Beirut’s Male Belly Dancer

“Alexandre Paulikevitch is one of the few male baladi dancers in the Middle East. He learned how to dance from watching Egypt’s black and white movies and now performs as a soloist, challenging his audiences to think differently about baladi – not only as a post-colonial dance that’s distant from ‘belly-dancing’ or ‘danse orientale’ but as a dance that men and women alike can perform. … We went to his class in Beirut to find out what he’s doing to revolutionise this Eastern dance.” (video)”