Professional Raqs Sharqi dancer
Badriyah is a professional oriental dancer, devoted mainly to Egyptian classical and folklore styles, modern fusion with oriental dance and the Golden Age of belly dance.
She is teaching regular classes at Shoonya Dance Centre in Ghent, Belgium, and travels around Europe to give workshops and lectures.
Badriyah's dream is to build up a real Bellydance Museum. As a start, she collects vintage bellydance items; such as newspapers, magazines, postcards, lobby cards, vinyl records and press photos depicting bellydancers from 1700' to 1970'.
Most of all, Badriyah treasures the ten years of performing with Bellydance Evolution (BDE): an international bellydance – theatre show, led by the famous Jillina from USA. Badriyah performed more than 60 shows with the company, both as a troupe dancer and a lead dancer. Among the 13 countries, she travelled to with BDE are Japan, Taiwan, Australia, USA, Morocco, Greece, Germany, and others all over Europe. One of the most unforgettable shows was Alice in Wonderland in the Ford Amphitheatre in Hollywood (Badriyah as Cheshire Cat) - the show was broadcast in Los Angeles TV; Likewise, the 2016 Moroccan tour, where the company danced to the Royal Morrocan philharmonic orchestra was absolutely memorable. However, the dearest and most personal tour was the 2013 Netherlands tour, where the company spent 6 weeks together, touring 25 cities of The Netherlands.
About Badriyah
Badriyah is teaching already for 13 years and in the meantime, she worked in four bellydance groups, created three educational programs, contributed as an editor to Orient Express magazine (Czech language), collected over 300 vintage bellydance items, and taught workshops and lecture worldwide.
She would not be able to reach all her goals without her teachers and mentors. Badriyah started with regular bellydance classes in 2006 with bellydancer Simona, Shaari, and Lenka Neumannova. Later on, she started to travel to Egypt (seven visits so far), where she took workshops at several Nile Group festivals, and private classes, especially with dancer Nour. She joined the troupe Al Fayyum dancers led by bellydancer Sheyla and got a deeper interest in Egyptian folkloric dances. Her biggest idol Jillina, trained Badriyah within the Bellydance Evolution company, where Badriyah met other great artists and learnt from them (Kaeshi, Louchia, Heather, and Sharon Kihara). Badriyah continues to visit dance festivals, both as a teacher and as a student. Recently, she has specialised in the Golden Era of Bellydance (she took private classes with Valerick Molinary and now studies by herself through analysis of old Egyptian movies). She educates herself in the 19th/20th century historical bellydance (awaleem and ghawazee style) with bellydancers Nisaa and Shining.