World Belly Dance Day United Kingdom, Letterston 2008

The Baubo Moon Room is a community arts belly dance team led by Guinevere Clark of Baubo Belly Dance, Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire in Wales. The aim of the Baubo Moon Room is to offer high quality belly dance experiences from workshops to performances and classes and generally promote the benefits of the art form.

We were planning to do a sponsored belly dance and discussing possible dates. Melanie, a belly dance teacher from the Baubo Moon Room wondered whether there was such a thing as an international day of dance or belly dance, she Googled it and found the World Belly Dance Day website!

It seemed like a great opportunity. One of our aims is to raise awareness of the nature of Middle Eastern Dance and to encourage it’s health and social benefits. We structured a marathon 12 hr programme to take place on World Belly Dance Day, which included workshops from belly dance teachers across Wales. Automatically, this added variety as teachers began to offer their main interests. We had American Tribal Style, Egyptian, A-Z Techniques, Saiidi, Veil, Zill and Tray dancing. It became an amazing medley of the different strands of belly dance.

We offered our classes at only £1 each, this was designed to allow people to take part in the many events on offer. We also invited total beginners to have a taste of belly dance. We had an evening performance, show casing many groups from Wales. We raised in excess of £1,000 for our chosen charity – Wales Air Ambulance. Some of the sponsorship was also filtered back into the Baubo Moon Room, allowing us to continue with our goals and pay the expenses of the day, such as refreshments, hall hire and printing costs.

The event was an outstanding success. It was colourful, friendly and many new connections were made. Our workshops were mainly attended by existing belly dance students from West Wales but members of the public enjoyed an intimate and relaxed evening show. The whole event had a feeling of regeneration to it as teachers taught for free but were also able to benefit from the wealth of other workshops on offer. Students both contributed and gained so much by participating in the event and by collecting sponsorship for their dancing from friends and family.