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NEW: Please check out the tutorials for Suha's touring schedule!
Oriental Dance Instructor and Choreographer
Suha Azar is a Lebanese dancer and choreographer whose depth of dance and musical knowledge is attributed to being born into a family of artists. Her grandmother, Nakhleh Dib, was a very talented Oriental and Folk dancer. She was a well respected dancer and educator (at girls' schools and the YWCA in Beirut); Nakhle performed at weddings, both as an Oriental dancer and a Dabke lead dancer and soloist. Her mother, Siham Wanna is also a very talented Folk and Oriental dancer; Siham was the lead dancer of the Beirut College for Women's Folk dance troupe in the late 60's - early 70's, before the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War. (Beirut College for Women later began accepting male students and has changed its name officially to the Lebanese American University. She was as beautiful as she was skillful, and this got her noticed by Al-Shabaka, a very prestigious celebrity magazine in the Gulf and Middle East. She appears in the magazine in traditional folkloric costume, which she wore to the Folkdance festival that took place annually at the American University of Beirut. Siham has numerous artistic talents: she is a soprano, and she taught piano for many years.
Suha takes her art-form and heritage very seriously and is highly devoted to her work. She studied TV production and was a part-time actress and fashion model, but has put that aside in favour of Oriental Dance. Not long after she graduated from university, she began teaching and was invited to give her class as a credit course at the University of Kaslik (Universite Sainte Esprit de Kaslik). It was the only Oriental Dance course to be included as part of the curriculum in a Lebanese university. It was a great honour for Suha, and an achievement of which she is very proud: to have been able to present Oriental dance as a respectable and serious subject at an institution for higher learning. Suha no longer teaches at USEK, as she travels extensively and can no longer commit to a semester-long period in Lebanon.
This past year has been full of projects that have taken her around the world: She has been to Athens four times to teach seminars and master classes, and she also gave a series of workshops in Washington DC on a variety of subjects including traditional choreography and styling (stage dynamics) as well as Lebanese cane and tabla technique. The workshops were hugely successful and she will return in September for more workshops in DC and other major cities in the US. In addition to that, Suha was the key instructor at the first Raqs Sharqi Festival in Santiago, Chile and was invited to be a guest judge of a dance competition on the TV show "Raices Arabes" (Arabic Roots) Shortly after that, Suha traveled to Vilnius where she was also the key instructor at the first Baltic Oriental Dance festival. Over 200 people participated, and students traveled from Baltic Europe, Byelorussia and the UK for the event. She will be returning to Vilnius later this year after another South American tour.
Due to the current situation in Lebanon, the student gathering in Beirut that was planned for August is of course cancelled. Hopefully it will happen in the near future, and in more peaceful times.
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