Born to Dance
Mia Sha’uri loves to dance
and lives to serve
Interview by Tammye Nash
“I definitely have to dance; I can’t help it,” declares Mia
Sha’uri, the young belly dancer from Puerto Rico who now
calls Paris, France, home. “It’s how I was born, and I do that
for myself.”
But for Mia, dance is about so much more than her
own enjoyment. “Performing, and any other interaction
with people is about service,” she continues. “Although
I have never clearly defined a personal dance philosophy,
throughout my years of study and prayer I’ve come to
understand that we are here to serve and to love. Full stop.
“I hope to help people understand that they are loved,
and they are worthy just as they are — not because of or
in spite of anything. If I can provide a sense of normalcy,
understanding or safety, it is my job to do so, and dance is a
beautiful vehicle for that.”
Mia says that finding belly dance was “a happy accident”
for her. The first time she and her family went out to eat at an
Arabic restaurant, there was a belly dancer there performing
— and Mia was smitten. “She asked me to dance with her,
and afterwards, I asked for her card!” she recalls. “It was such
fun! I’d always danced, but this felt different, and within a
year, I knew I wanted to dance this forever.”
One of the first orders of business was to choose a
dance name, says Mia. Her “real name” is Michelle Marie
Morales Román, and she says, “I love it! I absolutely love it!
But when I started dancing, there was a very strong fad in
Puerto Rico of adopting Arabic-sounding names and using
your teacher’s ‘last name’ as your ‘last name.’ We didn’t really
have a choice.”
So, she continues, “After searching unsuccessfully for a
while, the same name just fell in my lap twice: ‘Mia.” Turns
out, it’s related to both ‘Mikha’el’ — which is present in Arabic
and Hebrew prayers — and Mary/Miriam from the Bible. Its
meaning — ‘Of God,’ or ‘Who is Like God’ — really struck a
chord with me, and I love that it’s short and sweet!
“My ‘last name’ “is actually from a character in one of
my favorite sci-fi movies, Stargate,” she adds. “For people
who need a more traditional reason, I tell them it’s a
feminine version of ‘Sha’re,’ meaning ‘Servant of Ra.’ [My
dance name] is entirely mine, as much as my birth name is,
and I love it.”
When Mia says she has always danced, she’s not
joking around. In addition to belly dance, he has studied
ballet, jazz, street jazz, Flamenco, Sevillanas, Bomba, Plena,
Salsa, Tango, Kathak, Odissi, Bharantanatyam, Bhangra,
Hula ‘Auna, Hula Kahiko, Tahitian Ote’a and Aparima —
in other words, dance styles, traditions and cultures from
around the world.
“And,” she says, “I’m sure I’m forgetting some. I’ve not
yet seen a style of dance that I haven’t wanted to learn.
You know, I think I like to stick under the umbrella of
belly dance fusion, because I feel I can perform with a
huge variety of movements, and keeping to only one genre
seems to limit that.
“But the Polynesian dances come in a close second,”
Mia acknowledges, “because there is something about the
earthiness of them that just clicks with my soul. I feel that
to express the entire human experience through dance, I
need an ample dance vocabulary. I prefer to allow my body
to move any which way, and every which way, to share the
message fully and clearly.
“I can’t help creating fusion. The more I study dance, the
broader my vocabulary, the more richly I can share my story.”
Sharing a story, and the emotion that story creates
inside her, is a vital part of each and every one of Mia’s
choreographies. And it starts, she says, with the music.
“After much trial and error, I realized I needed to find
a piece of music that I could get lost in,” she explains. “Any
January 2020
The Belly Dance Chronicles
11