Emma is a teacher and performer based in Reading. She started classes with Afra Al Kahira in 1994 who has been her prime source of inspiration and even after Afra moved to Devon in 2000 still acts as a mentor. Emma starting teaching in 1998, primarily as an assistant, and in 2001 started to run her own classes. She teaches all levels of dance but more recently has concentrated on intermediate/advanced level classes. She instigated Belly Robics (now called RaqsRobics©) in Reading – a high energy class based solely around belly dance movements which has proved to be very popular.
Emma likes to inspire and develop her students’ individual dance styles and encourages them to perform at every opportunity. However she fully understands that some students come along to classes for social reasons and that some of them do not share her love of performance! Emma performs at a number of local and national events and likes the opportunity to experiment with styles and props.
Emma teaches workshops for all levels and in many styles and has been a regular teacher at the annual Celebrating Dance Festival. She prefers to teach technique based workshops as she feels that a strong grounding in basic principles nurtures a more confident dancer, but fully understands that choreography based workshops have a lot of material that can be utilized for developmental purposes. Emma is currently working on combinations and choreographies that satisfy both technical and artistic aspects.
She is a co-director of the performance troupe Mersin and writes a substantial number of their choreographies for performance at fetes, fairs, haflahs and stage shows. She is also director of Reading's first Tribal group - TribalTastic, a student performance troupe. Emma enjoys writing and teaching challenging choreographies which encourage team work as well as stretching even the most advanced dancers and draws her inspiration for structure and combinations both from what the music “says” to her but also from many other dance styles and even from television shows!
She has obtained her City in Guilds Part I in Teaching Adults and was the first person to complete the ASMED Teaching Diploma. As well as this she has continued her knowledge of Middle Eastern Dance by private research as well as attending as many workshops as she can! Her favourite style of dance is Egyptian but has very recently has been inspired by American tribal style and is enjoying adding aspects to her repertoire.
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