Kim Hall

Kim began her dancing career as a child studying ballet but then quickly became heavily involved in a gymnastics career spanning 10 years. During this time she was a National squad member for artistic gymnastics, became British Champion in Sports Acrobatics as a mixed pair and was a Great Britain squad member performing at the Royal Albert Hall. In the latter stages of her gymnastics career, she competed as a Rhythmic gymnast and eventually ran her own club and choreographed for many youngsters. She then qualified as a Chartered Physiotherapist and became the National Gymnastics coach for the British men’s disabilities team.

In 2000, Kim began yearning to perform again and accidently stumbled upon a belly dance summer school. Two years later she saw the work of Suraya Hilal and was completely bowled over by at last finding a great and challenging new pathway to pursue! Kim has since studied with Anji Jackson-Main, Aurora Gercke, Barbara York, Lisa Wedgwood, Suraya Hilal and Beatrice Grognard. She has also worked with the Musicians of the Nile in Belgium and Luxor, which then inspired her passion to create traditional Egyptian percussion and music with youngsters in the UK. She is the newest member of the dance company Tabeeya which she joined 3 years ago.

She currently runs her own dance, percussion and Baladi band and performance group for children ranging from 5 to 16, known as Rhythms of Egypt Drum and Dance. This group comprises 30 plus dancers and 25 young musicians. For the past two years the group has entered the Music for Youth World Music Awards and this year the dancers will perform live with tabla, dhola and the Baladi band. Especially exciting are the young group of Male Tahtib dancers who perform regularly with the group both in dance festivals and professional dance shows. Kim has also combined her teaching of Raqs Sharqi with her physiotherapy background by enabling adults with a learning disability to enjoy this fantasic way of expressing themselves often in a performance situation.

Kim is more usually known as” the double stick dancer,” where her gymnastics background enables her to perform an exciting Ghawazee style of the dance, mostly performed whilst improvising to live music from Sheikh Taha, Tim Garside, Ibrahim and Ali El Minyawi, Guy Schalom, El Gamal Accordi and Emile Bassili (and more recently by a young talented 13 year old tabla player Miss Poppy Hall, her own resident drummer!)