The Gilded Serpent presents...

Aszmara

“Dance is Emotion In Motion” aptly describes Aszmara. Her dance interprets the music with her own electric blend of Modern, Traditional and Folkloric Arabic and Turkish Dance. As one of New York’s leading figures in the field of the Oriental Dance, she was one of the founders and principal dancers of the AMMED Award Winning Middle Eastern Dance Company Oriental Images as well as co-founder/co-director of SaZ Dance Theatre, a multi-cultural woman’s dance company.

Aszmara tours regularly both the USA & Europe teaching seminars, master classes & performing. She has toured yearly in Switzerland as a solo dancer regularly since 1989 with the ethnic/jazz fusion music group, Transition - New York's Haig Manoukian on oud and Souren Baronian on clarinet, reeds and percussion, with Switzerland's Cornelia Kraft on dumbek and vocals. Aszmara has taught weeklong dance workshops in Switzerland once a year since 1991 as well as weeklong dance and drumming workshops along with drumming instructor Cornelia Kraft since 1999. Along with Souren Baronian, Cornelia Kraft and Haig Manoukian, Aszmara has also taught weeklong workshops at The Lenk Forum for Music and Movement in the Bernese Oberland and The Uhuru World Festival in Soloturn.

Along with co-director Roberta Koch, SaZ Dance Theatre, a Multi-cultural dance company was formed presenting full length programs throughout the 1990's. The choreographies of Ms. Koch and Aszmara reflected and utilized the diverse ethnic dance skills of the company members. Classical Indian, Spanish, Afro-Haitian, Cuban and Middle Eastern techniques were blended with modern movements to create an exciting and eclectic dance form. Jack Anderson of The New York Times wrote their production of “Out of Time” was “explicitly dramatic” and “a fascinating assortment of brief pieces.”

Oriental Images, formed in the early 1980's along with Carmen Evan and Majda Mudell Fisher presented concerts utilizing the idea of educating and entertaining audiences with the rich culture of the Middle East. For fifteen years they produced workshops and concerts as well as yearly events which were highly regarded in the Middle Eastern dance community. In 1997, Oriental Images received the AAMED Hall of Fame award.

Aszmara, a teacher of teachers and a master at her craft has vast knowledge and experience in technical as well as performance skills. Clarity in teaching difficult choreography while maintaining a sense of fun leads to ease in learning, readily accessible material and an enjoyable experience for all. Her teaching style is highly energetic. As a master teacher she teaches master and beginner’s classes with the same enthusiasm. Her workshops, thus, are highly appreciated both by professional dancers as well as by beginners.

Dance Stretch & Hip Energy is the highly acclaimed first installment of her instructional DVD series, The Secret Desire with three other DVD’s to complete the series presently in production. Articles from her website have been reprinted in Bennu Magazine and Bhuz.com and she has recently taken on the task of chronicling her thirty plus years as a working dance artist. Aszmara hopes to enlighten, educate and amuse generations of dancers; the past generation with remembrances, this generation as they find their way, and the next as they feel the first stirrings of passion for this art that even after all these years, Aszmara still feels deeply within her soul.

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