Tribal Thursday

Tribal Thursday – Excerpt taken from The Tribal Bible. The next step towards today’s interpretation of American Tribal Style Belly Dance came from one of Jamila Salimpour’s students, Masha Archer. Sychronized group improvisational choreograph in the belly dance world began its development by default in San Francisco, California, in the 1970’s when Masha Archer left Jamila’s tutelage and began her own classes. This occurred before Masha had spent much time with Jamila. and she hadn’t had experience in designing choreographies. Masha went on to found her own group, the San Francisco Classic Dance Troupe, and her own classes. She developed her own interpretation of belly dance, partly as a means to take the dance our of the cabaret =, restaurant and nightclub environments that were about the only outlet for an Oriental dancer in San Francisco at that time. Her style was focused more on the artistic side of a group presentation, and less towards an attempt at recreating a traditional MidEastern dance group than Jamila’s was.