Kalaeido World Percussion and Dance Company
Kaleido World Percussion and Dance Company
Our Goals for Dance:
• Teach women and girls of all ages American Tribal Style Dance as defined by Fat Chance Belly Dance and other world dance styles with a goal of future performance.
• Teach women and girls of all ages and cultures to recognize and be able to play some traditional North African and Latin rhythms and other world rhythms, with an opportunity to play them on finger cymbals and other hand percussion instruments.
• Enjoy dancing to live drumming and percussion.
• Develop strength, flexibility, grace, balance, posture and enjoy the company of our fellow dancers!
Our Goals for Percussion:
• Explore and play traditional north African, latin and other world rhythms on traditional instruments with men and women.
• Develop a wide variety of percussion numbers for performance which may be performed with and without dancers.
• Develop performance numbers that are suitable for and in harmony with dancers.
Our goals for Percussion and Dance:
• We wish our dance and percussion performances to each be strong and able to stand alone if needed, but together, they have the greatest strength. Together they form a Kaleido (beautiful form in Greek).
• Our dancers dance to the music as a 3 dimensional expression or picture of the music. They are one with the music.
• Our percussionists play in harmony with the dancers, and may often be the dancers.
Community Benefits:
• Wellness: Dancing offers women and girls opportunities to develop strength, flexibility, grace, balance, posture, as well as aerobic activity.
• Dance offers many a sense of spiritual and emotional well being beyond the physical benefits.
• Music and dance allows mothers and daughters or women and girls of many ages to participate together in a fun, healthy activity that is often a bonding experience.
• This activity offers the community opportunities to learn about the art, music and dance of other cultures and promotes appreciation of cultural diversity.
• This activity offers the community opportunities to learn rhythms and play percussion instruments from other countries and cultures.
• This activity contributes to developing a musical and dance performance group that can participate in community events, provide enjoyment for the community while promote knowledge of music and dance of other cultures in the community.
Community Outreach Programs
These programs are used to train or interest others in Kaleido as well as world percussion and dance styles. Through them we can assess interest and skill level to invite dancers or percussionists to join Kalaido as full time or guest artists.
• Tribal Dance and Rhythms Class
• Seward Drum Circle
Dance Training
Mary Ann Benoit is a certified Fat Chance Belly Dance American Tribal Style Dance Instructor. Kaleido is a Fat Chance Belly Dance Sister Studio. She has 4.5 years of dance and performance training and has studied or taken worshops with Carolena Nericcio, Mira Betz, Myra Krien, Alexandria King, Saqra, Sadie, Elizabeth Strong, Sahra Saeeda, Carrie Moore, Lori Angove, Joanna Caselli, Melissa Wanamaker, Aksana, and Kathy Burgoyne. She also has 25 years experience as a musician as a jazz bass player and currently plays doumbek, frame drums, tarine, zills, and other world percussion instruments. She has trained with Helm and Brothers of the Beladi.
Mary Ann currently teaches Level 1 and Level 2 Fat Chance Belly Dance American Tribal Style Dance classes which include training on learning and playing middle eastern rhythms on finger cymbals and other percussion instruments. For information on the current class schedule for Tribal Dance and Rhythms classes, contact Mary Ann or visit our facebook page at:
FatChanceBellyDance®, FCBD®, ATS® and American Tribal Style®, are federally registered trademarks of FatChanceBellyDance, Inc. For more information, please visit www.fcbd.com/about/legal.shtml.
Seward Drum Circle
Kaleido also sponsors the Seward Drum Circle, whcih generally happens the first Friday evening of the month. Contact Mary Ann for current times and locations.
Visit us on Facebook
For more information about Kaleido World Percussion and Dance, class schedules and upcoming events, visit us on Facebook at:
To see current class schedules or book private lessons you can also visit my Betterist site at:
http://betterfly.com/maryannbenoit
To book Kaleido for events, please contact Mary Ann Benoit at 907-224-5898.
See a performances of Kaleido World Perussionand Dance and our student troupe Kallista please visit our You Tube channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/arcticparadiseFor a wealth of information about middle eastern dance, please visit Shira's site at
