet of Egypt. She won first prize in a dance competition at the age of 14 and went on to study a wide variety of dance forms such as jazz, funky, ballet, contemporary, claqué and African. In 1992, she was awarded the silver medal in modern dance in the Contest of Dance of the Community of Madrid.

She has taken numerous courses in different styles of Eastern dance including Egyptian and folklore style. She began studying American tribal style in 1999 specialising in gothic tribal dance.

Complementary skills include Hindu dance and yoga, and also Shotokan and Shito Ruy karate styles in which she was a student from 7-15 years of age. From there, she progressed to study of Wushu in the upper school Serrato concentrating on using the sword and sabre.

She uses martial arts movements and expressive arms in stage performance.

She opened her own dance school, The Mists of Avalon,in Madrid in 2006.

Dawn O' Brien

A lifelong dancer, Dawn discovered Arabic Dance in 1996. She began teaching and performing professionally in 1998.

Director of Khalgani, the UK's first Tribal Bellydance Troup, she specialises on both Cabaret and Tribal styles of bellydance and has pioneered the development of Cyber Style.

Dawn frequently teaches and performs throughout the UK and overseas, in addition to running sell-out dance courses around the West Midlands.

She tours frequently with top Arabic music compilers DJ UMB and Phil Meadley.

Dawn coordinates Birmingham's only Arabic club night, Yalla Habibi, with fellow DJs UMB and Sephira.

A sought after performer and instructor, Dawn dances and teaches at many UK festivals, corporate events, and is a fully insured member of Equity.

Christine, aka HRH Lucretia of Raqsmacabre

Christine went to her first bellydance class over 10 years ago, and was lucky enough to have as her teacher Kay Taylor who runs Farida Dance.

Through her work with Farida, Christine has had many opportunities to study and observe this dance form all over the UK as well as in Egypt, Turkey and last year San Francisco, where she and Kay danced with JimBoz at the Rakassa festival. Except you wouldn’t have recognised Christine and JimBoz as they were both inside Christine’s favourite dancer – The Great Desiree – an authentic Egyptian dancing horse who now lives and works in the UK, dancing with Farida, Christine and Tarab Dance Company.

Desiree is also a bit of a goth and loves to raise money for animals, she danced and collected money at the Whitby Goth New Year weekend in 2006, in aid of local animal charities.

Christine’s favourite authentic styles are Baladi and Saidi, especially stick. However her real love is mixing Arabic moves with alternative music and Arabic techno remixes. She teaches regular classes and has held fusion and techno workshops at Ford Castle and JOY. Raqsmacabre started as a bit of a joke at a themed hafla where her troupe performed to Rob Zombie’s Living Dead Girls, since then she has been inundated with pleas to teach folks ‘the zombie dance’.

A fan of goth since its early days – Sisters, Siouxsie, Cure, Bauhaus etc, a regular Whitby goth weekender for many years, and a lover of horror films, having appeared in two locally, this is a great opportunity to put together things she loves - dancing, music, performing, horror and maybe above all – dressing up!

Her style provides a lighthearted slant on dancing from the darkside.

Raqs Macabre

Heike Humphreys aka Akasha

Heike (professional name Akasha) is a qualified JWAAD teacher. She first starting learning Arabic dance in 1989 because of her love of all things Egyptian and also because it had nothing to do with aerobics and the attached body fascism.

Heike studied originally with Sandra Thiebault, before she retired shortly afterwards, and then continued her dance training by attending workshops with many highly acclaimed dancers of the Suraya Hilal School of Raks Sharqi, especially Anne Ashcroft and Liza Wedgewood.

In Germany for a short while in 1996 she studied with Sonia & Albert, Edith Glockner, Shaddai and Rehan from Frankfurt who is renowned for her ‘authentic’ Egyptian style.

Returning to England and looking for more of a challenge, she joined the WADA (Wessex Arabic Dance) committee in 2001 signing up for the Josephine Wise Academy of Arabic Dance diploma in the same year.

As part of the JWAAD diploma, Heike trained with the senior JWAAD teachers as well as attending workshops with master teachers from Egypt, Europe and the USA including Randa Kamel, Yasmina, Dalia Carella and Alexandria. Heike passed her JWAAD diploma with distinction in 2004, but has been teaching since 1999. She is a regular at the Fantasia festival and teaches workshops all over the country, and recently, Portugal.

She studied with ‘Master American Tribal Teacher’ Kajira Djoumahna of BlackSheepBellyDance, and obtained a Level 1 teaching certificate in the BlackSheepBellyDance ATS format.

Heike joined ‘The Daughters of Lilith’ troupe in 2000, who concentrate on ‘the dark side’ including ritualistic elements as well as snakes in their performances. Since 2004, Heike has also been working with her troupe ‘Medusa’, who currently perform ATS and fusion pieces.

Her solo performances are inspired by a mixture of the modern Cairo style and ‘tribaret’/urban tribal fusion and gothic elements – not all in the same piece! Heike’s ambition is to give up her job and become a full-time dancer and entertainer.

Lynne Chapman aka Fulya

Lynne performs and teaches many styles of bellydance but is never happier than when she is pushing the boundries of this artform. In 2007 she set up the UK's first Bellydance & Burlesque event in Northampton / Rugby.

She is also a musician (Guitar, Vocals, Saxophone and Percussion) and writes some of the music that she dances to. She also leads an arabic tabla drumming group and is the one half of the Kookie Kaftan Bazaar partnership.

In her spare time she writes articles and reviews for bellydance magazines such as Mosaic and Jareeda and has been the sub-editor of the Network News section of Mosaic since 2000.