
The Gilded Serpent presents...
Barbara Grant
Barbara Grant began her performing career as an actor in the San Fernando Valley, taking every drama class she could find, and performing in a variety of plays and shows. She began professional training in dramatic arts with the Northridge Theatre Guild, Northridge, CA at ten years of age. Her interests shifted to math and science, and she earned a B. A. in Mathematics from San Jose State University in 1983, and an M. S. in Optical Sciences from the University of Arizona in 1989.
Barbara began serious study of Middle Eastern dance in 1990. She has had the opportunity to study with a number of fine instructors, including Baraka (San Francisco), Rhea (Athens, Greece), and Carmen Evans (Tucson, AZ). She favors the Egyptian style of dance, and has studied it with Amina Goodyear (San Francisco) and Leyla Lanty (East Palo Alto).
Barbara completed Baraka’s Teacher Training Certification in Bastet Oriental Dance and began teaching professionally in 2000 at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, forming the “Wings of the Desert” dance troupe. A second troupe formed from her students at The Training Zone in Tucson performed at Race for the Cure, an annual event raising awareness of breast cancer. She acted in Tucson’s Trail Dust Town Halloween Haunted House for the three seasons of its run, 2005 – 2007. She taught classes at Tucson’s Canyon Ranch Health Resort and most recently, at 4EverFit Personal Training Studio in Saratoga, CA.
Barbara has written several articles and reviews which have appeared in Gilded Serpent and in Habibi Magazine under her former stage name, Basheera.
E-mail: barbara_dance(at)att.net
Articles on Gilded Serpent by or about Barbara Grant
- 10-6-13 Egypt through a Rear-View Mirror, Middle East Journal: A Woman’s Journey into the Heart of the Arab World by Laila Abou-Saif
It is easy to recommend this book with a four-zill rating and I do. I applaud ground truth data–here, in the form of interviews–diligently gathered by someone qualified to interpret it. -
6-9-06
Weird Rituals and Beyond: Exploring Current Controversies in Middle Eastern Dance
If you are like me, (I know that many are not) you first responded viscerally and negatively to both situations. Then, as the shock wore off, perhaps you tried to make sense of it all. -
2-1-05
Walking the Line: Reflections from a Christian Dancer
I’ve personally never thought of my dance as erotic or enticing. I’ve considered it an attempt to distill the results of study about particular ethnic and cabaret styles, amalgamate them into American form, and present the outcome to an audience as entertainment. -
7-18-03
My Greek Transformation, A Conservative Engineer meets the “Instigator of Revolutions”
Rhea displayed boundless energy, far beyond my own at the best of times. How would I be able to keep up with her?