Jan Hudson

Jan has 18 years experience in Egyptian dance and has been teaching and performing for 13 years in Leeds and elsewhere in the UK.

Her first introduction to Middle Eastern music and dance in 1982 was the beautiful  muwashahat piece 'Lama Bada Yatassana'. This inspired Jan from 1989 to study the dance, first with Betty Thompson with whom she still performs regularly. The beauty, grace and elegance of the dance led Jan to further study; from 1994 with the former Hilal School and from 1997 with the Raqs Sharqi Society. She graduated from the Society’s Foundation Teacher Training course in 2000.

After obtaining a City and Guilds Certificate in Further Education Teaching in 2006, Jan has taken her work into schools and colleges teaching all ages from 5 to 18 years.Jan says: ‘It is very exciting, being able to show young people that dances of Egypt are a wonderful art form. At present I am researching Sha'abi (rural-inspired) Egyptian street music from Cairo today.  The dance gives me constant inspiration - it is always evolving.  We can never ever learn it all - we just have fun trying.’