Belly Dancers from across the North East attended the Durham Hafla in Support of Tesco’s Charities The British Heart Foundation and Diabetes UK for a fabulous night at Planet Leisure recently.
Les Fleur Vintages (Tricia Stewart, Lesley Ann Dixon and Maxine Watchman) hosted the belly dance event inviting all their belly dance friends to pay £5 to perform.
Professional belly dance teachers and troupes filled the dance floor in traditional sparkling and vibrant costumes to showcase the many styles of belly dance including Baladi, Saidi, Tribal and Sha’abi to raise money for two very important causes. John Bailey Community Champion from Tesco Bishop Auckland supported the evening and thanked the dancers and audience for their generous support stating that over £430 was raised on the night with more money to be collected.
Les Fleur Vintages belly dance trio kicked the night off with a Golden Era number followed by professional performances from Glennis Larum; Val Grainger’s Tribal Masquers from Redcar; Vanessa Gooding from Hartlepool; Victoria Armstrong from Darlington; Claire Stobbs from Wallsend and Kay Taylors amazing Helwa troupe. Everyone was in a spin as Samantha Smyth stunned the audience performing an oriental fantasy with her butterfly wings, followed by the fabulous Joanne Miller dancing to a fast and funky sha’abi number.
Helwa are a North East Troupe consisting of students that study with Kay Taylor. You can find out more about bellydance classes on www.nebellydance.uk Helwa can be booked by contacting Kay on 0191 565 2920 or through www.bookabelly.com John Bailey (Tesco’s Community Champion) thanked all for supporting the charities.
Tricia Stewart is in the process of setting up a social enterprise to help make a difference to people’s lives through education and training. She likes to organise events to raise money for good causes especially when it involves dancing and having fun. Tricia’s husband Craig an I.T. Manager for DISC in Newton Aycliffe helped out using his technical skills and organised all the music for the evening.
The belly dancers and John Bailey would like to thank Planet Leisure in Newton Aycliffe for offering their fantastic facilities for free with a massive thank you to Shaun, Andy and Adam who worked so hard to put the rooms together and supported the event before and throughout the night making sure the evening went without a hitch. Tricia said she has never known such fantastic staff, nothing was a problem to any of them and they werehard working with a fabulous sense of humour.
A big thank you to Vicky Hewish who was compere for the evening, Colin and Ann Williams who organised the raffle, Sheena Stephenson who collected tickets at the door and the amazing photographer Beki Metcalfe.
