About Andrea: Summary

Andrea Hanslip is an oriental dancer (belly dancer) and instructor from Calgary, Alberta. She has danced since the age of four, taking classes in ballet, tap, modern, jazz, African, ballroom, and oriental. She has also practiced yoga for the last nine years.

Andrea came to oriental dance due to chronic back pain and the after-effects of a car accident, having been told that oriental dance would enhance her core stability and help with recovery (as well as provide a good, safe workout). Two great things resulted: she is now mostly pain-free and has found a dance form that she loves and will be able to continue with for several decades.

Andrea believes that the oriental dance form is ideal for women of all ages and cultural backgrounds. She teaches belly dance classes in Calgary.

Details

Andrea began her many years of dance at the age of 4 with a ballet class. The next year, she tried tap and participated in her first dance show (so it has now been over 30 years since her first performance!). At age 6, she took modern. Age 7 brought her to her primary love over the next number of years: jazz. She occasionally took ballet again, but this was always a supplement. She progressed through all the levels of Al Gilbert’s jazz program, then went on to advanced classes. At the age of 14, she ran out of advanced levels that she could take at her current studio, so she moved to Allan Cozzubbo’s studio, which had several advanced jazz levels. During her time at Cozzubbo’s, Andrea continued to perform and began to compete.

At age 12, Andrea also became an artistic roller skater (figure skating on wheels – yes, it really is a sport!) and later won a silver medal at the nationals in the ladies’ novice category.

Partially due to teenage angst, she stopped skating at 16 and stopped dance classes at 17, becoming fascinated instead with aerobics classes of various kinds and with weightlifting.

However, she returned to dance at 18, working in a restaurant/nightclub in their floorshow. The next summer, Andrea took the AFLCA (Alberta Fitness Leadership) course.

Now an “adult” and looking for something different to do, Andrea took a number of adult tap classes (community, dance schools, and, briefly, Decidedly Jazz Danceworks) and also Al Gilbert’s tap 5 (just to see if she could do it). Then, Andrea took a jazz class at the University of Calgary and studied African dance at Decidedly Jazz Danceworks. As well, she enrolled in the University of Calgary’s Ballroom Dance Club.

More recently, Andrea has spent her time with yoga and meditation classes and with oriental dance. (She also did Jazzercise for a while and really enjoyed it.) She has studied oriental dance with Hadia, Tahia, Jumanah, and Nath Keo and has done workhops with Jalilah, Sabura, Helene Eriksen, Amir Thaleb and Sahra Saeeda.

She continues to take classes in oriental dance because she believes that we are never finished learning. Andrea has also recently completed teacher training Levels 1 and 2 with Hadia.