12
The Belly Dance Chronicles
April 2019
community center, then followed her to her school in
Mataró, one of the small satellite towns around Barcelona.
Silvia spent the next three years studying with Tasnim,
and taking workshops with “any teacher that would visit
Barcelona,” she said.
The list included “plenty of names that I imagine don’t
ring a bell internationally, except for the Egyptian teachers
— Dr. Mo Geddawi, Dina, Madame Raqia Hassan, Fifi
Abdo,” Silvia said. “I absolutely can’t claim to be an expert
in the Egyptian style of belly dance — fun fact, and bucket
list item, I have never been in Egypt — but I feel that Spain
[was visited by] a healthy amount of Egyptian instructors
because we are so close geographically.”
At the same time she was discovering belly dance, Silvia
was continuing her studies at the University of Barcelona,
working on her Ph.D. Her professor and director of thesis
at the university had contacts at the Medical Center at the
Institute of Molecular Medicine to arrange for hosting
students part-time in an exchange program. Eventually, she
moved to Houston full time.
“I am based in Houston these days, but I do get to
travel to Spain at least twice a year. I am blessed enough
that touring is kind to me, and I combine [my trips home]
with festivals over here,” she said. “I enjoy my time there, as
all my family of origin is still in Mallorca. And I always get
inspired while I am there. Now I am also blessed to have a
U.S.A. family that has helped me immensely to take good
roots in Texas.”
Once she moved to Houston, Silvia continued to search
out as many teachers and sources of inspiration.
“Once I moved to Houston, I dabbled with the local
teachers until I stumbled upon Sahira, founder of Urban
Gypsy,” she said. “That was another transformative moment,
since I had never seen a tribal dancer before. I literally chased
her after her performance at the Texas Renaissance Festival,
and in my broken English I asked for classes.”
Silvia studied for two years with Sahira and Zymirrah,
and during that time, she said, “I was getting more
enthusiastic with tribal and what we then began to call
tribal fusion. Besides training to become a member of
Urban Gypsy, I started traveling anywhere I could to take
workshops with Rachel Brice, Sharon Kihara, Kami Liddle,
Mardi Love and a big, fat etcetera of tribal dancers.”
That drive to learn and expand her dance horizons
continues. “To this day, I can’t conceive of not taking
workshops any chance I have — any style of Middle
Eastern dance or related music. If I can take it, I do,”
Silvia said. “I have said plenty of times that the day I don’t
wish to learn any more, that is the day I can retire to do
something different.”
L ife changes and rediscovering her roots
Even though it was her studies in biochemistry that brought
her to Houston, when she left that field of work, it was belly
dance that helped keep her there.
After spending eight years in biochemical research,
Silvia said she experienced a “major life crisis” that showed
her she was “in complete disagreement with what was
happening in the pharmaceutical industry.”
She added, “I am not an extremist, so you will not find
me dropping a bomb into the headquarters of Bayer. But I
hope my life is an example of how we can bring change to
this planet. I left [the field of biochemical research] because
I believed I was doing more harm than good. And in the
meantime, I was finding a new way to help people heal.
“I had been developing a passion for belly dance and
how it helped me heal,” Silvia continued. “So I said to
myself, let’s begin here. Let’s try to teach beginners and get
local performances and see if this path flows and opens in
my life. And boy, did it bloom!”
It was after she moved to the U.S. and began studying
tribal and tribal fusion that Silvia began researching her
own Spanish gypsy and Arabic roots.
“There were things that I knew all my life, but I hadn’t
put two plus two together until I had a strong motivation
for it,” Silvia said. “Finding my own voice in the tribal fusion