Artemisia and A Team Leila Sukara

Raks Pro Member: Naïn!

Naïn joined Raks Pro last year and was part of the team that went to Duisburg with Anadils beautifull double cane choreography. She is a member of the new troupe Bellyssimo and a regular dancer with both A-Team and Raks Pro. She has a great feel for folcloric styles and is a beautifull oriental dancer.

 

Naïn: " The bellydance vibes got to me quite early… I was 7 years old when I took my very first bellydance class, in Tunisia. Some 15 years later, I started dancing at the (e)motion belly dance school, where I have been dancing since then, under Artemisia’s expert guidance. 

I know since forever that I absolutely love dancing. I find Oriental dance styles the most fulfilling in terms of elegance, grace, beauty, rhythms, femininity and compelling music. It is just lovely for your body & soul!

During my (e)motion career,  I danced my way into both of our performance troupes. Dancing with a bunch of friends is such a great experience.

I like sharing the classes, the work, the fun and the (back)stage J.  It is satisfying to get a taste of different dance styles, and to get input from many different people. So, just bring it on!"

We hope to see much more of Naïn in the future, including some solo work!

Artemisia 

Raks Pro Member: Nour!

Over the next weeks we will be presenting all the dancers in our company to you!

Today, a dancer with almost ten years of practicing in her hips, who has been a member of A-Team for a while and now has joined Raks Pro as well!

Nour: "9 years ago, one of my friends dragged me with her to a try-out bellydance class in Mechelen... I never stopped bellydancing since.
I love bellydance because it is so many things at once : feminin, emotional, lyrical, healthy, FUN, elegant, sparkly and so much more.

These last few years I have been dancing in bellydance school (e)motion in Leuven and I have met so many nice and friendly people.
When Artemisia asked me to dance in her projects/troupes, I didn't hesitate for a second!

This is something that I love to do and I get to do it with a group of great friends. I love being in a troupe!"

She forgot to mention her love for all things costuming! Nour is our amazing source of ideas for new outfits and a hero in finding what we need online!

She is usually the first to sign up for classes and workshops (allll of them!), and that kind of dedication is resulting in the kind of leaps forward teachers and troupe leaders live for. As a dancer she really has that juicy Egyptian thing going, I love watching her dance! Oh, and her Arabic is getting pretty fluent!

we're back!!!!

Hello everyone

We have been a little quiet on the western front, i know!

A lot of things have been happening. Artemisia had her baby. Queenie left the troupe as a co-director to go on doing other fabulous things (such as winning in Duisburg!). A lot of members got very busy and new people joined. Such is the life of a troupe.

But THIS evening, tonight, we have started a new rehearsal process, with a new challenge, a group troupe baladi choreography. YES, baladi's are improvised solo dances, hence the word "Challenge". This has long been on Artemisia's "to do" list, and she finally got her act together.

So Nour, Nathalie, Sahra, Anadil, Laelia, Tonya, Adiva, Arwa and Artemisia will be working very hard the coming months, to present this new piece to you, in the coming performance season!

Stay tuned and happy dancing.

Artemisia

raks pro MK festival

Raks Pro performed at the MK-Festival in Heerlen this saturday. The dancers adapted one of our choreographies - the smashing award winning drum solo - to a smaller group, so that our guest choreographer of last year, Razia (USA/London) could finally see for her self what we'd done with her handy work! (and guess what, she llllloved it).

in the afternoon, some of the troupe took a zill choreography class with Razia, a dance we will also re-arrange to suit us as a troupe and add to the repertoire... though the zilling patterns are not for the faint-hearted, a lot of work coming up there. and it's ssssssuper fast.

when can you see the dancers perform next?

* at the RAKS hafla, on friday 26th august in Leuven

* at the Mundo orieltan Festival in Kempen, Germany on september 24th

we are - right now - planning our summer rehearsals...

Raks Pro in Hannover

Beste Raks Pro Fans ! We zijn weer in het land =)

Het heeft eventjes geduurd maar we hadden dan ook erg veel bezigheden zoals optreden in Hannover tijdens het fantastische 'World Of Orient'. De trip naar Hannover (+4 uur rijden) was erg leuk, het verblijf in het hotel nog leuker én optreden met de meiden was het allerleukste !

We hebben zowel opgetreden in de 'Messe' als tijdens het Openingsgala en hadden zoals gewoonlijk erg veel fun backstage. Dat zie je aan bovenstaande foto's :)

Binnenkort volgt hier een uitgebreid verslagje !!

Raks Pro did it again! ;-)

A 37 week old baby-in-belly (Artemisia) and pre-dvd-shoot frenzies (Khalida) made sure two of the coaches and choreographers were absent...

Did they miss us? We hope so...

But did they need us? No they did not!

Which is strangely gratifying!

The Raks Pro dancers held a superb and succesfull open rehearsal show this Sunday in Lummen. Almost a 100 people showed up to cheer the girls on, and send them on their way to their second international performance, in Hannover in a few weeks time. The choreographies have matured further since their first show last october, and the dancers also presented themselves individually as solo performers. Limburg - where i've been told we can do with a few more extra bellydance events - was happy to watch them!

Johanna, main work horse and responsible for the whole event running so smoothly will post an update and more pics later this week, but here's a first picture of our fabulous Raks Pro ladies. I'm very very proud of them!

Artemisia

Raks pro will be performing at the Gala Show on Saturday night of the Mundo Oriental 2011 festival, organised by Amira Shazadi, in Kempen (Germany). Saturday 24th of september.

We are all very excited to be part of this event! Headliner of the event is Aleksei Riaboshapka(Ukraine), in Germany for the first time!

more info on the event will be posted here soon:

http://www.amira-shazadi.de/Events.html

see you there?

Coming up!

The dancers are busy rehearsing for the upcoming shows.

In march they will perform at the Gala of the World of Orient festival in Hannover! It is quite amazing who they will be sharing the stage with, so super exciting!!! We will be performing all three of our choreographies there!

On february 20th there is an open rehearsal in Lummen, where our local fans can come and check out what we've been up to... it'll be the first Raks Pro show for a few of our "new faces"!

Meanwhile choreographer Artemisia - currently on maternity leave or so she claims - is setting up a shedule for a busy busy summer, when we will start rehearsals for "An evening with... Ava Fleming" on october 22nd in Brussels, our second big show.

In july we will start rehearsing three new choreographies, a zills choreo by guest choreographer Razia, a modern cane dance by dancer & guest choreographer Anadil, & a new oriental routine by troupe directors and choreographers Artemisia & Queenie

So where is Khalida? Well, that's the most exciting news of all! Khalida is on a little break from Raks Pro (after she's done drilling them at the next rehearsals) to work on her amazing new project: two instructional DVDS with Azizaproductions!!!! whooohoooo! the whole team is super proud of her!!! go break a leg in Canada girl!

Raks Pro has been invited to perform at the World of Orient festival in Hannover, Germany, 11-13 march. We will be sharing the stage with some of Europes most well known dancers and have been asked to represent Belgium in the European Superstars Gala.

http://www.world-of-orient.de/

Congrats ladies!!

Just a short note to say how unbelievably happy both me and Artemisia are to be working with such great dancers for the RAKS PRO project. You all really rocked the stage in Duisburg this weekend, as a group with Razia's awesome drum solo choreography but also as individual dancers during the solo category!! Keep up the good work girls, you make us proud :)

PS: Here a sneak preview of the pictures from the Bozenka show, more to follow soon!

 

Photo by Maani

yeay!!!!

we won we won we won! and we had too much fun!! !

longer updates and pictures later, we promise

but we already want to share our hapiness at getting second place in the formations/classical category at the Bellydancer of the World competition in Duisburg saturday. and well, the price doesnt matter, but that we, as a team, just got that much stronger on stage again! extra applause to choreographer Razia as well!

a big thank you to our support team, a-team, who became third in the same category and were lovely backstage friends!

and a huuuuge congratulations to two raks pro members, Anadil and Nasreen, who became FIRST in the classical duo category!!!!!!!!!!!! Duo Bintani rocks!

Backstage @ An evening with Bozenka

Together with my Raks Pro colleagues, we spent months of training and preparation for performing @ 'An evening with Bozenka'. It was amazing! I use the word 'it' because the day of the performance, there was so much more going on than the actual performance itself :-D

Before and after rocking the stage with my girls, I took the liberty of making lóts of backstage pictures.

You see the happiness in our eyes, the excitement of performing together for the first time, and the love for our coaches that made this all happen !

Check out some backstage pictures !

xx Johanna

About Us

RAKS PRO is the first Belgian professional Oriental Dance Ensemble, bringing together a group of dedicated, enthusiastic and fantastic professional performers from all over the country, available for gigs, events, festivals in Belgium & internationally. Current dancers include troupe directors & choreographers Artemisia & Khalida, as well as Queenie, Chadia, Fédra, Johanna, Luna, Sahra, Anadil, Nasreen and Majidah. Our repertoire ranges from interpretations of the classics, over the last modern Egyptian pop, to drumsolo's, folcloric tableaux and prop work, from simple integrity to glamourous extravaganza. Our speciality is dynamic group numbers that showcase both the individual dancers' qualities and our unity as a group. Experience how an ensemble can offer an audience a different experience of oriental dance without loosing any of it's feeling!

We know what you did last summer

So what happened after we got the "team" together?

One of the first things Khalida and Artemisia decided was to get some guest choreographers on board. Yeah, we like our own choreo's plenty, but they are still... our choreographies. To make the whole project more exciting for ourselves, the dancers, the audience, variation was key!

So we devised a summer of rehearsals and workshops, including workshops with guest choreographers Queenie (Khaleegy) and Razia (Drumsolo). we also included a theatre and stage skills workshop with Artemisia, which nicely doubled as a team building day and a wings workshops with Khalida.

The big "intro" choreo, Khalida and Artemisia were going to make together. Our original plan of each choreographing sections individually, and then throwing it all together, simply didnt work, so we ended up with a lot of extra meetings, to really create a joint choreo. It was one of the most fun, and artistically rewarding things we've both done. Artemisia loves creating formations and troupe transitions, and Khalida has the best ideas on poses, arms and combo's! We both hear the music differently at times, but that turned out to be a plus, rather than holding us back. Whenever we got stuck, one of us would come up with something!!! I don't think we really know by now who put together what. Well, apart from the wings, that's alllll Khalida!

The choreographies Razia and Queenie came up with for the troupe were wonderfull! And those also ended up being joint projects somehow, as they needed some adapting to working well with a large group of bodies. Which is great to do if the material to work with is so amazing. Both "commissioned" dances turned out so well... and the dancers had a lot of fun learning them. The challenge here, after the choreographers had left, especially in the case of our long distance working relationship with Razia, was to polish all the last details (arms, hands, heads, etc), in the abscence of the original choreographer. We really hope we've done her proud. For the Khaleegy we had Queenies ongoing support! And boy, did she drill the troupe into getting the "feel" of it right! It's not just the steps, Khaleegy is a mood!

So, we had our start up meeting, followed by about 5 all day rehearsals this summer, and a few more spread over september and october, to learn and rehearse three brand new "big group" numbers: a six minute oriental opening (wings, veil, formation crazyness!), a looooong drumsolo, and a compilation-khaleegy.

Finding rehearsal times for such a large group of dancers, who mostly teach weekly classes themselves was NOT easy. that is why we ended up with an intensive summerprogram, of mostly weekend day rehearsals. At least people were free then, though many really sacrificed (part of) their family holiday time for this. Finding rehearsal time in the middle of the year, is going to be the next challenge.

Come and read us next week for more on the joint choreography proces and on getting costuming togehter for a professional troupe...

our motto

Prepare-Practice-Pimp-Polish-Perfect-Perform-Pass Out-Pine

and then on to the next round!

How it all started!

In the summer of 2009, right after our first RAKS summerschool, Khalida and Artemisia went on a little field trip to the Jillina Weekend Djamilla was organising in Offenbach. After an inspiring weekend, and on the long train journey back, we started a brainstorm... that would eventually lead to Raks Pro

What we wanted was to find a way to continue working with some of the great dancers that had participated in our summerschool. To our delight more professional dancers than we had hoped for, had enrolled for RAKS. Afterwards they all expressed how they were finding it harder and harder to find weekly classes that suited not only their level, but also their time shedule. They wanted to work more with us (blush and yeay!) but really couldnt make it to our classes. Could we please do something in the weekends?

So A and K set out to try and come up with something! We love new plans! Our original dream was the PPPP-program. (Prepare, Polish, Pimp, Perform). Over a series of weekends, we would offer solo choreography therapy, for advanced dancers to work on their own solo's...possibly leading up to a show.

(and we still might run that sometime in future)...

BUT

Somewhere in 2009-2010, we decided to go a different route. Artemisia's shows had plenty of solo-ists in it... why not work with a group of professionals to add some interesting group choreographies to the mix. A new challenge for us as choreographers, and a new challenge for the Belgian dance scene! No, not a student troupe of one local dancer, but a group of professionals, from ALL over Belgium, each with their own talents and experience, would join us for this adventure. with choreographies from several pro's, from Belgium and abroad, to assure the necessary diversity such a project needed.

In march 2010 we started emailing around, and assembling both a group of dancers, and a pretty intensive training shedule...

The original plan was to keep this a temporary project... but we changed our minds. Why change a winning team!

More about the process of working towards "An evening with... Bozenka" and turning Raks Pro into something permanent... in a seperate entry later this week!

signing off and off to bed

Artemisia

Welcome!

Artemisia and Khalida are very happy to present to you our brand-new RAKS PRO website and blog. Check it out regularly for the latest news updates, pictures and videoclips. More posts will be added soon!