Become a BellyDancer from books or video tutorials?

In my personal opinion, most of the teachers nowadays do not teach the authentic BellyDance, just because in the old school of BellyDance the tricks of the trade were never relesed to their own competence, derivating in just focus their lessons on teaching technique, never sharing the traditional tricks of the trade to their students.

In my case is different, just because I come from a spiritual background, my mother is my mentor in BellyDance and was one of the pioneer BellyDancers in Spain on the early 1980s starting to BellyDance after years performing for tourist as a flamenco dancer and after her first teacher in BellyDance was teaching their students to connect with their inner soul, the spiritual line of BellyDance more known as Sufi style with the master Adnan Sarhan (the founder of Sufism in USA).

Soon after staring to perform in Barcelona Spain she went to learn BellyDance in Cairo, Egypt, with a famous film choreographer at the time Hassan Afifi, while she was asked to daily perform in a 4* hotel in Dokki, soon after she was asked to perform in the same stage as Soher Zaki, at the time her artistic name was Sahar Samara, then she moved back to Spain due that I was studying in Spain and she didn't want to leave me alone with my dad who was an engineer constantly travelling, thinking will be difficult for her to bring me to Egypt , so she decided to thrive as a BellyDancer in Spain.

Since 1992 her artistic name changed due to her dancing style was close to God as her public will say, and her Egyptian public gave her the new artistic name of Alia Shams, which in Arabic means “The sun in the high”.

Since I was a kid, I saw her dancing only in stage, at home mainly we will watch in VHS the videos of Soher Zaki, Nagwa Fouad, Fifi Abdou, Mona el Said, Nadia Gamal and the golden age egyptian bellydancers of Samia Gamal and Taheya Karioca.

Mom will mainly improvise all her shows, this is the reason why she will never practice at home.

Even I grew up watching BellyDance since childhood at home, and sharing our home at some times with the musicians she will bring by contract from Morocco, growing up in a Muslim society inside my home, to become a BellyDancer, I had to study from my mom at her group lessons, and not only that, also be trained at home, daily classes, with constant corrections.

All I can say, it was not easy, during the first 3 years I was assisting her lessons. During the first 7 years of my dancing career I had to give her all my income to pay her off of her lessons.

Yes, I started to perform I think 3 months after she taught me, and many years after she started BellyDance and me watching the BellyDance videos of many bellydancers.

Conclusion

In my personal opinion, you can learn in book and YouTube some techniques but the most probably with errors that after takes time to correct them, is better to learn directly from the teacher face to face, or by private online lessons so the teacher can correct the error every time the student makes them.

And you will end up doing the type of BellyDance moves we see nowadays without a meaning, without good techniques, and without the tricks of the trade.

So, if you want to study BellyDance for fun, go ahead learning from books or by YouTube video tutorials, but if you want to become a BellyDancer, then best book a good BellyDance teacher, you will safe a lot of time studying with a good teacher than just wondering around.

In the photo above, I am with my mother Alia Shams and Shoukry Mohamed years before I became a BellyDancer. This is the only photo I know of where you can see me and mom together. If someone else have photos of us, please send by email to us.