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Belly Dancer of the Universe Competition
The Willow Street Center
Long beach, California
February 15 & 16 , 2003
sponsored by Tonya & Atlantis

"For an ultimate learning and pleasurable experience"

 

Besides the preliminaries for the Universal and Egyptian categories, contests held earlier in the weekend, and not covered here, were:

  • Little- children ages 7-12
  • Junior- ages 13-17
  • Divine- dancers with professional experience greater then 20 years
  • Fusion- defined as all music & dance styles with a focus on ME music & dance
  • Belly Rolling for Charity
  • Drummers
Fusion included many interesting acts with specialty items, such as fans, cartwheels, shawls, balancing on glass goblets, "Ballywood" (Indian glamour), swords, and lingerie costumes.
A contestant competes before the judges
Enheduanna in the Egyptian category
The scores are made
Zahra Zuhair, Angelika Nemeth, Amina, Sahra, Ali Hamidzadeh
     
 

Finalists for the Egyptian category
Contestants dance to the same recorded music they used in the preliminaries with the addition of a live spontaneous drum solo. The drummer this year was involved in a mishap. This required a last minute switch to adding a randomly chosen pre-recorded drum solo.

 
 
 
Calypso
 
Enheduanna
 
             
 
 
 
 
Meera
Elisheva
 
 

 

Finalists for the Universal category
Contestants for this category danced in the preliminaries to recorded music of their choice
that had to include time signatures of 4/4, 6/8, and 9/8.
For the finales, each contestant danced to the same full routine including taksim and drum solo, played by live musicians.

 
 
 
 
Jamileh
 
Shabnam
 
             
 
 
 
 
Meera
Azhia
 
 

 

Musicians

 
 

Viken Najarian

Andreas Tsianis
 
         
 

Carlos Devecioglu

A drum machine replaces
David Feldthouse who was involved in
a car accident en route to the event.

 

 

Giza Club group with proud mom of winner---
Zelina, Cheryl, Amina, Malaya, Amy.
Malaya is the mom of the winner of the
Universal category, Azhia, from PA

A full house is surrounded by vendors about the edges of the room.
         
Amina receives a well deserved "Life Achievement"
award along with Marta Schill
Dr. Samy Farag is one of the contest sponsors
Ralph Karapetian, Betty and Harry Saroyan,
are more sponsors of the competition.
         
 
Atlantis confers with the sound technicians
Atlantis shows off her TV appearance recorded on video
 
     
 
 
Tonya's troupe, "Of Veils & Incense", performs to a woman power song sung by Tonya
         
 
 
 
Atlantis performs
Click here for more.
Last year's winner, Aziza, gets ready to perform
Click here for more.
 
         
 
Winners of the Egyptian category contest pose
with sponsors and trophies:
Tonya, Harry Saroyan, unidentified, Calypso in purple with 1st place trophy, Ralph Karapetian, Atlantis below, Elisheva in green as third-runner-up, Meera in purple with second runner-up trophy, Enheduanna in red with the first runner-up trophy.


Universal category contest winners.
Azhia- first place, Atlantis,
Jamileh 1st runner-up, Meera 2nd runner-up,
Shabnam 3rd runner-up.

That's a Wrap!

 
 

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