Wednesday, September 29, 2010

History and Culture by Bicycle Part 209: DESERT ANGELS

Since 2000 Sioux City has been fortunate to have a belly dance troupe called the Desert Angels. The Angels are lead by instructor Connie Reynolds. The Angels perform at local events like Art Splash, Riverssance and International Day of Dance.

All of the ladies in the troupe are very talented and work very hard to perfect their talent and routine. The dances range from a solo sword dance, a duet cane dance and several group dances with tambourines, zils and veils.

This blog author had the pleasure and fortunate oppurtunity of seeing the Desert Angels perform at Art Splash in Sioux City on Labor Day weekend and an event called Riverssance. He kind of had to, his wife is one of the very talented dancers.

Unfortunately Hollywood as created a stereotype for belly dancers and belly dancing in general. They have made it out out be something only women of ill-repute and questionable morals partake in. As a result a good majority of the population have come to believe what Hollywood says about belly dancing and the dancers.

This blog author can tell you with 100% certainly Hollywood has it wrong and the people who actually believe it are complete fools and should know better. One example of this is when the Desert Angels performed at Art Splash one of the spectators was shouting out obnoxious comments. The things he was yelling out was enough to make a sailor blush and was certainly inappropriate for the many young children watching the show to hear. He was asked to stop or leave by others, he finally left. That fool obviously believes the stereotype created by Hollywood.

These talented ladies come from all walks of life, there are high school students, school teachers, store clerks, office professionals, some are wives, mothers and even grand mothers and none of them are of questionable morals.

Link: Desert Angels

Enjoy the video and photos of the Desert Angels taken when they performed at Art Splash and the photos of the ladies taken at Riverssance:

TURKISH GROOVE followed by KARNAK'S SWORD DANCE:







KARNAK'S SWORD DANCE:






SILVIA'S SOLO:















TAMBOURINE DANCE:








CANE DANCE:




















TRIBAL DANCE with ZILS:













VEIL DANCE: