Amaya

Amaya is a veteran American belly dancer whose career extends back to the formative decades of the modern American Oriental dance scene. She developed a distinctive performance style influenced by Middle Eastern dance alongside Spanish and Southwestern aesthetics. Over the decades she worked as a performer, teacher and choreographer while also documenting the history of belly dance in the United States. Her work has included interviews and historical projects designed to preserve stories from early American performers before those memories disappeared. Amaya has also written about professional dance life and the changing expectations placed on women as they age within performance culture. Her career makes her significant not only as a dancer but also as a keeper of oral history for the American belly-dance community.