My name is Stathia, I was born and raised in Athens and I am a dancer - performer and dance teacher.
My journey in dance started almost as soon as my journey in life began. That's why , life and dance , for me are two intertwined concepts.
I was dancing well before I started walking and thanks to my mum , who saw and admired this vocation of mine, I started ballet and modern dance from the age of six. I continued having Russian ballet and modern as my base and trying various other genres from time to time , searching for my dance identity.
When I was 18 I was lucky enough to meet an Oriental dancer and teacher and because of my liking for her I started lessons with her without even imagining at the time that this was the dance that would click with me and give me - not only the dance identity I was looking for - but also a new meaning in my life.
Since then I started to train and become more and more passionate every day with Raqs Sharki - as the Egyptians call it - and in the meantime I started to deal with Tribal Fusion Bellydance.
To this day, I have never ceased to be impressed by the rich heritage of the Arab world. And this is my main goal as a teacher, to eliminate the westernized perception that Oriental is a simplistic and insubstantial dance, but also to break down the prejudice that it is a sexual dance and a dance that caters only to women and only to women with a certain body type, because it is much more than that. It is culture, it is history, it is soul, it is art. It requires knowledge , technique , study , creativity , imagination , dedication and above all respect for its roots.
Dance has given me the opportunity to express what words may not be able to say. It is for me a means of identifying myself and my psyche.
I am attracted to the teaching part because I teach what I love and I have the opportunity to learn through it.
I enjoy using dance to entertain people and interact with them, but what I love most is the performance part because by performing a song through dance I have the opportunity to "tell" my own little experiential story.
