Jihan Jamal

Beginnings and recognition

I have spent more than four decades performing and teaching Near and Middle Eastern dance throughout the United States, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Egypt and the Czech Republic. It began in November 1979.

In 1987 I became the first oriental dance artist from Miami to win the title of Miss America of the Bellydance, crowned in San Francisco by the renowned artist and sponsor Magaña Baptiste. In 2000 the readers of Zaghareet, the United States’ international dance publication, voted me Best Instructor of the Year. In 2014 I was inducted into the RAKSTAR Hall of Fame.

In 2002 I fulfilled a career-long dream and performed for the first time in Cairo, at Raqia Hassan’s Ahlan Wa Sahlan Dance Festival. I returned to Cairo in 2005 to teach as well as perform at the festival’s sixth annual edition — and had the great pleasure of performing with the renowned Egyptian percussionist Khamis Khankish, adding another line to that list of dreams.

The teaching

My method combines tradition and regional colloquialism without sacrificing professional form and technique. My objective is to educate the student in the structure of the dances as well as their cultural and regional backgrounds, and the social, religious and political history that has impacted and altered the dance across the centuries.

I have taught at Miami Dade College (Kendall Campus), where I directed the student company Mermaids of the Nile; at West Miami Middle Community School for thirteen years, home of the Bellyrina Oriental Dance Academy; at the Ballet Academy of Miami from 1998 to 2003; and at Miami’s Performing Arts Network, where I was resident teacher and choreographer from 1996 to 2000. I was a guest instructor and choreographer in the credit dance programme at Florida International University until 2003, and taught for six years at Dancer’s Dream Studio in Pembroke Pines until its closing in 2009.

Since 2002 I have taught regularly in Prague, at Zambra Studios and the former Centrum Spiral, and further afield in Nagoya, Japan, and on Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands. I have been a featured dance master at Rakkasah East and West, at the Florida Dance Festival, and at the Raks Al Dunya Festival in Gainesville, Florida, among many others.

Unveil the Woman

Beginning as far back as 1987 and still evolving, Unveil the Woman — More Than a Dance Experience is a workshop series for women only. It fuses the social, secular and spiritual dances of the Near and Middle East with interpretive movement and my Sufi teachings, to help participants develop their dance structure and expertise alongside their confidence and self-esteem.

“One workshop session with Jihan has proven more valuable to me than a month of psychotherapy.”
— Martha Hathaway, Hollywood, Florida

Teachers and lineage

My dance style is greatly influenced by the internationally acclaimed master dancer and choreographer Dahlena (Chicago / Los Angeles), and by the Egyptian master Mahmoud Reda — whom I consider the Egyptian equivalent of George Balanchine.

My training has been shaped by Raqia Hassan (Cairo), Mohammed “Momo” Kadous (Berlin / Cairo), the late American-Lebanese enigma Ibrahim “Bobby” Farrah (New York), Yousry Sharif (New York / Cairo), Morocco (New York), the late Amir (Boston), and Evelyn “Azeeza” Hamsey (Montreal / Miami), who taught and coached me from 1980 to 2004 and who remains, in my heart, my best consultant and my best critic. Since 2005 I have also studied with Egypt’s Mohammed Hosseny.

For twenty years from 1984 until his death in 2004, I consulted and rehearsed rhythmic patterns with the Tunisian percussionist Fathi Bilalgia, who accompanied me in class and on stage. It was Fathi who inspired The Dancer & The Drummer, first presented at the Florida Dance Festival in Miami in 1994.

Beyond bellydance

My ethnic dance expertise includes the line dances of Lebanon and Syria (dabke) and the women’s dances of the Khaleej. My formal education also covers the North African disciplines of Tunisian folk dance and Moroccan Sheikhat dance, with Leila Haddad (Tunis / Paris). I studied ballet as a child and again in later years with Carlos Danaan, jazz with Nancy Walker and Antolino Alvarez, and classical Spanish dance with Carmen de Cordova.

Broadcast, writing and community

I was a board member of the Arab-American Cultural Center from 1984 to 1989 and remain a member. I held a radio broadcast licence and hosted The Arabic Music Hour on Miami’s public station WDNA 88.9 FM in 1984 and 1985. Television appearances include WPBS Channel 2, WLRN Channel 17, and Univision’s Hola America.

I have been a contributing writer to Yallah Magazine since 2009 — first profiled in its “Movers & Shakers” feature, then as author of the column Raks Sharqi. I write and edit the Grapevine Dance and Music Newsletter and the Sunday Morning Over Coffee weekly letter.

In October 2010 I founded Women of the Silk Veil, a Middle Eastern and Asian dance arts, culture and book club that meets monthly and promotes dance and music artists alongside members of the South Florida Arabic community.

Home

The world is my home, but I live between Miami — my base — and Prague, travelling often to Cairo to continue my dance education and research. I have one child, my son Sanan Sasha Phutrakul, who is also my web master, best fan and hero.