Satinka is the creative love child of Faelan Shiva. Starting out as a student troupe dancing in local haflas, the group has grown, worked and thrived to become a high quality local dance company. Dancers include Faelan Shiva, Nellie Thorngate, Ann Vee, Willy Rybicki, Jasmine Hurst, and Natalie Morejohn. They perform West Coast Fusion Belly Dance. They honor the roots of belly dance with traditional feeling choreographies and improv, while honoring the evolution and freedom of art with modern artistic interpretation in original choreographies.
Satinka’s mission is to share belly dance with everyone who is inspired by it, to bring quality technique to the living room and the stage, and to spread joy with their heartfelt love of each other and this project.
They can be found performing locally from Monterey to San Francisco and have been guests in Zoe Jakes’ House of Tarot, have opened for Beats Antique (Video of the Beats Antique 2016 NYE show here), and can sometimes be found on adventures to perform at venues like the Seattle Art Museum.
They are available to hire for festivals and parties by contacting Faelan@FaelanShiva.com.
Meet The Dancers:
Faelan:
Director, Choreographer, Mama Wolf. She adores these women and is moved by their willingness to be shaped, shifted and pushed to the next level.
Full bio here.
Nellie:
Nellie is a perpetual student of dance as well as a movement and dance teacher, and is a confirmed science, anatomy, and movement nerd. She works as a physical therapy assistant and wellness coach in Santa Cruz, CA, specializing in chronic pain management, adaptive yoga, and manual therapy. She finds great joy in helping her patients and students find ease and healing in the motion of their bodies, and especially relishes those moments when her own understanding of movement through dance and yoga informs her ability to help others move better. Nellie has been studying dance since 1994 with a wide range of teachers including Shoshanna Rose, Crystal Silmi, Zoe Jakes, Kami Liddle, Donna Mejia, and Mira Betz, whom she considers her guiding teacher. She is certified in the DanceCraft Key Of Diamonds format, and will be completing Kami Liddle’s Krysalis: Invocation program in Summer 2019.
Willy:
Willy is a uniquely exotic Beauty. Her mother is of Spanish decent from Mexico and father from Indiana was of Polish decent. Being raised in a diverse cultural household has given her a very eclectic view of the world. Her musical taste spans many genres as does her dance style. Though belly dance is her primary art form she incorporates many types of music into her craft. It is not uncommon for her to create a routine to heavy metal or classic rock. Her dance journey started in her 40’s under the teaching of Faelan Shiva, her dance mama. In her day job she helps families find peace and closure as a mortician with compassion, respect, and a deep caring. She lives nestled in the red woods and enjoys walking her dogs and cuddling with her cat
Anya:
“Dance is the universal art, the common joy of expression.” Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo: A Novel. Anya fell in love with dance for the first time when her grandmother took her to see the Nutcracker ballet at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg. The movement, costuming and music captured her soul. Dance as an expression of art in its multitudes of styles became an inseparable part of her life. Although she grew up in the Bay Area, she discovered Tribal Fusion Belly Dance while being half way around the world from a single picture of Rachel Brice, the founder of Datura Style Belly Dance, and fell madly in love. Since then Anya has taken several workshops with Rachel Brice and has studied with many teaches such as Mardi Love, Kami Liddle, Amy Sigil, Olivia Kissel, Sharon Kihara, Tjarda Van Straten amongst others. True immersion and the current incarnation of her dance journey came when Anya met and started taking classes from her director Faelan Shiva and subsequently became a member of her troupe.
Jasmine:
Jasmine has loved many forms of dance for as long as she can remember. She was even introduced to Synchronized Swimming at the age of seven & swam competitively for 8 years. Never leaving her dance roots, she eventually found her way to her current teacher, Faelan. She loves the blend of the ancient and modern dance that Faelan Shiva so well embodies. She has been a member of Satinka since May 2014.
Natalie:
Natalie started her belly dance career after college, taking an adult mother-daughter course at the local community center in her hometown of Tracy, CA. She enjoyed the style so much that she continued to take group and private lessons with the instructor – eventually working her way up to teaching a beginner level class of her own. She went on to lead her first troupe Streams in the Desert with three of her dance friends. Natalie continued to grow her dancing experience under the tutelage of Tatseena in Livermore, CA dancing with her troupes Good Vibrations and the Serpent Sirens. Natalie has attended workshops and performed at various events like Rakkasah West, Carnival of Stars, Desert Dance Festival and other fantasy showcases. She has since moved to Boulder Creek, CA in the Santa Cruz Mountains where she found a dance home at Faelan Shiva’s Trillium School studio and now performs with Satinka.
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