Dark Side Tribal
American Tribal Style and Tribal Fusion Belly Dance
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Dancer Bios
Virginia Hojas
Virginia started belly dancing in Athens, OH in 2005. While searching the web she came across the Fat Chance Belly Dance website, and fell in love. She then started driving three hours once a week to study ATS with Sacred Shimmy in Columbus, OH. After moving to Bloomington she started taking classes with Ann Shaffer and DST, and was a member of their student troupe, the Tribalistas, for 2 years. Virginia completed her GSATS certification with Carolena Nericcio and Megha Gavin in 2010. Shortly after she stepped into the Dark Side, and could not be happier.
Mollie began taking belly dancing classes with Ann Shaffer in 2006. She was looking for a fun way to get some exercise and experience some female empowerment, but instead found a fabulous obsession! She danced with DST's student troupe, The Tribalistas, for two years before crossing over to the dark side in 2010, and is ecstatic to be dancing with these lovely ladies. In addition to ATS, she is also interested in fusion and folkloric styles. When she's not dancing, Mollie is into yoga, marathon training, and writing her dissertation in musicology.
Virginia started belly dancing in Athens, OH in 2005. While searching the web she came across the Fat Chance Belly Dance website, and fell in love. She then started driving three hours once a week to study ATS with Sacred Shimmy in Columbus, OH. After moving to Bloomington she started taking classes with Ann Shaffer and DST, and was a member of their student troupe, the Tribalistas, for 2 years. Virginia completed her GSATS certification with Carolena Nericcio and Megha Gavin in 2010. Shortly after she stepped into the Dark Side, and could not be happier.
Mollie Ables
Mollie began taking belly dancing classes with Ann Shaffer in 2006. She was looking for a fun way to get some exercise and experience some female empowerment, but instead found a fabulous obsession! She danced with DST's student troupe, The Tribalistas, for two years before crossing over to the dark side in 2010, and is ecstatic to be dancing with these lovely ladies. In addition to ATS, she is also interested in fusion and folkloric styles. When she's not dancing, Mollie is into yoga, marathon training, and writing her dissertation in musicology.
Heather Pund
Heather started dancing around 1996 and had studied various styles before she found herself caught up in turbans, tassels and group improv. She feels ATS most clearly conveys th
e feelings of camaraderie and communication she feels when dancing. Dance is not so much about what one has to say personally as it is about what one can say with fellow dancers. So while she may study many forms, her heart will always be hung with kuchi bits and cowrie shells. She has worked with several local troupes; starting in Banat Mara, one of the founding four of Different Drummer and finally co-founding Dark Side Tribal in 2006. She currently lives in The House of The Rising Moon with a Yeti, a furry pudding and an alien stuck in the wrong encounter suit. Other pursuits include SCA fencing, sewing, spinning and assorted house-wifery.
Ann Shaffer
Ann had her first taste of bellydance in 1998, then began learning in
earnest in 2001. While she initially studied raks sharki and various
folkloric styles of bellydance, she found her calling in tribal when
she began studying ATS in 2002. She performed with many dance troupes in Bloomington before co-founding Dark Side Tribal in 2006. In
addition to the wonderful local teachers with whom Ann studied, she
has taken classes and workshops with such bellydance luminaries as
Carolena Nericcio, Megha Gavin, Paulette Rees-Denis, Kajira Djoumanha, Heather Stantz, Jill Parker, Rachel Brice, Sharon Kihara, Moria Chappell, Kami Liddle, Amy Sigil, Karim Nagi, Artemis Mourat, and Dalia Carella. She has noticed that bellydance is a gateway dance, under the influence of which she's begun to experiment with incorporating other dance styles into her fusion, including flamenco, modern dance, hip hop, and west African Dance.
earnest in 2001. While she initially studied raks sharki and various
folkloric styles of bellydance, she found her calling in tribal when
she began studying ATS in 2002. She performed with many dance troupes in Bloomington before co-founding Dark Side Tribal in 2006. In
addition to the wonderful local teachers with whom Ann studied, she
has taken classes and workshops with such bellydance luminaries as
Carolena Nericcio, Megha Gavin, Paulette Rees-Denis, Kajira Djoumanha, Heather Stantz, Jill Parker, Rachel Brice, Sharon Kihara, Moria Chappell, Kami Liddle, Amy Sigil, Karim Nagi, Artemis Mourat, and Dalia Carella. She has noticed that bellydance is a gateway dance, under the influence of which she's begun to experiment with incorporating other dance styles into her fusion, including flamenco, modern dance, hip hop, and west African Dance.
Grace MacNeil
Grace has been studying and performing a variety of dance forms over the past 16 years of this lifetime, and is sure she was stomping dirt in others too! Grace took her first belly dance classes in 2000 with Onca of Baraka Mundi (formerly Tribe Om) and was hooked. She moved to New Hampshire where she studied and performed Cabaret and Folkloric styles with Catherine Skove, director of The Moving Company, and The Talking Hips dance troupe, in Keene. In 2003 Grace spent two weeks in Portland, Oregon studying the basics of Gypsy Caravan's style of tribal dancing with Paulette Rees-Denis. Grace is thrilled to have met up with the lovely ladies of Dark Side Tribal and began studying with them in the fall of 2006, and dancing with them in the summer of 2007. She sees ATS belly dance as a powerful foundation on which to build her personal form. Grace is also a 2 year student of West African dance, and currently studies with Harmony Harris and Dr. Djo Bi in Bloomington. At home she is the mom of three great kids, and is building a small farm with her husband. Along with other ventures, Grace has recently been seen wrestling rams, riding horses through the Black Hills of South Dakota, modeling rooster feathers, and drinking way too much coffee! Love.
Alice Dobie-Galuska
Alice became a member of Dark Side Tribal in 2007 and has been studying American Tribal Style Belly Dance since 2002. She began to study and perform dance while attending Beloit College in the late 1980's. Alice is a mother of two and works as an academic advisor at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. She and her husband and children have recently become "urban homesteaders", living and working in town to grow food for their own use and to share with neighbors.
