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Monica brings over three decades of movement, music, percussion, and language experience to her raqs sharqi and raqs baladi performance and education offerings. She is a  recognized and respected member of the cultural, dance, music, and art communities she comes from. 

Her performances are audience-focused and joy-bringing experiences, always tailored to the event, and can include live or recorded music. 

Her Egyptian dance instruction is rooted in respect for the dancers and respect for  the forms, and her classes are musically driven, with an additional focus on cultural, political, and  artistic context, going beyond globalized "belly dance".

Monica is a social practitioner, cultural bridge builder, and ongoing heritage learner of Pizzica, Tammurriata, and other regional "tarantelle" from Southern Italy. Piecing together childhood memories with lots of new learning and re-learning over the last ten years, her focus plays with defossilizing diasporic dance and music expressions while exploring and respecting how they got that way. 

Monica hosts weekly online Pizzica practice and social dance sessions (currently on hiatus) and in-person study and skillshare groups in San Francisco, where she is slowly but surely putting together un collettivo di danza - an Italian dance and drum movement, percussion, and culture skill share and arts collective. 

Monica 's weekly classes are on hiatus in 2025. Workshops and 1:1 lessons are still happening.

Past long term instructor positions include Alonzo King Lines  Dance Center (teaching faculty 2003 - 2024), Ruth Asawa School of the Arts (teaching artist-in-residence), Marin School of the Arts (teaching artist-in-residence), Belly Dance! studio (teaching faculty and curriculum development), and the Women's Cancer Resource Center (teaching faculty).  

Upcoming workshops can be found on the calendar.

Interested in hiring Monica for a workshop? My current topics and offerings can be found here.

Take a dancer trained in two specific and deeply rooted cultural styles, who holds deep reverence and respect for them both. She loves the land, people, and traditions that develop(ed) and foster(ed) them. She is recognized as maybe knowing something by community keepers and elders. She has committed decades of her life to them. 

What  is that dancer to do to scratch an artistic itch, to use her lifetime of dancing to try new things while not pretending it is  anything but authentic to her own experiences, loves, losses, joys,  laughs, tears, friendships, body, and interests? When she has to dance  it to find out what it means? When cultural integrity is a standard she  uses for her dance work? When her own mixed and not-so-distant roots are tangled and alive and loudly beckoning?  When she isn't doing it for fame or fortune? When she knows there are connections and paths and doors and bliss and change to be made with  this expression? When she wants to work with others in her communities  who are also figuring it out as they go?

Spoiler  alert / switch to first person: It me. I'm figuring it out. Like all things worth doing, it is  sometimes awesome and sometimes embarrassing, it's all about  collaborating with fellow weirdos, and it's probably about the process  more than any particular destination.

So far this looks like finding experimental musical artists from beloved source cultures and interpreting and working with them to see  what happens.  Please never let me be a context-free artist. None of this happens in a vacuum or a tower or alone. It looks like doing and performing the rooted work I've been trained and  raised in, and then also adding a piece in that pushes me a little, and  maybe the form, and maybe the audience, and maybe the work, while keeping it connected and growing in a way that is also rooted in and recognizable to lineage. It's about never claiming to 'preserve' anything that isn't really mine while also recognizing there are roots that need tending, honoring, attention, love, and time.

We shall see. Here for the conversations and the here for the lavoro (and apparently the wordiness). 

Monica offers private Egyptian dance classes and coaching in person in San Francisco or online anywhere in the world. She has worked one on one with dancers, duets, troupes, and small groups of collaborators who are creating or polishing a piece, looking for inspiration, or need a  critical but supportive eye on their work, progression, or style.   

Rates start at $90 per hour, plus studio rent, if any. Private lessons can also take place on Zoom.  

Please contact Monica for a questionnaire and initial email consultation so we can make sure that lessons are focused and on point for your  needs.   

Need choreography? Reach out to Monica  for current rates, references, and details of how it all works. 

Sometimes 1:1 work leads to more of a mentorship. That is a conversation best had in person.

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Upcoming events and workshops can be found on the calendar.

Interested in hiring Monica to teach a workshop? My current topics and offerings can be found here.

Interested in a dance and/or music performance? Let's talk.

Reach out if you are interested in dance or music bookings, classes, lectures, or collaborations. If it isn't in my wheelhouse or area, I can usually refer you to someone who is well-suited to the gig.