Belly Dancer Troupe Performs in Seoul
By Shawn Despres
Contributing Writer
With an interesting fusion of tribal, Oriental and ambient music influences, Canadian-born belly dancer Esthe will launch the Love Dance event April 4 at Bowie in Hongdae from 7 p.m. until 10 p.m.
Love Dance will continue on the first Saturday of each month and feature Eshe, her students' troupe Navah ― which is comprised of women from Australia, Canada, England and the United States ― and a guest Korean belly dancer. The event will feature both the Oriental and tribal styles of belly dance.
Eshe has wowed audiences with her hypnotic hip work throughout her native country, Japan and South Korea.
She began shimmying in Tokyo in 2002 and spent one-and-ahalf years as the resident belly dancer at Simsir Turkish restaurant in Yokohama. While in Japan, she was a member of the Public Urban Ritual Experiment (PURE) and in November 2006 founded the Afet Collective, with ``Afet" meaning ``catastrophically beautiful'' in Turkish.
Afet is a group of socially conscious belly dancers from five different countries who organize benefit performances for women's charities. To date, it has raised more than 3.5 million won for Japanese and South Korean organizations.
Eshe left Japan in September 2007 and spent a month in Cairo studying extensively with Raqia Hassan, one of Egypt's most-famed belly-dance instructors.
Moving to Seoul in late 2007, she began teaching Oriental, tribal and ambient belly-dance classes at the Well Being Studio in Itaewon in early 2008.
Eshe and Orgeltanz have also been featured on MBC TV's Nanjang music program.
For more information about Eshe, visit www.eshebellydancer.com. The cover charge for Love Dance is 10,000 won.