Lamma Bada Yatathana is a beautiful old song to belly dance to. Lamma Bada is also The Danceable Song for the 9th episode of my belly dance podcast A Little Lighter If you want to sing Lamma Bada, print these: Lamma Bada phonetic lyrics and translation – Aquabella version Lamma Bada Lyric Pronounciation and Translation – Taksim Ithaca Version Lamma Bada is a “muwashsha”, meaning a secular poem which grew out of al-Andalus. This often refers to Southern Spain before Christian invaders came in the late 1400s and kicked out a hell of a lot of great musicians and architects. Muslims and Jews were […]

Antique assuit headbands, head ornaments and coins sewn to headbands, decorated side clips, flapper headbands, boho updos with porcupine quills, and simple crowns make easy hairdos for belly dancers.

Dance quotes for Belly Dancers by Rumi (Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rumi), the insightful 13th century Persian Poet, Sufi Mystic, & Islamic Scholar

Find out why Jill Parker is one of the world’s best belly dance teachers. She can teach you how to zip up in the middle, make both big and small movements clear, and start with the footwork. Great belly dance tips for all levels.

Afraid to perform with a live band? Liz Strong of Belly Dance Superstars and Beats Antique and Emmy award winning musician Dan Cantrell share their best practices for dancing to live music.

Like Zumba, belly dancing is great exercise for people who don’t like to exercise. It’s amazing!  Zumba is awesome, but belly dance is even better. Here’s why

Colleena Shakti’s friends Raki and Sunita Sapera show us how to dance like the Rajasthani Kalbelia dancers in the opening scene of Latcho Drom. Rehearse like your audience is always there with you and if you see something you like in another dance, make it your own.

A belly dancer in flamenco dance classes in Southern Spain feels the passion, learns dramatic spins, and bring homes flamenco hands.

Portland’s Ruby Beh is a hair tossing, veil throwing belly dance powerhouse. Learn some of her unique veil moves as well as tips for choreographing and learning drum rhythms for belly dance.

Do excuses and distractions keep you from meditating regularly? You are not alone. Here are some solutions.

Choreographing belly dance for a group or improvising belly dance with others does not have to be hard! Choose moves that are easy to sync, repeat moves, and learn how to follow your friends.

Increase your positive energy while you practice belly dancing to this Chi Gong belly dance routine video and audio clip

You can figure out how to meditate consistently! You do not need to be in a retreat center or super quiet place. Choose the most quiet place near you, put it on your calendar, and enjoy.

This is a work in progress 🙂 Myth: You must refrigerate rice after you cook it Fact: Even in tropical climates like Thailand and Indonesia, cooked rice is left out and unrefrigerated over night. It’s just covered or put in a food safe so that pests don’t get in.

The Kalbelia Queen Looks Bored Her child shuffles on the roof He slides around on the seat of his pants She says he doesn’t walk unless someone is helping him She is pregnant. She stomps the marble floor like she is slapping a man’s face with her foot Her hands are flowers She reaches in and out. Inviting and denying entry to her gypsy world She tickles the sky and sweeps the ground with her face I want to go to the tents. I want to see where music is born. A Trip to the Tents on the Edge of Pushkar It looks […]

His name was wind. He stood by the lake in the dark, regretting everything. He is 20. He has been married for 3 years, and his father is ill. Wind is becoming an old man at 20 years old He talks of no freedom. He says I am especially lucky Being a woman born outside of caste Whole castes of women are forbidden to have cell phones. College girls are not allowed to take selfies on campus If he leaves, his family will bear shame. If he stays, he is trapped. What to do? -Written in Pushkar in February 2017

There is only one person in the world who can create the content you are about to create: You. Get your equipment and content creation process set up so your creativity can flow and people can find what you have to offer.

Years ago… I learned how to scream. I was in a circle of trees, staring into the scorching summer sun. Someone was beating a drum. My teacher kept shouting. I didn’t even know I was resisting until he asked, “How can you get the benefits of this if you don’t really scream?” I realized I had never screamed before. I was limiting myself for no fucking reason. It made me angry. I screamed uncontrollably. I screamed from my gut, doubling over until all of my fear rode tears down my cheeks and disappeared in the dust. For a moment there was no worrying […]

Every once in a while, reading a book is like sitting down and drinking wine with an old friend. The Fall of Athens makes the reader feel as though they are face to face with the author Gail Holst-Warhaft sharing glass after glass of sweet pink wine on a warm summer night.

The divine feminine in us always recovers. We cannot be stopped Tongue hanging Eyes wild with anger Suddenly returning to the wisdom of and old soul with beeswax on her lips. Breath sweetened by anise. Coal accentuating the unique shape of her eyes. Vermillion in her hair. Gold and silver circling her skin. A woman who damn well knows what she is talking about. How do we get what we want? We must be clever at all times.I came to this part of India To see the Bishnoi Temple. I tell the driver I will not leave until I do. He tells me […]

If there’s anything that my gypsy soul loves, it is wearing big skirts and spinning beneath the moon at the Pennsic Medieval Festival. I am so happy sleeping on the ground after hours of dancing. I smell campfire smoke in my hair and I dream as drum beats filter through my tent walls. Pennsic is not just a two-week festival with 10,000 DnD nerds armed with medieval weapons bludgeoning each other on the battlefield. It is also drum circles of people belly dancing around fires until the break of dawn. There are artisans and artists everywhere. Live music pours out of camps. There […]

Belly dancing to live music for an audience is the ultimate belly dance experience. It is nothing like dancing to recorded music, and when you can dance confidently and respectfully with a live band your understanding of belly dance will rise to another level. It is surprising how many dancers study American Tribal Style, Tribal Fusion, classical Egyptian belly dance, folkloric and American Cabaret Style and then sit down when it is time to improvise to live music. Dancing to live musicians is my favorite part of belly dancing! Years ago I started learning percussion in order to deepen my understanding of the […]

I love flying. Really. I get so excited to get on an airplane and enjoy all the time I have to myself. Other people talk about flying like it’s not fun. Are you kidding? It’s a goddamn miracle to fly across the ocean! We’re wined and dined and entertained, and no one asks anything from us if we’re flying without kids. And then we emerge from a glorious bird-like machine into a place that would have taken years of bumpy roads and rocky ships to see without launching into the sky for half a day. Like the best backpacker beaches in Thailand, winding […]

You will love these healthy and scary vegan food recipes for Halloween parties. Tofu eyeballs, disgusting labels, worm salad, salty gonads… When the veil between the living and the dead is lifted each year in October, we celebrate with an epic Vegan Halloween Party. My Halloween parties are famous. I am a damn good vegan cook, I belly dance and drum, I know how to sew costumes, and – lucky me – Halloween is my birthday. This is everything you need to know to create a terrifyingly healthy Halloween party. This will also help you figure out the best vegan food to bring to a Halloween potluck.   […]

More info coming soon! In the meantime, check this out:  Get a tour of the FREE APP to translate vegetarian and vegan food requests into Thai. I made a hard copy of this Guide to Being Vegetarian in Thailand with my Peace Corps Thailand buddies Shawn Green and Peter O’Brian.  The amazing Thai Vegan Chef and restaurant owner May Kaidee turned it into an app for everyone and it has thousands of downloads.  Go straight to the free app download Cook vegan Thai food at home with these 7 Vegan Thai Cooking Tips From Famous Chef May Kaidee  

Qele, Qele    (Come, Come) Armenian Folk Song Translation by Mane Mehrabyan with assistance from Alicia Free Easy-to-print Qele Qele lyric translation Keh-leh keh-leh         Come, come kehl-kid mer nem   That walk of yours, for which I would die                                       Meaning: I adore your walk   Koh goh vah kahn khel kid mer nem      That admirable mind of yours, for                                                […]

Read these 7 practical tips on how to henna your hair and make it shine. I have been using henna and indigo to cover my gray hair for years, and it’s a ritual I look forward to each month. You can too.

Just like wedding dresses, there is a universe of gorgeous costumes that can get applause all on their own even without a dancer in them. But design is also about the way a costume moves with a dancer. The way it frames us. How it makes us feel. If you’d rather listen to this than read it, check out this podcast on belly dance skirts… When we worry about something popping out or coming undone or getting tangled, we are not immersed in the dance and the music. We are distracted or nervous dancers, and the audience can see it. Uncomfortable costumes don’t […]

India is paradise for vegetarians, because vegetarian food is widely available and even tends to be the default option. And people get it. There must be more pure veg restaurants in India than any other country in the world. Most Indian veg food is fragrant, flavorful and cheap on the street and in typical restaurants. If you are looking for vegan food in India however, you may lose to the sacred dairy cow more than you like. I started learning the magic of Indian vegetarian cuisine when I studied abroad at Lady Irwin College in New Delhi. We had a cooking lab where […]

Check out A Little Lighter podcast #012 for a whole show on how to film yourself dancing. Don’t get me wrong, for dance performances it’s ideal to hire a videographer or engage someone who enjoys filming. Our videographer Alfred Grunwell has been recording live music performances since the 1970s, and he truly enjoys capturing the spirit of a performance. He shoots video as a bonus for our band while recording audio and then syncs the video with the professionally recorded audio. These recordings are a great tool for improving and promoting future shows. And they are a gift I can give to all […]

Father’s Day just passed, and I feel like it is my responsibility to get real honest with you real quick here. I still feel like I could have saved my father’s life, but it didn’t work. And that one of the reasons why I am so motivated to share my love for good food with you. That is why I have paired dance with plants. Because I think it’s powerful, and it saves lives. My dad was diagnosed with cancer when he was 53. Fifty-three. Death sentence. We blamed a chemical that he used to spray on the apple trees when he was […]

This will be an inspiring 6 week belly dance series with live music for $60 paid up front via Paypal to Alicia’s gmail address. Classes will be capped at 5 students, so sign up and pay to reserve your spot before the class is full! Classes will be from 7-8pm on Giles St Ithaca Wednesdays Oct 16, 23, 30 and Wednesdays Nov 6, 13, 20 Sign up here Highlights from the Summer of Belly Dance Class Series 2019 This is a special class. We dance to live music. We focus on the essence of key Middle Eastern rhythms and some movement vocabulary that […]

“When you go to Banda Aceh, you should visit my village. Lambuuk. Right on the sea,” he said. I asked him if there are museums I should visit in the city. “There is a Tsunami Museum. I never go there. It is for tourists,” he said. “I was 15 the year of the tsunami. At that time there were four of us in the house.”

Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand is heaven for vegetarians and vegans. My in-laws are the authors of The Great Life Cookbook, as well as macrobiotic vegan chefs in Ithaca New York. We knew they would love a vegan Thai cooking class from Vegan Heaven while traveling with us in Thailand. I served in the Peace Corps in Northeastern “Issan” Thailand from 2003-2005. That was before I gave up eggs and dairy and started eating mostly vegan. Eating out as a vegetarian in a small town did have its limits. Eating paht pahk roo-ahm (friend mixed vegetable) got old that first year before I […]

The freshness Vietnamese food is astounding. For some cuisines a salad is simply lettuce. In Vietnam salad is a mix of fresh sprouts, vibrant herbs, leaves of many shapes with purple stems and varied aromas all crunching gently in your mouth beside crushed peanuts and soft rice noodles. It’s a version of heaven. And these mixed greens are served with many dishes, along with a slice of lime. So fresh. When I travel, I give myself the gift of vegan cooking classes. Then I internalize the tastes and smells of another land and bring it home to my kitchen to enjoy and share […]

Creating a meditation practice can be a lot of fun. Choose an inspiring thought leader who meditates like Oprah Winfrey or Thich Naht Hanh and use these tools to start experiencing the benefits of meditation. 

Abigail Keyes of the Salimpour School teaches us 11 words from popular Arabic dance songs that will help us understand our favorite belly dance songs. Learn more on the belly dance podcast A Little Lighter episode 46

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Tired of feeling tight and stressed? One of the world’s most down to earth Buddhist teachers shows us how to soften, relax, create space, and find meaning in our dance lives and daily lives. 

These instructions for making a portable dance studio mirror can help you create your own dance studio, even if it’s in a weird basement or barn or somewhere without walls where you want them! This mirror is great for moms with small children because it is stable, portable and reversible. Every dancer deserves a place to dance. To experiment and grow and see what that looks like. Using power tools will save you a lot of time. If you don’t have a jigsaw, drill gun and screw gun, borrow them or invite your friend who has them over and feed them dinner. A […]

This famous Lebanese dance song is in Bedouin Arabic, but these phonetic lyrics for Ya Ayn Mawlayitan make it easier for people to sing if they don’t speak Arabic.

Bellydance Superstars Choreographer and Artistic Director Jillina Carlano tells us how to communicate with musicians when you dance. Use hand gestures just like the musicians! Read this for examples and listen to Belly Dance Podcast A Little Lighter #62 for more Jillina expertise.

If you feel good, you’ll look good! Make water your drink of choice, find a workout routine that empowers you, and be intentional with how you spend your time.

Carolena Nericcio tells us about the evolution from the names American Tribal Style(ATS) to Fat Chance Belly Dance Style (FCBD) in this belly dance podcast interview

Golden Era Belly Dance enthusiast and our fabulous featured dancer in podcast #64 Badriyah of Belgium loves to bring us back to a time when bedlah and Raqs Sharqi dancers frequented movie screens. To an era of rapid growth for belly dance. A time when some of the most famous Raqs Sharqi performers were also film stars, and Fifi Abdou had just started her dance career. In my interview with Badriyah, Badriyah revealed much of her findings from the research she has done on Egyptian belly dance films from the 1930s, 40s, 50s and 60s. After years of studying Golden Era Belly Dance […]