I started dancing oriental dance in 2001. I remember for how long I was looking for MY teacher, and when I found her, I totally fell in love with bellydance! In 2005 I went to Egypt, Cairo and for the first time I attended workshops of Egyptian bellydance teachers. Since then I’ve been trying to gain more knowledges from Egyptian masters all over the world, including Egypt and Europe. Arabic dance, as well as other dance types, is constantly changing, new information appears and it’s almost impossible to "get`away" with old one, it’s just not enough. In 2004 I started to teach Oriental Dance. I was having a lot of disagreements with my Mom, Soviet Union person, she thought I was doing something like striptease, couldn’t even imagine an implementation of femininity, beauty and sensuality of this dance. To calm down my Mom, I entered Riga Technical University, faculty of chemistry. It was rather hard to study - I had only Oriental dance on my mind instead of chemical formulas. Finally, I graduated and having my diploma I gave it to my mom with clear conscience. At the moment I’m studying at two education establishments – in Latvian University “German Language teacher” program (full-time) and at Riga Teacher Training and Educational Management Academy "Dance and rhythmic teacher" (part-time). I love my job and I’m trying to enrich my dance knowledge and improve my teaching skills.
Now I’m the leader of “Yallaraks” and “Divashine" show groups. You can see diplomas and various achievements of "YallaRaks" and "Yallar" in corresponding sections on this site, but shortly:
“Miss Oriental 2007”, winner among professionals;
“Vēderdejotāja 2009”, winner among professionals
“Pirate Bay Party 2009”, organizer
“Diamonds of bellydance”, organizer
“Yallaraks” 4th place among groups, “Vēderdejotāja 2007"
“Yallaraks” 3d place among groups, “Miss Oriental 2009”
Nowadays a lot of people offer bellydance classes and among people who do a good quality job, there are those, who treat bellydance as an easy way to earn money, not putting any effort into self-improvement. You are lucky if it`s a former aerobics trainer or a dancer of another dance trend, who have attended oriental dance classes for 1-2 weeks. In other cases it could be a person, who just decided to earn some money without having any skills needed to work with people and their bodies.
Oriental dance, as well as any other dance, has its own history and traditions, that should be learned, that’s why I sincerely advise everybody to take the question of choosing a teacher very seriously. Price and location aren`t the most important factors, while chosing Your Dance teacher. Be careful! It`s Your health and Your body.
In the end, I would like to say that I do love my job and I’m full of energy and desire to help other people to learn to dance, that’s why I always welcome new people and I`m happy to see familiar faces as well;-)
