Mid 1990s - In with the In Crowd - the beginnings of "The Flowers of the Desert"

So I was now a mom of a toddler. I was working at US Air in Air Freight at LAX, operating forklifts, hauling large boxes, transporting dead bodies in caskets, driving trucks down the airfield alongside the mighty 747s. It was a bad ass man's job & I was straddling two worlds - the masculine & the supreme feminine. I still had weekly dance jobs & for the first time I regularly took Bellydance classes when Suhaila Salimpour was teaching in Hollywood. Suhaila's best friend was in the class, Laura Crawford, & word was she was the new "It" girl in the Arab clubs.

Perhaps a year later I got a phone call from Shira (Jane Padgett from the Hajji Baba's days in the '70s) asking if I would be interested in joining a dance troupe that was forming. The idea for the troupe was to join together LA's most popular working dancers. After Arabesque Dance Co I wasn't exactly chomping at the bit to get myself into that kind of commitment again, but I had just been laid off from USAir so I had some free time. When I heard Laura Crawford was starting the troupe I perked up a bit. She was working the hot nightclub at the time Al Andalus, & they were interested in a weekly troupe show with live music. I showed up for the rehearsal & was greeted by a friendly Laura, a young dancer named Miriam, Shira, Veena (one half of Bellytwins fame) & a Turkish girl named Zeyno. Laura was excited about doing a retro show with coin costumes & finger cymbals which in all truth was not something I was even remotely interested in. I wanted the hot Egyptian show with beads & crystals, & the Amcab look was something I had years before left behind with a good riddance. To make matters worse, Laura handed me a fluffy lace skirt to go home & add sequins to. I was rather huffy about this & as I glued one sequin on at a time for hours on end, I cursed myself for being talked into what felt like another troupe debacle. Hallah Mustapha who now has a successful costume business in Cairo made the costumes & she said we looked like flowers when we did what was to be our opening dance with several measures of fast spinning. Laura added "of the Desert" for a bit of a Mid East flare & voila The "Flowers of the Desert" were born. The whole thing sounded a bit too American to me & again I was having flashbacks of Arabesque hokeyness.

Advert for Al Andalus nightclub

So we did the whole enchilada - swords, veils, chamadon, finger cymbals & it turned out Laura was right about her audience. Unlike the Arab audiences in the past, these patrons seemed to get a bang out of the whole thing. A new girl was added to the weekly lineup - a tall elegant woman named Laura Kali who was somehow dubbed "Tall Laura" to differentiate the two. We pared up for the sword number & in rehearsal Laura Kali proved to be an excellent dancer, but it didn't prepare me for the dynamo she became in performance. I quickly realized I had to ratchet my performance value up a few notches to match her intensity. This was going to be fun. And we had live music to boot, & really good live music with none other than Issam Houshan on tabla, who later became probably the most famous Bellydance drummer in the world after his stint with the Bellydance Superstars.

Early Flowers in our retro coin costumes. Veena, Laura, Miriam, Kamala, Neena

Truth was, nearing 40, I was the old lady in the group. I was pretty fortunate that Laura even accepted me into the company, but it didn't change the fact that I didn't do as many paid gigs as the younger girls were doing. A hard pill to swallow, but I had to accept it. My prime time had come & gone. I was really happy to be at an Arab club again, with the hospitality (& great food) that came along with it. Laura & I would drag our young daughters with us to practice. They would hold court in a booth as the owner, musicians & waiters would come by to talk to them & offer Shirley Temples & the likes. My 4 year old daughter was loving every minute of it, & unbeknownst to me was soaking the dancing in, mentally & probably unconsciously taking notes.

                               
                            Early promo video including Rose Parade Al Andalus, Fountain Theater & Arab American TV

Not much later a few more ladies were added. Najwa was a dancer I had worked at Ali Baba's with. Veena brought her sister Neena & they added some Indian Punjabi & Filmy to the mix. Farhana was brought in to do some balancing & was soon integrated into the troupe full time. Of course Farhana eventually became Princess Farhana & the rest is history.

Clockwise from bottom right: Laura kali, Princess Farhana, Neena, Veena, Laura, Najwa, Kamala

We were immediately tapped to produce a show at a snooty theater reserved for more esoteric dance forms. The owner of the Fountain Theater in Hollywood came to Al Andalus & was impressed enough to let us create a theater production. "Dances of the Orient" was a success - filling two nights with enthusiastic audiences. It was really unusual at the time to have a full length Bellydance production & we were even favorably reviewed in the LA Times. The owner thought we were too commercial & was very sour throughout, but we WERE commercial - we were working clubs & parties.

Clockwise from bottom right: Zeyno, Veena, Najwa, Laura, Laura Kali, Kamala,  Farhana. Center Miriam

The Flowers became the toast of the town. I felt very fortunate at my age & at that point in my dance career to be a part of the current "In Crowd"in the LA Bellydance scene. Looking back I really wasn't that old, was I? But to put away my steel toed work boots & take off my suburban mom kit to be a part of a popular working dance troupe was a bonus I really hadn't anticipated. And things were about to get even better...

My Transition Years - Late 1980s Belly Dance

   The years after being a member of Arabesque Dance Co are a blur. For the first time my dance career took a back seat, & my social life blossomed outside of the insular belly dance world. I was working at LAX and was part of a very close knit threesome - a young male and a young female coworker became my best traveling buddies and our free airline passes afforded us the luxury of weekend trips abroad and all varieties of drunken antics in various exotic locales.

   My favorite dance job was a cozy place, close to home, called The Crossbow. I worked there several years, dancing to the beautiful music of John Belezikjian and various drummers. John's many fans would show up for all the shows & were appreciative & generous.

The Crossbow in South Pasadena. Fortunate to be dancing again to John Belezikjian's glorious music.

   I was back to jazz class on a regular basis, happy to find a teacher I liked who challenged me & made me remember why I loved jazz. Having some nights off allowed me to have a more vigorous social life. Rock and roll concerts & other American style activities brought me back to who I was, rather than the girl who had become absorbed by the Arab nightclub world, trying to please another culture & forfeiting my own identity.

   My dance jobs, besides dancing the party circuit, were Papadakis, a popular Greek restaurant in the port town of San Pedro, CA, & Burger Continental, a Lebanese/Armenian outdoor restaurant in Pasadena, CA. These two places were similar in certain respects. Both were owned by lecherous brothers, were very established & popular family businesses in the LA environs, & had daily belly dance shows. Papadakis was a crazy gig - you would sit with a fellow dancer in the dressing room for hours until the owner called you down in a panic. Waiters would be dancing and breaking glasses & the owner would suddenly blast some Arabic music & push us out the door to dance quickly around the audience, tip toeing around the shards of glass. The owner would lift my fellow dancer on to a table (lucky for me I was tall & not so easy to sling over a shoulder) & encourage a wild shimmy. Then boom, he would run into the kitchen & cut the music off after maybe three minutes & that was it. Three minutes of dance & a decent salary kept me there for something like 12 years.

   Burger Continental was the hangout joint where I had seen my first belly dance show, way back when in the '70s. They had just started live "Mediterranean" entertainment after a long hiatus, and the joint was jumpin'. The casual outdoor patio, the cheap food & of course the musicians & dancers made for a great ambience on a balmy evening. The place was so busy, there were about 3 turnovers in seating per night. There would be a line to get in, & a charming Jordanian Maitre-D' glided about, seating the wealthy & glamorous patrons first. The musicians were usually my dear friends John & George, who I first worked with at The Gypsy way back as a baby belly dancer. A very skillful tabla player, Faisal would show up to play for me, & an Egyptian friend would join him on tabla, not quite as skillfully. Between the Maitre-D' & the four musicians, we had a wonderful time laughing & talking politics. The tips were flowing at BC (as it's known all over LA). That place was a goldmine. I would do two shows just running around collecting money, then would end the show near the drummers for a proper drum solo. I also danced to recorded music in the afternoons to a large lunch crowd. We had patrons from the world over. Persian, Arab, Armenian, Latino, American, European, Russian, all happily joined in the fun, dancing in the aisles, calling out for songs from their homelands. This place managed to stay a hotspot for a long time. It took a good 15 years or so before various circumstances caused BC to take a downward spiral. I worked there from the late 1980s through 2013, when I finally resigned. Again, I had been fortunate to be dancing at the peak of its success, & left on good terms.

A busy night at BC 1995

                                                          Burger Continental 2011

  One of my favorite stories happened on a day I was working the ramp at Burbank Airport. I was in my workman attire, as my job required loading bags, driving stairs up to planes, bringing the planes in & pushing them out. With big head phones, steel toed boots, no makeup & a messy bun on my head, I was hardly the epitome of feminine glamor by any means. As I was waiting for a plane to disembark, standing on the ramp, a couple of young guys took one look at me & shouted "That's the belly dancer from Burger Continental!"  How they recognized me, I'll never know!

  So it was not much later, July 9, 1991 to be exact, when the most momentous moment of my life occurred. The birth of my daughter, as most births, was the most magical, defining thing to ever happen to me. I had a quick & relatively easy labor. My doctor said he wanted to prescribe belly dancing to all his patients. I performed until I hit about 5 1/2 months, & about 4 weeks after the birth. I could hardly wait to start dancing again, but now it all felt so different. I was not the girl I used to be. I was a mom now. And I made it my priority.

  One would think I would settle into a mundane existence, dance-wise, but no - the early '90s were coming & things were about to get anything but mundane! I was about to enter a novel, exciting & stimulating phase in my dance career. Who would have thought it?

The Advent of the Belly Dance Troupe era - mid 1980s

   I was lamenting the downslide of my dance career, feeling rather sorry for myself, when I received a call from Latifa of Laguna Beach, CA. She remembered me from Stox II and said she wanted to start a dance company comprised of popular dancers. Apparently many corporate clients told her they would be more interested in a group of dancers than a soloist, and being very enterprising she got to work organizing a commercially viable company the "Arabesque Dance Company". All it took was for Latifa to tell me Sahra Saeeda (Kent) was onboard to convince me to join my first dance troupe.
                               
                                                            

Sahra, Kamala, Latifa, Asmara & Amira in our Cleopatra inspired gear

   This was a great learning experience for me, yet a very difficult one. Rehearsals were at Latifa's house in Laguna Beach - a good 2 hour drive. This eventually became a bone of contention. Long drives through horrendous traffic made me a salty girl indeed. The upside was Learning Sahra's choreographies & paying attention to how she constructed group choreography. My jazz background came in handy now - I was accustomed to learning choreography quickly & retaining it. Latifa urged me to come up with a piece, yet I was unsure of my choreographing abilities & reluctant to try my hand at it, so I didn't contribute, except for an improvisational number where I was dressed as a snake & came out of a basket.
                   

                           
   Latifa's American husband told her Americans would never be interested in watching traditional Middle Eastern dance or hearing Arabic music. Hence, she set out to find "acceptable" music for the large "Arabian Nights" corporate parties that were popular in the day. It was the Orange County Disneyland version of Belly Dance. A husband wife team, Amira and Kevin were added to the troupe.  Latifa contracted Jimmy DeFore, a jazz dancer who had performed with legend Jack Cole to choreograph a fusion number for us. The troupe's lack of jazz skills became apparent immediately & the routine was watered down to a Jazz 101 ridiculous routine. There were a few movements we learned from Mr DeFore that I loved & have incorporated into a few of my own choreographies later in my career.

                                                                 

Amira, Kamala, Kevin, Sahra & Latifa

   One particular party we were booked at was located at a grand Beverly Hills mansion. We were to perform our "Cleopatra" number, with Latifa decked out in Cleopatra wig and fancy costume. As we stepped onto the stage we were immediately met by the violet eyes of no other than Cleopatra herself, Liz Taylor, sitting in the front row. She smiled very graciously, while Latifa looked a little flummoxed, & Sahra & I did our bookend background dancer shtick behind her.
                   

                           
   Latifa and Sahra both had studied with the famous Farida Fahmy of Egypt's Reda Troupe while she was in LA. Farida was attending UCLA & had become Sahra's friend & mentor. She was to be honored at a large Egyptian function at the Beverly Hills Hotel, & we were fortunate enough for her to decide to choreograph several numbers for us to perform at this event. I was a huge fan of Mahmoud Reda's fabulous old Egyptian musicals. It wasn't easy to find these videos, but I was, & still am, enamored of the style, flair & technique Mahmoud & Farida brought to these vintage films. To work with Farida was a dream come true, & still a highlight of my dance career.

Sahra, Kamala, Latifa & Amira, inspired by Farida Fahmy

   After a few years Sahra was to visit Egypt, but she didn't return, as she got a dance contract at a 5 star hotel. Amira became very ill, & put up a valiant fight against ovarian cancer, but sadly succumbed. Latifa added the beautiful Sultana (who I had discussed in an earlier blog about Stox II). Once we added her we discovered she was not able to retain or even learn choreography, as brilliant a soloist as she was. We had to rearrange our shows to make her the center dancer doing her own thing while myself and two new dancers were doing the choreographies around her.

                                                                     

Sahra, Roxxanne Shelby, Latifa, Amira, Asmara & Kamala

   I was going through personal strife at this time with the death of a beloved grandfather & my parent's pre break-up stress. I started to experience anxiety attacks, & a violent hair tossing drum solo choreography of Latifa's caused great damage to my neck - exacerbating the anxiety attacks. This was a darker period in life for me.

  

Mid '80s - Greek, Armenian, Moroccan - becoming a B-list dancer

  My career hit a low patch during the mid eighties. The mega nightclubs had for the most part closed their doors. Only a few remained, and with more dancers now in the mix, I was out of the running for these 2 or 3 jobs. I found in a new niche in the Greek and Armenian clubs. Not my favorite because of the music. Dancing to Greek and Armenian musicians requires a whole different set of skills, mostly comprised of furiously racing around the floor to breakneck speed music.

  I danced regularly at a lovely little restaurant called Aegean Isles in Los Angeles. They treated me like royalty, and although the music was not really Belly Dance friendly, I felt comfortable in this lovely family owned taverna. On the other hand I worked at probably my least favorite club in my entire career. Port of Athens was one of several large Armenian/Greek nightclubs, situated in the armpit of the world - the San Fernando Valley. This was a hoodlum hangout, a den of unsavory characters. Cocky little singers with overblown egos, a particularly nasty owner, and women with no self respect made up the employee ranks. Shootings happened. Once a fellow dancer was almost grazed by a knife that went flying in front of her. The owner's wife was a former Belly Dancer who tried to be sympathetic to my need to get out of there before 2am and would often sneak me money. I would pretend I was just hanging out and would slowly make my way towards the door, grab my strategically placed suitcase & beat it out of that smoke pit. The owner started catching on that I was MIA at the end of the night and one night kept an eye on me. As I scooted out the door & hastily made my way to my car I heard him yelling for me to come back. I jumped in the car and started driving, and could see him running after me in the rear view mirror, obviously pissed off. I don't think I ever returned. Not even sure if I called to quit, though I probably did since I was very responsible. I felt badly that his wife probably got the brunt of his anger for being an accomplice.

At Dar Magreb. beautiful place, beautiful people, crappy food, low pay

  I had also been working at Dar Magreb, a beautiful Moroccan Palace of a restaurant in the heart of Hollywood on the Sunset Strip. This place was the good, the bad and the ugly. "Bad and ugly" because although the pay started out high with the dancer doing a few shows a night - it descended into a poorly payed all night gig, sometimes doing as many as 12 shows a night. We danced to tapes which was a low point after live music. The "good" was the fascinating assortment of celebrities that would grace the place each night, and the shenanigans that would take place. I danced for the likes of Baryshnikov and then partner Jessica Lange who looked in the midst of a lovers' quarrel, Yoko Ono, Rick James in his Superfreak heyday, an adorable & friendly Matt Dillon, Johnny Rotten who I feared would snarl at me but was polite and clapped accordingly. A then unheard of Claude Van Damme came up to me one evening and said "I can do the splits" and proceeded to do the splits right in the lobby. He was flirting and was so charming, giving me his phone number. I was married at the time, but I kept that piece of paper for the longest time - just in case! Now I see he's done a big stunt - doing the splits between two moving trucks - a real one trick pony! One night General Hospital's Luke (Anthony Geary) came in with some lovely friends and I ended up sitting with them. All us dancers on the road in the Guy Chookoorian days would watch the soaps in the daytime, since we were often stranded in podunk towns with nothing to do. I didn't let on that I knew who he was though. We all ended up in his Hollywood Hills home talking until late in the evening, and then I went home. A nice evening. One feature of Dar Magreb at the time was the liberal allowance of drugs on the premises. Hollywood types would line up their cocaine on the beautiful inlaid tables, and the smell of weed often wafted through. There was a private room where patrons could really be debaucherous. One night a party ended up naked and frolicking in the room. Someone urinated in a wine bottle and left it for the poor busboys to pick up. Eventually Dar Magreb spun downward and crowds were sparse. The food was less than stellar and it just wasn't the happening place anymore. It was the only restaurant gig I was ever let go from. The bitchy new host decided he didn't like me. I probably did have a bad attitude. I was tired of the poor work conditions.

Original Dar Magreb dancers Maria & Helena with Kamala

  Truth was I was tired of the whole thing. I was still getting used to being a married woman. I was working my first civilian job since I had started dancing - as a reservations agent at Delta Airlines. Dance just wasn't my passion anymore. Drab music, the occasional Belly-gram, the lonely evenings now that the restaurants only hired one dancer per night. I had joined the B-list - the hustlers who were always looking for dance jobs. It was depressing and degrading, and I felt like I was in the twilight of my career, even though in my late 20s, early 30s.

  But my assessment was premature. I got a call from an Orange County dancer named Latifa who was looking for good soloists to form a company. When she told me Sahra Saeeda was on board, I quickly agreed, even though it meant driving to Laguna Beach, a good 2 hours away, for rehearsals. So started a whole new phase in my career - the troupe era.

Mid 1980s Escape from Acapulco - Road trip gone Wrong

The mid eighties ushered in the final throes of the Middle Eastern nightclub boom. My guess is the club owners who came to the States with a finite amount of cash failed to attract enough business and lost their shirts. With orchestras, singers, dancers, and the high price of Hollywood real estate it must have cost a fortune to keep those places alive. Not surprising they fell, one by one. Ronald Reagan had ushered in a new era of conservatism which seemed incompatible with the former grooviness of Bellydance and the exotic mystique of the Arabic nightclub.

Fortunately I was able to work consistently, but now I turned to the Greek restaurants and other random establishments for regular work. There were one or two large nightclubs left. Hajji Baba's, I believe was near the corner of Sunset and La Brea (I think but could be wrong). Now it's a strip club, with a different name. Jacqueline Lombard had just returned from a long gig in Damascus and had created an hour long show with costume changes. It was the first of its kind in LA and she was the toast of the town. With so few venues, the "Toast of the Town" concept happened in the Arabic clubs. One dancer became popular and everyone wanted that one dancer. I would go to the club to catch Jacqueline's show and envied her position. Dancing to lightening speed Greek music was not my thing. As much as I admired her, she was not happy at all. She was tired of the shenanigans and suddenly up and quit performing. And I mean quit. She is now a horse woman and wants nothing to do with the Bellydance scene.

I got a call from my somewhat agent type person that a singer needed two dancers for a month long gig in Acapulco, Mexico. Several dancers showed up for the audition which turned out to be just an interview with an Egyptian singer with the stage name of Marc Anthony who was obviously completely full of himself. He kept eying me and the ditzy blond dancer named Shahira (Loren) who I had mentioned previously in the post about Ali Baba's. I got the call that he had chosen the two of us because we were both tall and slim and would be like "salt and pepper". 

Shahira was the live in girlfriend of oudist Maroun Saba. She appeared not to have a brain in her head, yet she learned Arabic quickly, and I mean she could converse fluently. She also had a nasty temper and would fluctuate from giddy to mean to sullen and back again within a matter of minutes. I got along with her because I pretty much got along with everyone, but I had always tried to keep a healthy distance from someone so volatile. 

"Salt and Pepper" Kamala & Shahira onstage in Acapulco

Acapulco is the home to a large Arab diaspora. Marc Anthony's show at the Hyatt Continental was geared toward this audience, and hopefully attracting tourists as well, as our photos were in all the elevators and lobby of the hotel. When we arrived we were greeted by Marc Anthony and a driver. We were excited to view the gorgeous shoreline as we drove into town. The hotel was lovely, on the waterfront with a fancy pool that included a bar in its center. Shahira was a little too enthusiastic, and she blathered on like a child. So things went sour right off the bat when Marc Anthony said something like "you're a little Airhead aren't you? Are you on drugs?". This sent Shahira into a total tailspin - ranting in Arabic and storming around, slamming her hotel room door. I thought to myself "holy shit". Prior to this upheaval he told us matter of factly that if we wanted any drugs not to get them on the street but to go to him directly, as he was friends with the chief of police who happened to have the cleanest drugs. Things were not looking too promising. 

Shahira was livid as she ranted on all night to me about how nobody calls her names and she would set out to make this guy's life miserable. Thankfully we had separate rooms, but I tried to reason with her before retiring for the night, happy to have my own little haven. 

So we were excited in the morning about being able to spend the day lounging by the pool, but the excitement didn't last long. Shahira didn't take my advice about slathering on the sun screen and proceeded to burn to a crisp, further igniting her foul mood. 

So the show was to begin, but not before Shahira continued to give Marc Anthony a piece of her mind. This set off a battle of the egos. Marc Anthony would introduce us in Arabic, saying something like here's Kamala the Star and the other dancer who's not so good, not knowing she understood everything he said. So she came up with schemes each night to sabotage the show, and he switched his intros to Spanish, where I could understand and translate for her the put downs in his introduction of her. She would walk off the stage early or not come on for her solo and would sit backstage gleefully as he hemmed and hawed on stage. Now he was really pissed.

One night she went out for her solo, and boom, the bra strap broke and two foam pads bounced to the stage. She came running back in the dressing room aghast. Marc Anthony came out for his song and proceeded to kick the pads around the stage as he sang and one point picked one up, examined it and threw it into the audience. Shahira backstage kept saying "what's he doing, what's he doing" as I peeked through the door, eyeing the spectacle. I didn't tell her, fearing new heights of retribution.  

I was miserable daily. The novelty of the fancy pool wore off. Going into town with Shahira was hell, as she would insult the merchants selling the goods in the street and basically act like the ugly American. For a girl who had performed around the world, from Africa to London to the Middle East, she sure hadn't learned the rules of etiquette. 

I was caught between the two egos, each one complaining to me about the other. I got out the calendar and started counting down the days - I didn't think I could handle the whole run. 

The happy trio, Kamala, Marc Anthony & Shahira

So days turned into nights and weeks passed. It was tense, and everyday was new drama with the two enemies trying to outdo each other - tit for tat. At one point all the entertainers went out to a nightclub for what was supposed to be a night of fun. I ended up sobbing at the table in front of everyone, which was something I had never done before. I was fairly tough, and not a crybaby so this was unusual.

Then I got sick. And I was sicker than a dog. I couldn't get off the bed from some sort of food poisoning, and I had really tried to be careful. I didn't get much sympathy from my co-workers, and somehow I managed to make it on the stage and then run off to the bathroom where I lay flat on the floor in front of the toilet in a sweat. Things had gotten so bad between Marc Anthony and Shahira that he told me he was contacting the chief of police, and would make it so she would never be seen again. I went to the hotel doctor who had a little office with a large pistol on the desk which he hid down his pants before examining me. I was given some remedy for Montezuma's Revenge and told to rest. 

I got the bright idea to check the airlines to see if I could change our flights. Thankfully we still had the tickets and our passports in our possession. I changed the tickets to leave a week or so early and went to inform Marc Anthony, trying to figure out how to sugar coat the news and still get paid. I felt I needed to get Shahira out of there for her own safety, not to mention get me home to recuperate. 

We met with Marc Anthony and the hotel manager. I think I played on their sympathies in a convincing way, with my naive American innocent act. Saying how I was too sick to function. Somehow, very reluctantly the manager counted out American cash for the two of us - we were paid in full for our time. 

Until we got on the plane the following day I was looking over my shoulder for nefarious characters waiting to ambush us. I'm sure that Marc Anthony was sorry for the day he ever laid eyes on us. I didn't regret going, but I was sure as hell glad to get back to LA in one piece.

And I was returning to start a whole new way of life. For the first time in many years I was to start a non dancing job - working part time for Delta Airlines. I could see the writing on the wall, especially with the urging of my husband. It was time to supplement Bellydance with a "civilian" job.

Next up - the late 80s and the fall of the "It" Girl

Viva Las Vegas?!

I was back to working in LA clubs which seemed pretty anticlimactic. It was sad to see the empty streets of Los Angeles when one was accustomed to the Euro street life.

I can't say exactly where I was performing at the time, but my guess is most of the clubs were sputtering and my guess is this was about 1982. I know I was fully employed since dancing was my only source of income and I had rent to pay.

Somehow I was asked to audition for a job at the Aladdin Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. This was the old Aladdin Hotel - with a slight nod to the Arabian nights but otherwise just a big ugly box of a hotel/casino at the very end of the Vegas Strip. After auditioning I was contacted that the job was mine. Which brings me to the subject of auditioning (I will digress a bit here). I think the times I auditioned could be counted on one hand. It was something we didn't do in the day - again because we felt if we performed we got paid. Period.

So I was off to Sin City, settling into the Airport Motel which was where a lot of transient entertainers resided during their contracts. Lodging was not provided by the hotels and casinos in those days, which was the same as when I went on the road with Guy Chookoorian. Always searching for the cheapest digs.

This was not the best job by any means, but I worked out a decent week's wages (I remember the other entertainers being annoyed that I was paid more than they were, certainly more than the showgirls or dancers in the big rooms). I was to dance in what I believe was called the "Sinbad Room", a lounge in the middle of the casino where acts rotated 24/7. I had to do 6 shows a night (I think they were only about 10 minutes in length, but still!) 6 nights a week, and I was basically the act taking up time on the stage while the bands behind the curtain changed equipment. I brought a few cassette tapes with me, but way too few. Don't remember what they were but I was so sick of that music by the end of the run that I wanted to jump off a roof.

So here I was again, counting down the days until I could get out of there. Las Vegas at the time was a cowtown - again, deserted streets and a load of beehived country folk pulling the slots, who looked like they'd stepped out of an Elvis era time warp. I'm not a big Vegas fan, but it has

changed a lot for the better.

Because there were so many musicians backstage (mostly country or wannabe Wayne Newton type groups) I had a lot of people to talk to. Mostly we talked about how we could hardly wait to get out of there. There were a lot of ridiculous shenanigans going on - this one dating that one and all the intrigue that went with it. Again I stayed out of the whole thing.

And yet again, no photos of the time. If it would have been this day and age there would have been a million, but I don't think I even took a camera with me. I remember I grabbed a napkin as a souvenir, and even that got lost somewhere.

This was a very transitional time in my career, my life and my dancing itself. I was in love with Egyptian style, and though I had been dancing to Egyptian music in clubs with Egyptian musicians and dancers I still had no formal training in this style. My dancing was a hybrid of faux Egyptian and American Cabaret. I felt like I had two left feet. I was fortunate to take a few workshops from Bobby Ibrahim Farrah but this only shed light on how much I needed to learn. When a dancer works every night it's easy to get lazy about taking classes, and let's face it - not many who knew about Egyptian dance were teaching in those days. In a setting like the Aladdin Hotel, one needed all the bells and whistles of AmCab - veils, zills, swords, etc.

There was a sordid feel to this place. I remember one lone Middle Eastern man who would come to all my shows night after night. He was a high roller who was always bringing gifts, and took groups of us entertainers out to expensive shows. He didn't try hitting on me, more like he wanted to look impressive. As the weeks went on he started looking rundown and nervous. One of the final nights I saw him he offered me his fancy watch, asking me to buy it off him for a discount. I bought it and gave it to my future husband who was coming to visit me there. It was evident he had a gambling addiction and had blown his wad at the casino. I hated gambling, hated the sound of the slot machines and I was again itching to get out. I didn't renew my contract, even though my agent begged me and offered a raise. LA was nothing special at the time, but it still beat Vegas and I was ready to go home.

Next up: Escape from Acapulco, Mexico

London Calling

London was where it was at in the late '70s early '80s if you were a fan of Middle Eastern entertainment. Club after club, restaurant after restaurant, like LA, but these clubs were classy. Their proximity to the Middle East, and the money from the Gulf Countries guaranteed that the best music and dancers would be performing, the best champagne would be flowing (and sometimes not into mouths - a bit on that later) and the spending would be on overdrive.

My love of London at the time was more the theatre in the streets, courtesy of the Brits themselves - the clothes, the music. Trendy trendy trendy, changing season to season. LA was a deserted wasteland at the time, and so I loved seeing people in the streets in their creative get-ups. I was an observer, a little out of place, but like any Bellydancer at the time, walking into an Arab nightclub was like coming home. The music, the food, the smells, the ambience was familiar. We were all outcasts in this country.

The Arab clubs were an entity all their own - starting late in the evening and going until the wee hours of the morning. Lebanese of wealth and elegance (at least they appeared that way), and Gulf gentlemen arriving by cab or sometimes limo. The doorman always made sure no riffraff were allowed inside.  I worked at El Nile on New Bond Street, a nice address to be sure, but by the time I was there it was a bit of a faded shadow of its former grandeur. Our publicity photos were outside on the street. I was told mine was billed (in Arabic) as "The Star from Hollywood". I could have sworn I snapped a photo of me in front of that display case, but maybe it was taken by the boyfriend I had at the time, and lord knows where he (or the photo) ended up.

El Nile Entrance Pass

As the new kid in town I was the first dancer of the evening, which was the most lowly slot. The dancers got better and the musicians multiplied as the night went on, but I was more than thrilled to be done early. Other dancers might have been offended, but I felt this was the perfect spot for me to get my bearings. All the dancers were of the new and popular Egyptian style, from the dancing to the costumes. I had a few fancy Egyptian costumes, but not enough. My homemade costumes that I could get by with at home weren't good enough, but there were no places to buy costumes. Occasionally a woman I knew would come in from the Middle East with a bounty of bedazzled costumes at close to $1000 a pop. I did spring for a few of them. Many of the dancers I met at the club didn't speak English, were aggressive and not too interested in making my acquaintance. This wasn't the "we're all dance sisters" atmosphere of today. This was work. My MO was to be so easy going, nice and naive so that I would be left alone. This was very calculated on my part, but I was going for the wide eyed innocent American ploy which for some reason worked and I kept my reputation as the "good girl". The musicians and the owner took me under their wing like the protected little sister.

I found a little one room flat in Pimlico and would take a cab to and from work. One cabby asked why in God's name was I going to a place like this.  Must have thought I was a prostitute all tarted up in wig and eyelashes, naively going to a place full of swarthy foreigners. For my call time (I believe around 11pm - it's honestly all a blur) I would arrive at a fairly empty place. There were more people on stage than in the audience. A few B-girls getting ready for the long night of "drinking" bucket loads of champagne (more like secretly pouring it out and then ordering another bottle which a johnny-on-the-spot waiter would gladly produce with a flourish). At the end of the night I can only imagine the tabs that were wracked up, not that these wealthy patrons cared.

Aside from the few hours I spent at the club, I lead a life of solitude. I didn't want to hang out at El Nile all night so I rarely saw the other acts. To go to another club was an expensive ordeal and usually required an invite from a fellow dancer to get out of being sat at a table and receiving a suspiciously bloated tab. I once went to see Mona Saiid dance since word was she was the toast of the town, and I believe it was at a swanky club called L'Auberge. Or was it The Empress? I know I saw my LA co-worker Lorena at Empress. Boy was she in her element - no qualms about drinking champagne with the wealthy patrons. I later heard she claimed to have married a Greek prince and was now Greek royalty. Anyway, impressive place with amazing music -  I think Aboud Abdel Al was playing there, but maybe that's just wishful thinking. Back to Mona - I remember her swishing in, all statuesque with fur and jewels - just totally Miss Thing. I didn't dare approach her. Nothing like a true diva to make a girl feel like Miss Frump USA. What a performer. A jaw dropping drum solo I'll never forget. There was a current of sexiness in that woman that could electrify a room.

Back to the solitude - being horribly shy, I didn't take London by storm. I really struggled with what I now recognize as depression and low self esteem. So as wonderful as it all was in retrospect, the reality was not all that glittered was gold.

 The big dancers were having their music written for them. Since I was not an A-lister I would get the generic music in the repertoire including great songs like Hani, Mahrajan and Sahara City. There was always an intoxicating taxim with the various instruments,  topped off with a drum solo. Because people were just starting to drift in, I was more a part of the ambience. But there were those nights where champagne or gifts were brought to the stage, along with piles of pound notes. I have no photos of the time. I don't think we were allowed to take photos, I don't know. It would have been awkward to ask someone to snap a picture. Throughout my '70s and early '80s career - when I should have been taking lots of snapshots, it just didn't seem to cross my mind! As the decades went on there were more and more photos to share and now people document their every move. I had no phone so all correspondence was done by letter, and the frequent visits to the public phone.

So I settled in to British life by day, Arab life by night, and one day blurred into another. As usual, being on the road to me meant counting down the days on the calendar. I admire dancers who stay with contracts for years. I suffered from a "my hat don't hang on the same nail too long" syndrome. As Merle Haggard poetically articulated my plight "Every front door found me hopin' I would find the backdoor open..." And so it was a fabulous dream come true job, but I was anxious to move on and head over to the continent to do some traveling and meet up with some friends. Then I would head home and come back to England. I thought it would all never end, that the clubs would always be there, that I would always be young and employable and could come and go as I pleased, but naturally that was not to be. It seems as quickly as the clubs proliferated, they also began to close down. Now the dancers left their beautiful Arabic music behind to start dancing a hundred miles an hour in the Greek, Turkish and Armenian restaurants. I think the era of the grand Arabic nightclubs was finally over in maybe 1982 or 1983. Now one can only find this wonderful experience on the stages of Egypt. But for that brief moment in Bellydance history, I was very fortunate to be a dancer in the right time and place. I would say these years were definitely a peak. But what goes up must eventually go down, and my days as an "It Girl" were numbered.

Next Up - Viva Las Vegas?