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Majida Anwar is a dancer, choreographer, and instructor in the Atlanta Metro Area. She is also member of the Awalim Dance Company. Middle Eastern dance has been a part of Majida’s life as long as she can remember. Her family is Jordanian, so she grew up with this beautiful dance surrounding her. As a child Majida would watch such famous Egyptian stars as Nagua Fouad, Sohair Zeki dance to 40 piece orchestras on television just as any other child would watch Saturday morning cartoons.

Majida learned the dance through her family, her aunts in particular who would visit from Jordan. She started formal training at the age of 11, after seeing a belly dancer at the Georgia Renaissance Festival. She began taking as many classes as she could, now that she knew that there was a Middle Eastern dance sub-culture just waiting to embrace her. After a couple of years of training, Majida decided to enrich her dance by conducting intensive study on the many different styles, costumes, music, and rhythms of Middle Eastern dance. Majida hopes to develop her studies into a thesis one day to be published. She continues her research today.

Currently Majida teaches beginning to advanced belly dance classes in Atlanta, Georgia. Majida focuses on the Classic Egyptian style in her classes, teaching the essence of belly dance from the Golden Age of its artistry in the vibrant city of Cairo, Egypt. Majida makes sure her students are well acknowledged in all aspects of the dance, including music, costuming, etiquette, and style. For the more serious student, Majida offers private lessons as well. The true essence of Middle Eastern dance is reached when an accomplished dancer of the Orient has total control over every muscle, both large and small, in her body, and uses this ability to interpret all the nuisances of the maqam (Arabic music). Majida has this ability and can break down this intricate movements in detail to the novice.

As a performer, Majida’s natural stage presence dazzles her audience. She has had many a dancer, from beginning to experienced praise her graceful command of the stage. Majida credits her Middle Eastern heritage and years of violin study for her creative and wonderful interpretations of Middle Eastern music into performance. Her musicality is unique and adds texture to her dance. Such great singers as Abdel Halim Hafez and Um Koulthoum especially move her. Majida mainly performs the Egyptian Classical style, but also incorporates veil technique, zills, and sword balancing.

In the media, Majida has been featured in a belly dance DVD entitled “Belly Dance Workout! With Rayzahna and Dancers of the Harem”. She also appeared on the morning news show Fox News Rising as a promotion for the DVD. Majida has also been published in the Online Middle Eastern Dance magazine, The Gilded Serpent. Her article, “Hurry Magda”, reflects her childhood and Middle Eastern Dance. She participates annually in Shimmy-A-Thon, a fundraiser for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and in 2005 shimmied for over 4 hours!

Majida is a member of two dance groups in Atlanta, Dancers of the Harem, a philanthropic sisterhood of dancers, and the Awalim Dance Company, the premier tribal belly dance company in the Southeast. Both dance groups can be found on the web at www.dancersoftheharem.com and www.awalim.com.