Lorna Gow Star of Cairo

Saturday 13th August 2011

Lorna's Back!

As loyal Saqarah-ites will know, it has been our pleasure to introduce the UK's only active performer in Cairo to the London scene almost four years ago, and since then Lorna has attracted a loyal following in the capital. However, Lorna is well known in her native Scotland, where she taught and performed across the country for almost nine years, before giving it all up to pursue the dream of working as a belly dancer in Cairo, where she has been performing since 2006.

As a performer, Lorna epitomises the cheeky sassiness of modern Cairo, and is a very giving and lively entertainer. As a teacher and as an individual, Lorna is witty, engaging, highly knowledgeable and passionate about sharing her knowledge gained from first-hand experience.

Despite the fact that Saqarah closed its doors in May after sadly losing its venue, we felt it would be a tragedy to deprive the London dancers of the opportunity to learn from Lorna's experiences, and so we are hosting workshops with her as a one-off event!

As we don't have a resident venue, the evening show will be somewhat different from it's normal format! At the moment, we are in discussions with a number of venues as to how to go about hosting the evening show, and will let you know as soon as we have finalised details. But it will be an exciting night and a unique opportunity to savour a taste of Cairo without having to leave London!

Lorna's Blog

12:00 - 14:00

Workshop 1: Lorna's Egyptian Technique - And Yours!

During her time as a professional performer in Cairo, Lorna has drawn upon many inspirations and blended them to create a unique, truly modern Egyptian style in her dance. Inspirations may be from the legendary Samia Gamal right through to modern Randa Kamel, but the style remains uniquely Lorna's.

In this workshop, Lorna will be explaining techniques how to sharpen your own technique, and will be explaining how you too can draw inspiration from other dancers without becoming their clone, how to be inspired but to make your dance truly your own: how to innovate rather than imitate!

Lorna's teaching style is many-layered, and as such many levels of dancers will benefit from the workshop, however this workshop would not be suitable for absolute beginners, with no prior experience of belly dance.

Lorna Star of Cairo (aka BellyLorna!)

15:00 - 17:00

Workshop 2: Sharp and Smooth

This is an extensive workshop covering the art of dancing 'Tarab' - or how to dance to emotional, emotive music convincingly, one of the most common obstacles that foreign dancers struggle to overcome with an Arab audience. It can often be hard to balance the urge to be 'impressive' with the requirement of the song to keep it simple, powerful and emotional.

In this workshop, Lorna will teach how to hear and interpret the music with your dance. She will teach technique on how to accent your dance without overpowering it, and how to contrast that with smoothness and fluidity - and when to use each! She will also help explain how you can keep your performance 'interesting' without having to layer as much complicated technique as you can manage, which will often lose an Arab audience.

This workshop is the more advanced workshop of the two, although still of value to many levels of dancers. Please no absolute beginners.

Don't miss out on this wonderful opportunity to learn from a dancer who has an incredible insight into the Egyptian dance world and Egyptian culture!

Workshops will be held at:

Studio 2, The Place
17 Duke's Road
London WC1H 9PY

Nearest Stations:

Euston (National Rail, Northern and Victoria Lines, London Overground)

Kings Cross St Pancras (National Rail, Circle, Hammersmith & City, Metropolitan, Northern, Picadilly and Victoria Lines)

	Early bird*	Normal
Single Workshop	£20	£25
Both workshops	£35	£45

*Early bird tickets are on a first come first served basis and are limited to the first TEN workshop spaces. After this, the price will revert to the normal rate.

Evening Performance

Lorna will be performing an evening show in London. Details to follow.

London's Monthly Open Belly Dance Hafla

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