Raqs Nerd: in praise of small - why I'm NOT organising a dance festival 🙅‍♀️

OK, so I'm going to start by saying - bellydance festivals can be brilliant!

I go to them. I teach at them (check out Dance JoY and Celebrating Dance - both lovely and very welcoming events here in the UK). I really appreciate that they exist. And I am absolutely not knocking them.

But also, although I put on events myself, I am not a dance festival organiser - and I don't aspire to be one.

Allow me to explain...

Bellydance festivals are, first and foremost, big.

Lots of teachers! Lots of class topics! Big venues! Big classes! Multiple shows! Multiple classes at the same time! Competitions! Shopping! More shows!

They fill an important role in the ecosystem of bellydance - as a place where we can get together with our peers, meet cool new friends or catch up with old ones, try out classes with different teachers and in different styles, absorb inspirations, and put ourselves out there as up-and-coming artists.

Especially when you're a newer dancer, this can be VERY EXCITING. A chance to take classes with teachers from outside your local area - maybe even international stars, to try styles that are totally new to you, to see professional-level performances, and perhaps to come home with your first costume...

But the bigness also comes with being... kind of unfocused. A big event that relies on big attendee numbers and the promise of variety, has to try to offer something for everybody. It's like a tasting menu. You get to try a little bit of a lot of things, find out what you like, and hopefully gain some real insights - but, it's not really an environment set up for in-depth learning.

For less experienced dancers, the "tasting menu" aspect is valuable - it helps us build up a sense of what the many facets of this dance are, and start to get a feel for what's out there, and how it all fits together.

But for committed long-term students, teachers, and professionals, this mix-and-match way of learning has its limits. There's just only so much you can learn in one isolated 2-hour class, without preparation or follow-up, and having to switch gears from something completely different before, and to something else completely different after...

In praise of small

When I look back on my own dance career to date, the events I've personally learned the most from, been genuinely changed by as a dancer, haven't been the big sparkly glamorous festivals (although those have been fun).

They've been events that either go smaller, or deeper, or both.

The week-long immersion courses. The small-group residential weekends. The single-teacher intensives.

These are where the real magic happens - when there's a focused topic, with time and space to absorb the material, and a chance to build meaningful relationships with teachers and fellow dancers, or to get a true feel for a particular approach and philosophy.

I feel this is especially important when it comes to topics like musicality, improvisation, expression, emotion - as well as cultural subjects that need much more than an hour or two to do them justice. For all of these, learning depends not just on paying attention or memorising a choreography, but on being present, relaxed, and open to new experience.

My mission

What I personally wish to bring into the dance world, is more of the second type of event.

Not because there's anything wrong with the first - they are important and also fun. It's just, they already exist. We are spoiled for choice!

Whereas I hear a lot of unmet desire for more of the small, the local, the intimate, the deep and hyperspecific.

As I see it, these smaller, more specific events pick up where the big festivals leave off - and fill niches they can't. They provide the opportunity for dancers who fall in love with a certain teacher or topic thanks to the "tasting menu", the chance to go absolutely all-in on their passions.

And as you know, I'm more of a "deep and obscure passions" person than a "glamour and competitions" person (I mean, this newsletter is called Raqs Nerd...).

So this is where I make my contributions, and what I hope for my legacy to be in the dance community: events that really truly change people. That let dancers learn more, experience more, than they could anywhere else.

I have no aspiration to go bigger, to be "Rachael Borek the big famous festival organiser". It's just not me. It's not what I was put here to do.

Instead, I'm leaning in to the small and the intense.

What I'm working on right now...

At the moment, I'm working hard on preparation for the Raqs Roots Intensive: Ihsas el-Musiqa - which is my own attempt at making something that's everything I hope for a dance event to be.

Which means - a lot of live music, learning from traditional Egyptian artists (Reda Henkesh, and our guest musicians) and teachers who have deeply studied and deeply respect the culture (Nisaa), a single complex and fascinating topic to be immersed in (the relationship between Egyptian dance, music, and feeling), the same group of likeminded dancers all weekend, lots of context and discussion and chilled social time as well as dancing... and last but not least, very nice Lebanese food (because I don't know about you, but I learn a lot better when I'm not stressed about when/where I'll get my lunch).

Quite a number of dancers told me after last year's Raqs Roots Intensive that they did feel it was a transformative experience - and this year, places have filled up really fast and it's already almost sold out!

And, early bird pricing ends on the 1st of September. If you book now, you get the best price, and an interest-free payment plan, for a unique weekend of music and dance education - with luxurious amounts of live music, embedded in cultural and historical context by our expert teachers

Find out more and book your place here:

​Raqs Roots Intensive: Ihsas el-Musiqa, 20-22 November 2026 in Manchester UK​

With Love,

PPS - every part of this newsletter is written by me, a flesh and blood human being, using my own thoughts, feelings, opinions, and writing style - now and always. This is a generative AI free zone 🚫🤖