Festival Headliners 2020

Tjarda is a thoughtful and genuine coach, choreographer, dancer, movement & yoga instructor. She is well-known for her Contemporary Fusion Bellydance style, innovative and meaningful choreographies and creative movement vocabulary. Her work has inspired peers and audiences around the globe and triggers many in finding their own path. Tjarda is the inventive force behind award-winning troupe The Uzumé Dance Company and The Amano Project and she often teams up with other dancers in the business.

Tjarda teaches the Friday 3-hour intensive this year and performs in the Gala Show on Saturday.

Maya Acid is a Tribal and Fusion Bellydancer well known for her magnetic stage presence, and heart for experimental bellydance. Also a dancer of the American Tribal Style or ATS, which is defined by group improvisation so in tune that you swear it is a choreography. ATS movements and costumes are inspired by folkloric dances of the Middle East, North Africa, and India. Maya Acid leads a troupe in Rotterdam, and joined by ATS dance groups from Den Haag and Amsterdam, they make up the Dutch Tribal Collective!

Dutch Tribal Collective performs in the Gala Show.

Nargis is an internationally recognised dancer of classical Bellydance, Indian Fusion, and Bollywood, and the highest qualified in Holland. She continually trains to develop her own dance training methods and regularly produces her own shows and special workshop weekends. Since 2014 Nargis has been involved with Shimmy Shake as performer, expert panel member, leader of projects and coach. In this Shimmy Shake Festival, we have created a special project around her talent by matching her with a variety of world music musicians from CoDarts.  

Nargis dances in the Gala Show and will teach you how to move Bollywood style in the Step-Up on Sunday.

Choreographer in Residence at Korzo Theater in Den Haag, Rutkay is an upcoming Turkish-Dutch male dancer and will premiere his own version of an Oriental solo in a costume especially made for him in Turkey. Last year he started research into Turkish dance traditions and will premiere a new dance at our festival. Rutkay's creations are based on emotional experiences and always tell a story. The dearly beloved people in his life inspire lots of his work. Music and musicality are for him as important as the vocabulary of his choreographies. His style is recognizable by its technicality and very organic movements.

Rutkay shows his Oriental solo in the Gala Show on Saturday.

Nakari Dance Company, founded in 2008, consists of Doro Altenburger & Michaela Hamajova. They are dancing and living in Vienna and traveling for dance and further education across Europe and the wider world.

The ATS Wüstenrose Style is Nakari’s own creation, developed in Vienna from American Tribal Style by Fat Chance Bellydance, Blacksheep Bellydance, and Gypsy Caravan Variations.

You can join Nakari's workshop ATS Wüstenrose Style on Saturday.

Vesna comes from Slovenia and is an extremely versatile artist, her work reaching far beyond dance. Her strengths lie in her unique way of combining all forms of art, reflected in her extravagant costume designs and make-up artistry.

Vesna's choreographies, for herself but also for the dance group Ambrosia, are exuberant, energetic and above all extremely creative. Her passion and focus lie in creating intense storylines that captivate the audience, as well as developing and infusing life to an interesting variety of stage archetypes who pull the audience to another dimension.

Saturday 7th November you can learn new choreography techniques from Vesna, the queen of dance herself.