The main class leader for this site is Jo Ashbeth...

Other teachers or guest workshops leaders will have biographies added as appropriate.

Jo Ashbeth

I started dancing as a small child, attending the range of ballet, tap and modern and ballroom lessons over the years. I was also involved in theatre. As I grew to be an adult none of them quite stuck, though I still loved dancing. I started searching for which instrument i should be playing but eventually concluded I wasn't a musician. Then, around the turn of the millenium I found Belly Dance. I was hooked, soon i was taking 3 lessons a week and practicing in between. Students of my previous teacher were not meant to perform, without having at least 6 months to a years training, I was lucky enough to be allowed to participate in a show for a paying audience after a couple of months (I was in pretty intensive training by then and had easily packed over 6 months of weekly classes into that time).

After a few of years i was used to dancing with our main class in shopping centres or with other students, or my teacher at haflahs and alone with my partners band. I still wanted more so I found a band I could be the dancer with, which suited my style. I danced with a Hawkwind tribute act, one of my favorite gigs involved dancing with another dancer who I hadn't met until that evening, where we performed a lovely 'wings' duet (the first time I had danced properly with wings too!) I carried on with Assassins of Silence until I moved out of their area, and I am still one of their dancers for any gigs in the south west. I have danced on camera too, as part of my extra/acting work - having had a walk-on, or rather jump-on part in a kids sketch show as one of a trio of belly dancers who leapt out of a transit van Charlies Angel style and danced around a bomb disposal expert in the street (well, it was a kids comedy show).

I love belly dancing, even though I have never got into a particular style. Some teachers specialise in Egyptian, some Cabaret/Golden Age, some Turkish, some ATS, some Gypsy - if anything I specialise in fusion with interpretive dance and just making it fun. That and dance being a spiritual experience, dancing from the soul. I love the way I can loose myself in dancing, how hours can pass by and tensions just flow away. I love the connection with live music as we create together. I love letting impulse flow and switching the mind off to let the body dance to the music.

I had an excellent teacher - Sara Shrapnell, though I have attended workshops and other classes with many and various teachers including, to my delight, Morocco of New York and other wonderful teachers like Vashti, Afra AlKahira and Heike Humphries, and Melanie in Bristol. I carry on attending workshops whenever I have time and money. I prefer advanced workshops which challenge and push me, however as I will tell all my students - whatever level you're at it doesn't hurt to practice the basics, and a new teachers take is always useful.

I have taught belly dance workshops in a number of settings from the freedom of the middle of a field at a camp in the new forest, to a cultural diversity day at a womens prison.

I would have been teaching regular classes years ago but Sara was a full time teacher and had pretty much cornered the market for belly dance classes in the hampshire/berkshire area, so it has delighted me, on moving back to the south west to find I can at last start running my own regular classes.

I have been teaching classes in Devon since April 09 and hope to continue to do so for many years to come.

I am also a qualified sports coach and apply these principles to my belly dance classes.

I also teach workshops and in 2010 am teaching n introductory taster belly dance class at Lapstock and other private bookings through to teaching at the Mersin Day of Dance two specialist workshops. One is on Balance and turning in dance, the other is a Stretches workshop. I have a number of performance bookings through 2010 too WI Turkish nights to Twinning Associations Egyptian nights, and dancing at the day of dance in Hampshire.

most studio photos on this site are by robery babylon.

http://www.robertbabylon.com/

performance photos are by a selection of people including ( but not limited to):

pink floral outfit on this page: Kathryn Goddard of

http://www.capturethismoment.org/

if you see a photo by yourself here and want to get a credit added her just email with details