{"id":653,"date":"2008-05-07T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-07T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqed2.wsmtechs.net\/spark\/suhaila-salimpour\/"},"modified":"2016-01-19T14:44:23","modified_gmt":"2016-01-19T22:44:23","slug":"suhaila-salimpour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ww2.kqed.org\/spark\/suhaila-salimpour\/","title":{"rendered":"Suhaila Salimpour"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"KQED Spark - Suhaila Salimpour\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/9cIQytsr-rY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<aside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">&#8220;This is a chance for women to come together &#8230; where we can accept all of our body issues and kind of get with our truth.&#8221;<cite>&#8212; Margaret Cho<\/cite><\/aside>\n<p>Belly dance is one of the oldest known forms of dance, believed to have originated in the Middle East. In El Cerrito, California, belly dancers flock to a modern day mecca &#8212; the dance studio of legendary performer and teacher <b>Suhaila Salimpour<\/b>, who is from a belly-dancing dynasty. Her mother, Jamila Salimpour, ran the Baghdad Cabaret, a popular venue for Middle Eastern dance and music in the 1960s in San Francisco&#8217;s North Beach. Jamila went on to become a pioneering belly dance instructor, writing the first manual to categorize Middle Eastern dance movements.<\/p>\n<p>Suhaila started dancing at the age two, and as a young woman toured the Middle East and Europe. When she returned to California she opened her school to teach a new generation of dancers, but she continued choreographing and performing. At one of her shows she attracted a talented fan, comedian Margaret Cho, who is now one of her pupils. <b>Spark<\/b> captures Suhaila giving Cho a private lesson, as well as Suhaila performing with her young daughter Isabella at Rakkasah West, the largest belly dance festival in the world.<\/p>\n<h4 class=\"resource-links\">Resources<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li>Array<\/li>\n<li>Array<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Find out how empowering belly dancing can be with Margaret Cho and her teacher Suhaila Salimpour.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8667,"featured_media":1947,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"coauthors":[18],"series":[],"affiliates":[],"programs":[],"collections":[],"interests":[],"class_list":["post-653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-aside","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dance","post_format-post-format-aside"],"acf":{"template_type":"standard","featured_image_type":"standard","is_audio_post":false},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.13 - 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