Samira (aka Alisa McAffee) started her bellydance life at the age of 17 in Salt Lake City, UT (1991). She dove into the professional realm relatively quickly and ended up migrating to Las Vegas in 1996 where she worked at various local restaurants as well as Ceasar's Palace and the MGM Grand. In 1998, she graduated from UNLV with a B.A. in Health Education and a minor in Women's Studies. After a brief stint in Peace Corps, she returned to the states and started a career as a professional ballroom dance instrctor. During her 7 years as a co-owner of the Arthur Murray Dance Studios in Las Vegas, she developed regular monthly events for the belly dance community and started organizing the Las Vegas Bellydance Intensive in 2003.

Although Samira has been a dancer since 1991, she realized quickly that her passion was creating community through dance. The regular monthly haflas and the Bellydance Intensive are extensions of her love of the Las Vegas Belly Dance Comnmunity. As her events have outgrown her ability to manage them on her own, she has "collected" some of the brightest and talented individuals to assist her in continuing to provide community dance events to Las Vegas and the world.

Tori King started bellydancing about 5 years ago, and after a short time realized that if she wanted to study with the masters, she had to travel great distances. So, seeing a void - filled it, and started hosting world class instructors into Las Vegas in 2004, and has kept raising the bar each year. Samira asked Tori to help with the LV Bellydance Intensive in 2006, and a great friendship arose out of the unique opportunity the relatively young LV Community has to create itself from scratch.

Tori also is the troupe director of Daughters of Durga, and organizes the Tribal Massive & Massive Spectacular that is held in Las Vegas in March.

She is on the Board of Directors of Nevada Wilderness Project that has in 6 years protected almost 3 million acres of Wilderness in the state of Nevada!
http://wildnevada.org/

Danya is a very talented and creative artist who specializes in creating fabulous art & jewelry, bellydancing, and spinning fire and poi. She has a great resume which includes working as a fire safety tech at the BITE show at the Stratosphere in Vegas, performing with Cirque du Soleil, and working as a caricaturist in Las Vegas and Texas. She has helped us with graphic arts at previous Intensives and we are thrilled to welcome her back this year as Director of Information and Technology. Danya is the goddess who manages the shopping cart and makes Samira's life much happier with her witty humor.

This position is a new position for the 2009 Team of Directors.  We are very excited to be adding a bellydance festival to our extensive list of activities.  Ashtalea will be organizing all the submissions and working with our Tech Director to ensure that the 11 hours of performances are run smoothly.  This is no small task and we are very happy to have Ashtalea joining our team.  She has substantial experience producing belly dance shows through the College of Southern Nevada as well as working as the Stage Manager of the Friday productions for the Intensive in 2007-2008.  She is one stellar individual and we LOVE her!!  No worries, she will also manage to find the time to teach a class and get her troupe "Ah Ya Helu" ready to perform.  She's quite versatile and talented individual.

We are so unbelievably excited to have Willene Wadkins joining our staff as the Director of Entertainment.  Willene has a Master's Degree in theater and has ample experience organizing Harry Potter Conventions (which thrills Samira as she is a fanatic HP fan herself).  Willene's job includes organizing the 2 professional shows, acting as both Production Manager & Stage Manager, as well as coordinating efforts with the Tech Director.  We know that her vast amount of experience will contribute to even better produced shows at the Intensive.