Alexandrathe Romanian Bellydancer

Bringing the fire of Eastern European and Middle Eastern dance traditions to Chicago's stages and celebrations.

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Resident artist & featured performer

  • Alhambra Palace · Chicago, IL
  • Barba Yianni Grecian Taverna · Chicago, IL
  • Juliana Restaurant · Chicago, IL
  • Shiraz Restaurant · Chicago, IL
  • Samah Hookah Lounge · Chicago, IL
  • Horseshoe Casino · Hammond, IN
  • Platinum Lounge · Norooz 2024
  • Al Meer Hookah Lounge · Michigan

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A live performance

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“Alexandra was a great entertainer, very professional, the way she interacted with the guests I love it!! The show she did was very beautiful. I would hire her again if I need a bellydancer anytime. Hiring her for my event was the best thing that I did!! She was phenomenal!!!”
Lucia · Special Event
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When I perform, I connect with the source — a different dimension. Everyone in the room feels it.

— Alexandra

Alexandra performing bellydance with red silk fans

The dancer

In high demand across Chicagoland

A native of Brasov, Romania, Alexandra launched her dance career in 2006 and has since enchanted audiences with the ancient art of bellydance — restaurants, ballrooms, casinos, and the private celebrations that people remember for the rest of their lives.

Hire her if you want cultural dance and top-notch entertainment. Bellydance is an artform to be enjoyed by everyone: women, men and children alike.

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Music

Ensemble Violonist

Long before the veils and finger cymbals, there was the violin. Alexandra is a classically trained violinist who performs exclusively with the Chicago-based Grazia Quartet — together they perform as an ensemble, bringing the same discipline and stage presence to every set.

Proud member of the Grazia Quartet based in Chicago, Illinois.

She has also performed with two of Chicago's nonprofit and university-affiliated ensembles: the Middle East Music Ensemble at the University of Chicago, directed by Wanees Zarour, and the Ravenswood Community Orchestra, led by Richard Corrigan and Eli Chen.

That musicianship is what makes her dancing land: she hears the phrasing, the accents and the silence between them, and shapes every performance around the music instead of counting over it.

Live violin is available with the Grazia Quartet — perfect for cocktail hours, ceremonies, corporate receptions and private dinners — and can be paired with a bellydance performance the same evening.

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Alexandra holding her violin in dappled sunlight

Heritage

An ancient art form

Belly dance — known in Arabic as raqs sharqi ("oriental dance") and raqs baladi ("folk dance") — is one of the oldest continuous dance traditions in the world. Its story winds from the temples and tombs of ancient Egypt through the courts of the Ottoman Empire to the modern stages of Chicago and beyond.

Tomb paintings and carvings depict female dancers swaying to drums and clappers, moving hips and torso in ways recognizable to belly dancers today.

First estimated dates
c. 4000 BCE – 500 BCE
Key locations
Upper Egypt, especially the Minya Governorate; temple and tomb sites throughout the Nile Valley.
Context
Some of the earliest visual evidence of torso-driven dance appears in Egyptian tomb art. These images show celebratory movement at religious festivals and social gatherings, suggesting a long, unbroken lineage for the dance forms that later became known as raqs baladi and raqs sharqi.

Dancers performed in palace courts across the empire. The professional traditions of the awalim and ghawazi shaped the refined and folk styles that still influence modern Egyptian dance.

First estimated dates
1299 – 1923 CE
Key locations
Constantinople/Istanbul, Cairo, Alexandria, Damascus, Baghdad and the wider Eastern Mediterranean.
Context
Under Ottoman rule, professional dancers entertained in imperial courts, urban cafés and private homes. The awalim were educated, poet-musician performers, while the ghawazi were traveling entertainers associated with folk and street dance. Both streams fed what we now call Egyptian belly dance.

The French term danse du ventre appeared in an 1864 art review; by the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, Middle Eastern dance reached American audiences and the English name 'belly dance' entered popular use.

First estimated dates
1864 & 1893 CE
Key locations
Paris, France; Chicago, Illinois, USA (World's Columbian Exposition).
Context
French Orientalist painters and writers coined 'danse du ventre' to describe the hip-focused movement they saw depicted in North African and Middle Eastern art. Three decades later, dancers at the Chicago World's Fair introduced live Middle Eastern dance to mainstream America, and the anglicized term 'belly dance' stuck.

Cairo's nightclubs and Egyptian cinema refined Raqs Sharqi into a global art form. Dancers like Samia Gamal and Taheyya Kariokka brought its drama, grace, and musicality to audiences worldwide.

First estimated dates
1920s – 1990s CE
Key locations
Cairo, Alexandria, Beirut, London, New York, Los Angeles and touring stages worldwide.
Context
Egyptian cinema and nightclub culture transformed belly dance into a polished stage art. Legendary dancers such as Samia Gamal, Taheyya Kariokka and Soheir Zaki performed in films and cabarets, exporting the style across the Arab world, Europe and the Americas. Their work remains the foundation for contemporary belly dance performance.