Alia Thabit Traditional & Avant-Garde Belly Dance

Alia offers belly dancing classes, coaching and private lessons, and corporate training programs. She welcomes beginners through professional dancers and teachers. Alia champions belly dance as a vehicle for healing and joy.

 

Classes may focus on performance, teaching, or emotional and physical well-being and healing. Private lessons and corporate programs are also available. Alia has over 30 years of experience as a professional educator, working with all ages from pre-K through college and beyond. She has taught at the college level for 20 years, and online college courses for over 10 years.

 

An Arab-American and a Vermont Juried Artist, Alia draws from decades of immersion in technique, history, regional and folkloric styles, props, theatrical and fusion elements, costuming, music, choreography, improvisation, and performance.
Alia explores the traditional roots of her heritage as well as cross-cultural and Western influences, bridging the gap between East and West. Her inspirations range from the strictly traditional to the avant-garde. Enriching a profound feeling for the music with intensive study, she articulates this swirl of influences while retaining an authentic Eastern sensibility. Alia empowers students, bringing out their beauty, confidence, and unique personal expression.

 

Alia specializes in solo and group improvisation and choreography, using collaborative strategies and flexible teams, with narrative, symbolic, and movement-based structures, grounded in the principles of traditional Oriental music and dance.

 

Working with choreography and improvisation, Alia develops students’ understanding of dance structure and musical interpretation. Students respond to her warmth, humor, and energy as well as her focus on technical excellence and evocative joy.