About Yasmina Ramzy Arts
Raqs Sharqi (Middle Eastern Dance) School and Performance Company
Profile
Yasmina Ramzy Arts has created 10 films (including immersive), 12 theatrical dance and music productions, toured to the United States, Greece, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and across Canada, and has produced ten dance and music conferences and festivals (3-5 days long).
Described by the media as a visionary, a pioneer, and a disrupter, director Yasmina Ramzy has created 300 choreographies for international ensembles, taught in over 80 cities on five continents, performed in four Middle Eastern countries for royalty and heads of state, written 26 magazine articles, 58 blog posts, and her memoir is currently being edited. She has lectured around the world, in universities and other educational venues, on women's studies, Middle Eastern culture, dance, and music. Yasmina is the longest-serving member of the Board of Directors for Dance Ontario, having served since 1999. In 2020, she founded and chairs the Justice, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Committee.
.The company has created productions featuring as many as 45 musicians and dancers in each presentation, and has produced films with as many as 64 collaborating artists. Performance highlights include Cirque du Soleil, The Rolling Stones, Alabina, Rageb Alema, Bijan Mortazavi, and the International Conference on Middle Eastern Dance, among others. The company’s reputation for artistic integrity and innovation has attracted talented dance artists from England, France, Brazil, Mexico, across the United States, and Canada to relocate to Toronto to join the company.
The mission of Yasmina Ramzy Arts, since 1992, has been to promote awareness of and further the artistry of Middle Eastern dance and music, while shedding light on and fostering an understanding of a culture often misrepresented. Since 2020, when the company began creating films, its mission has expanded to encompass diversity in terms of gender, race, ability, age, size, dance, and music forms..
“Arresting imagery…intelligent and innovative choreography…seduces completely” The Globe and Mail
Commitment To Community
Through Justice, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion
The main impetus to open Arabesque Academy in 1987 was to shine a light on the dance and music arts of Middle Eastern cultures in an effort to correct misrepresentation, appropriation and orientalism.
Since then, there have been many generations of the dance school and music and dance company with an outreach to 70 cities around the world under the name Arabesque, and more recently, Yasmina Ramzy Arts.
The office staff, dancers, musicians and students have always been a reflection of Toronto’s cultural diversity. Arabesque was referred to by media and the public as the United Nations of dance companies.
Yasmina Ramzy often responds to those that are seeking more representation by creating Allspice Dance Company celebrating mature ages, Earthshaker Dance Company celebrating diversity of size and Righteous Rogues of Raqs Sharqi challenging gender stereotypes. As Well, Yasmina facilitated discussion and debate at her conferences concerning such topics as Arab Women in Dance, Men in Bellydance, Cultural Appropriation, Aging In Dance, etc.
Although YRA diversity happened organically, a conscious awareness through education is now being implemented to address possible inequalities that were previously overlooked. It is an ongoing effort that YRA strives to embed into all of its activities.
This includes recognizing that the studio and most of YRA working areas take place on traditional Indigenous territory across what is now called Ontario. YRA wish to gives thanks and honour all the original peoples starting with the Anishinaabe, and the Wendat, and including, in more recent times, the Haudenosaunee, Métis and Inuit people who have been living on these lands since time immemorial.
In September 2020 Yasmina Ramzy founded and is the chairperson of the Justice, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion (JEDI) Committee of Dance Ontario.
Media Reviews
“Scorching… Virtuoso”
— The Globe and Mail
“Arresting imagery…Seduces Completely”
— The Globe and Mail
“Hypnotic… Artistry and Passion”
— Dance International
Testimonials
“Mahmoud Reda and Yasmina Ramzy have presented a counter-discourse that has had an impact on the global dance form’s reception … What makes Arabesque distinctive is the sophistication of the choreography, in which the dances are an intricate visual revelation of the music … ability to choreograph this visual and aural integration is the result of her discovery of Tarab.”
—Barbara Sellers-Young, USA. Author, Bellydance, Pilgrimage and Identity“… will go down in history as having redeemed Bellydancing… scorching solo of virtuoso body isolations…”
—Rebecca Todd. The Globe and Mail“…a Jungian wonder, studded with arresting archetypal imagery and symbolic power…intelligent and inventive choreography…seduces completely”
—Deidre Kelly, Toronto, ON.The Globe and Mail“…consummate professionalism…hypnotic to the eye and ear…well-appreciated by the audience for its artistry and passion…”
—Paula Citron. Dance International“Brilliant, creative and forward thinking. Yasmina has the capacity to engage, empower and inspire everyone around her”
—Jerry Pergolesi, Palm Springs. Director, Contact Contemporary Music