The Ya Raqs girls were thrilled that their performance for Hossam and Serena back in September had made enough of an impression for them to be invited to dance at Club Baklava 5 in East Grinstead this year.
Meroe is currently undertaking the Advanced Dancer course with Hossam and Serena, and she was already in East Grinstead for one of her monthly classes. But the others made an outing of it and headed south by train on the morning of Thursday 20th February. It proved to be quite an eventful trip with Naima almost getting stuck in one of the turnstiles on the London underground - but they finally made it the Poison IV club in one piece!
Kebi, Aisha, Naima and Phoenece performed first – a revamped version of Aziza. There hasn’t been much of an opportunity just lately to perform in our lovely glamorous dresses, so this was a real treat – it went brilliantly and the crowd went wild!
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| Kebi, Aisha, Phoenece and Naima - photo courtesy of Chris Parfitt |
The second half of the show saw Meroe performing a solo to Enta Omri I in a dress she made herself especially for this show – given that Meroe isn’t much of a dressmaker it wasn’t at all bad, and fitted the music perfectly.
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| Meroe's solo - photo courtesy of Chris Parfitt |
There was then a quick change for Meroe and a complete contrast to Enta Omri as she joined Kebi, Mish Mish and Aisha to perform a Bedouin routine to Efrooh Bawadina. The choreography was originally written by Serena Ramzy, but had been adapted for Ya Raqs by Meroe. The routine certainly lifted the mood in the club and the crowd went mad – in a good way. All the girls were on a high, made even better by a big hug from Serena who said that they had done her choreography proud. The costumes – made by Meroe and Phoenece – looked amazing too!
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| Aisha, Meroe, Kebi and Mish Mish - photo courtesy of Chris Parfitt |
It was a great night and we are grateful to both Hossam and Serena for giving some of our girls this opportunity to dance somewhere new. The rest of the show was equally brilliant with lots of very talented dancers and we look forward to dancing with some of them again in the future – not too far in the future hopefully, so watch this space!
