Tamalyn Dallal for the Gilded Serpent

The Gilded Serpent presents
Tamalyn Dallal

As many of you know, I am a bellydance teacher and most of my time is spent teaching dance workshops all over the word. I had a school in Miami Beach for many years, called the Mid Eastern Dance Exchange, which was a non profit arts organization. Many famous dancers came from this school and got their start in my troupe and theatre productions: Amar Gamal, Bozenka, Aireen, Virginia, Hanan, Maja, Shahar, Jackie Lalita, among others. If there is one great love and passion in my life it is to make changes happen around me. I love to teach dance, but one day, I was so sad because of the predudice our country has toward people of the Muslim world that I decided to go into different Muslim countries and find out what life was really like. That changed my life and my view of dance. Glamor, self expression, and health benefits are very important, but I see dance as a tool for understanding and social change as well and am very happy to see that some of my former students are also doing projects along the same lines: Hanan (Dance4Peace) with film/dance projects in Cuba, and Jackie Lalita who has been working on a film project about birth practices around the world.

www.tamalyndallal.com

www.40daysand1001nights.com
http://40daysand1001nights.blogspot.com

Articles on Gilded Serpent by or about Tamalyn:
12-6-02 A Young Woman's Multicultural Adventures in Columbia, by Tamalyn Dallal book review by Sierra/Sadira.
If we had the farsightedness to use dance as a form of diplomacy and ambassadorship towards human rights and dignity throughout the world...

8-11-07 40 Days and 1001 Nights by Tamalyn Dallal
I envisioned it as a book in which I would travel to five Islamic countries and live for 40 days in each, writing about my experiences. When I was traveling in Indonesia, one of my friends wrote back "You need to be filming this!" I did, and a musical documentary film was born

8-14-07 Tamalyn Dallal's DVD- 40 Days and 1001 Nights, reviewed by Barbara Sellers-Young
Thus, the film did expand my visual awareness. Now, did it deepen or extend my understanding of what that diversity implied? My response would have to be no.