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About Belly Dance Geek®

About Belly Dance Geek®
Most people think that dance and geekery are opposites.

After all, belly dancers are graceful and creative, and geeks are awkward and analytical, right?

But knowledge and creativity are like chocolate and peanut butter.

When you put them together, the results are delicious!

Not just another choreography

Most dance instruction feeds you moves and choreographies to copy.

Here at Belly Dance Geek®, we geek out on how the dance works, so you can create it for yourself.
 

Meet the Team

 

Nadira Jamal, Founder


Nadira is living proof that you should listen to your mother. Her mom, a dance reviewer for an arts newspaper, came back from a belly dance show and said “you should try this; you’d be good at this.” In 2000, Nadira finally took her mom’s advice, and that’s why you’re reading this right now.

Nadira, now retired, performed and taught in the Boston area and provided coaching and training for dancers world-wide for over 10 years.

Her specialty is breaking down improvisation, compositional principles, and other mystifying “talents” into straight-forward skills that can be explained and learned.

To do this, Nadira draws on a lifetime of geeky fascination with how things work, which also led her to earn two engineering degrees from MIT.

Nadira has helped over a thousand dancers (yes, really!) through her Improvisation Toolkit DVD series, Belly Dance Geek Clubhouse and More Than Steps podcasts, and online courses such as Rock the Routine and How to Build a Sustainable Practice Habit.

 

Heather Wayman, Director Emerita

Heather served as Director from 2019-2022, but has been part of the BDG world since 2011, when Heather completed Nadira’s one-on-one improvisation coaching intensive, Be Amazing in the Moment.
Heather is a second-generation professional dancer. She is classically trained, but discovered classic Egyptian Oriental and Folkloric dance in 2007. She found that middle eastern music has a unique way of eliciting a wide range of emotional moods in its listeners (and the dancer).

Heather has trained with dance masters from Egypt, Russia and the United States. She has placed 1st, 2nd and 3rd several times in professional live music, improvisation, alternative and recorded music categories at “Belly Dancer USA” and the “Yellow Rose of Texas” belly dance competitions from 2012-2019.  In 2016, she won first runner up in the “Belly Dance Off” at Seattle’s famed Teatro ZinZanni theater dancing to live music chosen on the spot. Most recently, she was named 2018 Ms. La Danse Oriental and 2019 Belly Dancer USA Live Music champion, dancing to music unknown to her as she took the stage.  She also earned 1st Place in the “Yellow Rose of Texas” Professional Cabaret Soloist and Diamond Diva categories in 2019 at Yaa Halla Ya’ll in Grapevine, Texas.

Heather has captivated audiences from Okinawa, Japan to Dallas, Texas (and points in between) with her commanding and elegant stage presence. She performs in theater shows, galas, fundraisers & specializes in women’s events & retirement community performances.

She has recently opened her own dedicated home studio in Selah, WA where her intermediate students train and she teaches beginners at a local, commercial studio also in Selah, WA.

Find information about Heather’s instructional DVD (made through Nadira’s “Make Your First Belly Dance Video” course), performances and classes at BellyByHeather.com and on YouTube at www.YouTube.com/user/okibelly

 

Stick Around!

We’d love to geek out with you too, so stick around, and check out some of our free resources:

Or if you want to jump right in, here are a few of our more popular training products:

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