I’m always going on about how dancers today need to know their history, ancestry, and lineage. This video is a brief biography of our dance grandmother, Jamila Salimpour, without whom we wouldn’t have American Tribal Style, tribal fusion, or even modern American oriental dance. Her legacy lives in almost every dancer in this country, whether they know it or not.
Thank you so much for this, and the “Slump” post. Maybe the video sparked you a little bit? 
I know it did me!
Thank you for posting! It is important to know our history! We can learn from the past and help mold the future we would like to see!
Thanks for posting this! I’m going to look up Jamila’s book on the Internet to see if I can find it. I hope it is not out of print.
Actually, I just found it: http://www.smartcart.com/suhaila/cgi/display.cgi?item_num=PBMdo .
Hi! not that this has anything to do with your post, its just that I thought that since your blog is doing so well, you should put up ads on it, and make money off of it! I know you have quit your day-job and depend on your dance to support you, but maybe this could be a sours of income aswell?
just thinking!
love
Thanks for the link. I read about Jamila’s links to the origin of ATS in The Tribal Bible but it’s great to see clips of Bal Anat in motion. It’s interesting to me that Suhaila didn’t follow in the same stylistic path (at least as far as costuming goes).
To Jesmia: Suhaila also sells her mother’s books and CDs at Rakkasah East when she is there. I purchased a CD with zill patterns from her booth.
As part of my September “The Trouble With Tribal” episode, I also did a piece on Jamila, Bal Anat and the birth of modern American bellydance in sixties Berkeley in my podcast, drawing mainly on Jamila’s published accounts. Interested listeners can find it at http://mutantmuse.podbean.com.
Thanks for posting this! I think I may have seen another portion of this documentary. Great stuff.