Lisanna of Salome's Tent

Lisanna

(or who *is* Salome's Tent, anyway?!?!?)

I started dancing with baby ballet at age 3, in a small town in Texas. Yep, I'm from Texas, a 'Cajun' by blood. I took all the conventional dance classes for many years and was in dance groups in high school and college, never intending it as a career, just a passionate hobby.

In college, in a dance extra-curricular activity, we were exposed to dance forms of all kinds. When the 'belly-dancing' section came up something triggered inside me. The movements of the dance were so natural and echoed the way my body wanted to flow. I threw myself into it, taking more lessons, buying books, including Serena's WONDERFUL book (encyclopedia?) of dance moves. To this day, I refer to that book for ideas in choreography.

I moved to Pennsylvania after college and sought to continue my dance studies. There was only one local teacher at the time, and when I arrived at her class, it was so over-booked that she really could not handle it all herself. She saw that I already knew a lot of moves, spoke with me after class, let me 'audition' for her a little - and then asked me to take over half the class. So, for a while, I taught. She gave me private lessons. That was a great time!

Then I got married, and ,well, didn't dance for many years. Long story. 'Nuff said.

But now that I'm on my own again, I have returned to the dance with a vengeance, studying wherever I can and dancing solo at events and also with a troupe, Embers and Emeralds. I now specialize in finger cymbals and double veil, too. And I am teaching again, currently at LCCC and at the Jewish Community Center in Allentown.

and how did Salome's Tent come about?
In the course of preparing for the first Rakkasah East, I wore myself ragged trying to find nice costuming at a reasonable price. It was frustrating, with many sites offering only very limited selections or very high prices.

But what made me glad was finding a certain costume importer, who has since become my business associate and good friend - Andrea - who runs the www.babylonbreeze.com site. Go to her site and you will recognize the costumes on my 'exclusive' page. I am a distributor of the costumes from her factory in Turkey. Please do feel free to go to her site and work directly with Andrea on costume purchases. Since she has her own factory, she can fill special orders for color and size needs with uncommon ease and remarkably reasonable pricing.

I bought a lovely costume from her to wear at Rakkasah and we became friends in the course of that purchase - she gave me SUCH good customer service - and we developed a great chemistry. When I told her there was no place locally to buy even hipscarves, she sent me a few to see if girls in my class wanted them. They just about yanked them out of my hand!!! And then they started asking me - gee - do you carry this or that? Well I didn't *carry* anything. But I had been thinking about starting some kind of business on my own.....

Since I am a webmaster in my other life, and had done a very exhaustive web search for costume suppliers. I had a good idea what was out there. So I began to acquire inventory, and then launched the Tent in earnest in February of 2001.

The mission of the Tent is to provide a wide range of costuming and accessories for Middle Eastern dancers. I strive to keep my prices reasonable while at the same time making a point of finding costume items that are not just the same old thing you see everywhere. It is important to carry the 'basic' items, but I pride myself on finding unusual, distinctive, one-of-a-kind things as well. I am also a jewelry fanatic, so I am always looking for interesting, funky jewelry which could be worn on or off the dance floor. And I make a point of offering costuming in a range of sizes, so larger girls can find something nice, too.

While my site has a lot of cabaret oriented items, I am increasingly moving into the gypsy and tribal area. I already stock a lot of tribal jewelry and am starting to specialize in cholis, since I have some wonderful sources for UNIQUE cholis as well as some nice standard cholis that come in SIZES!

Drop me a line anytime and let me know what you would like to see added to the Tent's offering - I love suggestions and special orders!