| Ja'niesa bint asya welcomes you! |
| My love affair with movement, dance, and mainly performance started from the very beginning! At the early age of 2 ½, I was enrolled in tap and ballet in Logansport, Indiana. My training continued on into hip-hop, salsa, flamenco, and stage performance throughout school and college. During my elementary days, my interest in performing grew, and I would frequently dance, act, and sing in the Children’s Civic Theater, and Adult Civic Theatre. I have performed in many plays including Wizard of Oz, The Diary of Anne Frank, Grease, Cinderella, Damn Yankees, Oklahoma, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Summer Picnic. I also began teaching and assisting in dance class at the age13. From here I continued to teach ballet, character, hip-hop, and tap classes and local dance teams throughout school and college. In 2005 I started my own personal dance classes in collaboration with a local gymnastics school in eastern Indiana. Up until this point in my life, Belly Dancing had never been anything I had pursued. Surprisingly, a trip to a movie theatre in August of 2006, would lead me to my current belly dancing life! Upon questioning a worker at the theatre about her henna, I was introduced to Elizabeth, and encouraged to take Belly Dancing lessons with Carenza Bint Asya at her studio in Muncie, Indiana. From that point on my entire life changed! I left the gymnastics studio to teach hip-hop at Carenza’s Caravan Dance Studio. In exchange I received the best changes in my life to date. I had no idea that belly dancing would one day be my specialty in dance. Carenza and her troupe members gave me intense dance training, along with my newest dance passion of Indian/Bollywood, and continued to change my experience and technique for the better! Since 2006 I have become completely and utterly in love with the beauty, grace, and fulfillment that belly dancing has brought to my life. Being the hardest form of dance training I have endured to date, I became fully engaged and enamored with this dance form. Through the training of Carenza and my past dance experience, I draw on the forms of the Orient, Indian, Ballet, and Hip-Hop to round out my tribal fusion style of belly dancing. The Egyptian Cabaret dancers and Zoë Jakes are huge influences for me as well! Currently I have taken courses from Carenza, Liz, Dunya, Zoë Jakes, Moria Chappell and Yael Becker. Somehow, performing for a crowd has always just felt so right and natural! I love to entertain others and share the joy of dancing! I hope our paths cross soon! |
| What does Ja'niesa bint Asya mean? :Ja’Niesa: Funny, loving, hyper child. Bint Asya: Taken from my instructor Carenza Bint is Arabic for "Daughter of" Asya in Arabic is a variation of the word Asia meaning "lively" or "resurrection |
| Al Salaam Alaikum (Peace be upon you) |
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