(Founder and Artistic Director: Susie White)


Tuesday 25 August 2015

A First for Ya Raqs at World Museum Liverpool, posted by Naima


Mid August and we are back to one of our favourite venues for the second time this year – the World Museum Liverpool.   We performed here in March and thought we’d done well with an audience total for the weekend of 1,100 but this time we topped it.  An impressive 1,236 visitors over the two days!

When we arrived we were greeted by our lovely ‘minder’ Steve, who showed us to our very own dressing room. 


In with the bugs!

Over the years we’ve shared dressing rooms with some interesting people but never bugs!   We hoped they wouldn’t bite and they didn't - thank goodness!

We started our first day with a Tunisian routine followed by a Moroccan inspired dance with scarves, giving us yet another opportunity to wear all our lovely bling.  


Meroe, Kebi and Mish Mish all blinged up in their Tunisian costumes

We followed this set with a mini-me workshop for some of our small,  and not so small audience, who enjoyed joining us with a bit of swishing and twirling of colourful scarves.


Some rather fuzzy audience participation - it's a job to focus when there is quite so much swishing going on!

We had three more sets during the course of the afternoon- Ghawaazee, Bedouin and finally Nubian – and a more formal workshop with a chance for our mini-me dancers to earn their special Ya Raqs Certificates!  Meroe rounded off the day with a very colourful Nubian solo.
Aisha, Phoenece and Meroe in Ghawazee costume

Queuing up for the Ya Raqs Certificates!

As those of you who follow our blog regularly will know, we do try to keep our sugar levels up with some cake at some point during the course of an event - a must if you are dancing as much as we do! However, on this occasion we ended the day not with our now traditional tea and cake, but with ice cream.  

We're not quite sure what the ice-cream man thought as we all queued up in costume! But he took it in his stride - doesn't everyone dress like this in Liverpool?  OK, maybe not!


Forming an orderly queue - just blending in!

As nice as the ice cream was it was clear that some of the Ya Raqs dancers didn’t want to get caught!!


Naima and Aisha - camera shy, or just hiding their ice creams?

We sat out in the glorious sunshine after a super day for a well earned rest and were joined by a lovely gentleman called Billy, a 94 years young war veteran who entertained us with some of this war time stories.

Our new fan - Billy - with Aisha and Meroe

Our Sunday performances were just as enthusiastically received as our Saturday routines. We had some FAB dancers and our mini-me dancers enjoyed dressing up in the glittery and jingly costumes.   Those that didn't join us for the actual workshops were spotted swaying their hips and were quite happy dancing along to our music.  What was nice on the Sunday was that we had some grownups join us too - it is always a pleasure to have adults as well as children getting up and showing us their moves.

Our final performance of the weekend was a World Premier – by dint of the fact that it was in the World museum and it was the first time we’d performed it in public – a group stick routine. The original choreography was by Serena Ramzy, but she had very kindly given Meroe permission to tweak it a little so that it would work as a group dance.  We were very proud of our performance and it seemed to be very well received. 

We also got the opportunity to wear our new Turkish inspired costume, made specially by Meroe and Phoenece.  Watch out for a new routine that will be more appropriate for this new costume at a future event.


Phoenece, Meroe, Mish Mish and Naima in our new costumes

So, another wonderful weekend at the World Museum came to an end. Check out our video for a taste of what we got up to on the Saturday.



We would like to thank the good folk of Liverpool, who came to the museum on such a lovely summer’s weekend – they could so easily have gone to the beach - but they came to see us instead!  OK, so maybe we weren't the only reason they came to the museum.  

And last, but not least, a very BIG thank you to the lovely staff at the museum, especially Steve, who never fail to make us very welcome and always look after us so well. 


Saturday 1 August 2015

Viking Godmanchester, posted by Kebi

Having barely caught our breath after Wellingborough Medieval Festival , we went back in time to the Viking era. This was the first Viking festival to be held in Godmanchester at the Woodgreen Animal Shelter Showground, and there was an amazing turnout of re enactors.

I can almost hear you ask "where does Ya Raqs fit in with Vikings?" and, to be fair, we did get asked this a couple of times. Hauk, who was our excellent commentator for the weekend explained it beautifully…..

Vikings or Rus, as they were known, settled in the Byzantine Empire. They traded, settled and married into the local population. Rus is the source of the modern name of Russia. So we know that the Vikings would have known of women dancers such as Ya Raqs and would have been familiar with the Mediterranean and North African coastline.

Actually quite a few of the girls fell in love with the Rus trousers. There are 3 meters of fabric in one leg! I feel a sewing spree coming on.






Rus "trousers"

Sorry I digress.  Meroe was unable to attend, so I was left in charge, well that was the plan! We put up our tent for the first time this year. We almost lost Tameri when a gust of wind took hold of the tent, but thanks to help from David and Roland, we got her up and well pegged down - the tent that is not Tameri! That night there was the most spectacular thunderstorm but thankfully we all came through it unscathed.


Tent, awning AND dancers all survived the elements.

Saturday was sunny and very hot. We performed our first set early in the day so we were able to spend the rest of the day dancing with the children and doing henna tattoos around the tent.

We also had ringside seats for the skirmishes between the various Viking bands. There was lots of shopping to be done as well - I bought some lovely silk and bracelets and earrings. Well a girl can never have too much bling!

After lunch we had the honour of dancing with Serpentyne . I had the nerve-wracking job of dancing to The Serpents Kiss from their new album. It is a wonderful song and Meroe had done a beautiful performance the weekend before, so I hope I did her proud.


Kebi and Serpentyne.

We soon had the crowd up dancing. At the start of this event we set ourselves a challenge – could we get the Vikings to dance? Well, yes we could and they were very good at it!


Yes! Vikings can dance too.

Sunday was a lot cooler. We had time to wander around the encampment. Alma, our newest troupe member and an excellent drummer, had a drumming session with Hràfn Rikardson who played the lyre harp. It sounded amazing.


The perfect combination! Alma and Hràfn Rikardson.

It was really nice to see all the families at the event. The children looked happy running around and mums and dads had fun dressing up and jingling around with the girls. It was a lovely weekend with something for everyone. Let’s hope this is the first year of many.


Mini-me dancers – large and small!

We should pass on a special thank you to Joe Bridge for some of these wonderful photographs.  If you want to see more of Joe's pictures from the event then go to his web site (Joe Bridge).