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Offerings :: Gallery :: Videos

Monica is a longtime pro dancer and instructor keeping it of and for the people.  She is based in San Francisco, California, on unceded Ohlone Ramaytush land.

Dance and Music Offerings

Egyptian Dance :: رقص بلدي

Southern Italian Dance :: Danze Popolari

Southern Italian Dance :: Danze Popolari

A person looks wistfully to the side holding a pink scarf

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".

Southern Italian Dance :: Danze Popolari

Southern Italian Dance :: Danze Popolari

Southern Italian Dance :: Danze Popolari

Two people dance pizzica in a ronda (circle)

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. 

Classes :: Workshops :: Events

Southern Italian Dance :: Danze Popolari

Experimental Folkloric :: Pan-Mediterranean

A group of people taking a dance class seen from above

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.



Experimental Folkloric :: Pan-Mediterranean

Experimental Folkloric :: Pan-Mediterranean

Experimental Folkloric :: Pan-Mediterranean

A dancer in a gold dress poses and looks to the side

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). 

Coaching :: Mentorship

Experimental Folkloric :: Pan-Mediterranean

Coaching :: Mentorship

A dancer smiles at the camera as three of their fellow dancers smile in the background

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.



Keep in Touch

Experimental Folkloric :: Pan-Mediterranean

Coaching :: Mentorship

InDance magazine samples

Please subscribe to our seasonal newsletter for upcoming classes and events and a curious-minded curation of inspiring artists and thinkers and writings and videos.


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. 


Photo Gallery + Triptychs

A triptych of a dancer in a green dress in front of a light brown curtain

Photos by Carl Sermon

Triptych - a dancer and a nai player, a drummer and a singer, two dancers

Photos by Jeff K. at Salon Hala

Triptych of a dancer

Photos by Carl Sermon

Triptych of a dancer in a striped shirt
Triptych of a dancer from above
Triptych of a couple dancing

Video Gallery

Improvisational Baladi

Monica dancing to the beauty of singer Shaden Amleh's موال (=mawal, a vocal improvisation) and the nai playing of Ari Salim Marcus. 


Salon Hala, Dance Mission Theater, San Francisco, July 2025.

Monica at the Brava

Style: Pan-Mediterranean / Experimental Folkloric 


Monica performs an Arab/southern Italian piece at the Brava Theater in  San Francisco. 


Fall 2024


 Sponsored by The Hala Collective

Dance Along Joy

Style: Egyptian Raqs Baladi


Monica's post-performance dance along with the fine folks attending Salon Hala, San Francisco, Summer 2024.


Show produced by Mama Ganuush

Video by Jeff Vengeance

Venue is Queer Arts Featured

Dance to the sounds of the studio / Last days at Lines

Style: Freeform / Experimental folk


A moment to the sounds of the street as I cleaned out a cabinet at a studio I had taught at for over 20 years.



Back in the Day

Style: Egyptian raqs sharqi and raqs baladi


Well, not the DAY day, but another day. Live set with Sirocco in 2008. 


August 3, 2008, San Leandro, California


Dancer: Monica of San Francisco  Musicians: Armando Mafufo, Paul Ohanesian, Michael Gruber 

Producer: Tatseena

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