Who the hell are we?

Our belly dance troupe, Soleil d’Egypte, grew out of a university dance society. We have been performing together since October 2005, and made the decision to stay together as a professional performance group, following various dancers’ graduations in June 2006. We are based in Oxford, Reading and London, and perform regularly at a variety of festivals, balls, dinners and special events.

Soleil d’Egypte perform a unique style of belly dance fusion. We have learnt our dance form from numerous different sources, so do not follow a particularly “pure” form of either Turkish or Egyptian or any other style. We take the moves we like best from the rich variety available to us, and are influenced by the various other dance forms that our dancers have learnt over the years. Expect to see moves from African dance, flamenco, hip hop and salsa cropping up in our belly dancing!

Likewise our approach to choreography is also influenced by contemporary and jazz dance. Our choice of music varies from traditional to Arabic pop, to Western music. Various dancers experiment with fusing belly dance with different styles of music, so you may see a soloist experimenting with belly dance and ballet, performed to classical music, or sword dance with martial arts thrown in, danced to a western rock track!

How come the French name?

The name Soleil d’Egypte comes from a track of the same name by one of our favourite singers, Natacha Atlas, who performs a mixture of French and Arabic fusion. Many of her tracks have inspired our choreography, including the beautiful song Soleil d’Egypte (Egyptian Sun).

We chose a French name for our troupe, as we wanted to convey a cosmopolitan flavour. We felt that if we chose either an Arabic, or Turkish name, that it might be limiting in terms of the perceptions of the style of dance that we perform. It is also a nod to the cosmopolitan nature of the dancers!