World Museum, Liverpool

Our first event for 2015 took place the weekend of 28th/29th March at one of our favourite venues; the World Museum, Liverpool. It was a great success with over 1,100 visitors getting the full Ya Raqs experience over the two days.

We were delighted to be joined by our new member Alma, who added a new dimension to our performance with her live drumming to some dances. She was later joined by Meroe, Phoenece and Kebi to play a piece of music written by Hossam Ramzy. The drumming is clearly a big hit so watch out for it at future events – because there is much more where that came from!

Alma, Meroe, Kebi and Phoenece drumming

We performed four short dance sets each day taking the museum visitors on a journey through Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia and Nubia. Each set was followed by some audience participation.

Nubian dance

Kebi, Meroe, Phoenece and Naima perform a Bedouin dance

Nubian dance with Phoenece, Tameri and Kebi

Kebi, Phoenece, Tameri, Mish Mish, Naima and Meroe in their Tunisian finery

All ages were represented from children the age of two to a grand lady who will be 89 years young next week! We even got members of the World Museum staff to join in! They were all delighted to receive a certificate for participating in the workshops.

Dancing with members of the public . . .

. . . and with the museum staff

The certificate has been re-designed for our 2015 season to include a cute camel. This new certificate was designed for the benefit of those children who collect them at our events each year.

It was a really busy weekend, but being Ya Raqs we still managed to squeeze in enough time for tea and cake!

Mish Mish and Phoenece introduce Alma (L) to the Ya Raqs cake tradition!

We had a great time and want to thank everyone who came along to support us, but especially the staff at World Museum, Liverpool - we are looking forward to our second visit in August.

Kebi, Alma, Naima, Phoenece, Tameri, Mish Mish and Meroe with a new friend!

All Drumming, All Dancing

Start of a new dance season and everyone at Ya Raqs HQ is raring to go. Not so much “All singing, all dancing” but more “All drumming, all dancing”.

Ya Raqs are very pleased to have a new member of the troupe for the 2015 season – Alma – not just because she’s a great person and a fantastic dancer – but boy can she drum!

So we took this opportunity to branch out into something a little different for the new season – we are going to introduce some live drumming to our performances.

After we’d got over the teething problems of exactly who was going to drum which parts, everyone picked up this new found talent really quickly. Before you knew it we were really starting to sound musical!

Alma and Kebi

We’re using two types of drums – Alma and Phoenece were playing the Egyptian “goblet” shaped drum called a tabla. Meroe and Kebi were playing large frame called a duff.

Will it work? Well who knows, but if the first rehearsal is anything to go by it just might. Meroe was literally punching the air for joy by the end of the session – it was just fantastic and so much better than she could possibly have hoped for.

Meroe, Phoenece, Alma and Kebi

So watch out! Not only will we be dancing our socks off, but at most of our future events it looks like we’ll be drumming our hearts out too. We’re going to see how this all goes at our first event of the season, which is at the World Museum in Liverpool the weekend of 28th and 29th March.

This is all pointing towards 2015 being a FAN-TAS-TIC year for Ya Raqs.