Dancer Bios

Dark Side Tribal

American Tribal Style and Tribal Fusion Belly Dance

Your Subtitle text

Dancer Bios

Heather Pund

Heather started dancing around 1996 and had studied various styles before she found herself caught up in turbans, tassels and group improv. She feels ATS most clearly conveys the feelings of camaraderie and communication she feels when dancing. Dance is not so much about what one has to say personally as it is about what one can say with fellow dancers. So while she may study many forms, her heart will always be hung with kuchi bits and cowrie shells.

She has worked with several local troupes; starting in Banat Mara, one of the founding four of Different Drummer and finally co-founding Dark Side Tribal in 2006.

She currently lives in The House of The Rising Moon with a Yeti, a furry pudding and an alien stuck in the wrong encounter suit. Other pursuits include SCA fencing, sewing, spinning and assorted house-wifery.

Ann Shaffer

Ann had her first taste of bellydance in 1998, then began learning in
earnest in 2001. While she initially studied raks sharki and various
folkloric styles of bellydance, she found her calling in tribal when
she began studying ATS in 2002. She performed with many dance troupes in Bloomington before co-founding Dark Side Tribal in 2006. In
addition to the wonderful local teachers with whom Ann studied, she
has taken classes and workshops with such bellydance luminaries as
Carolena Nericcio, Megha Gavin, Paulette Rees-Denis, Kajira Djoumanha, Heather Stantz, Jill Parker, Rachel Brice, Sharon Kihara, Moria Chappell, Kami Liddle, Amy Sigil, Karim Nagi, Artemis Mourat, and
Dalia Carella. She has noticed that bellydance is a gateway dance,
under the influence of which she's begun to experiment with
incorporating other dance styles into her fusion, including flamenco,
modern dance, hip hop, and west African dance.

Grace MacNeil

Grace has been studying and performing a variety of dance forms over the past 16 years of this lifetime, and is sure she was stomping dirt in others too! Grace took her first belly dance classes in 2000 with Onca of Baraka Mundi (formerly Tribe Om) and was hooked. She moved to New Hampshire where she studied and performed Cabaret and Folkloric styles with Catherine Skove, director of The Moving Company, and The Talking Hips dance troupe, in Keene. In 2003 Grace spent two weeks in Portland, Oregon studying the basics of Gypsy Caravan's style of tribal dancing with Paulette Rees-Denis. Grace is thrilled to have met up with the lovely ladies of Dark Side Tribal and began studying with them in the fall of 2006, and dancing with them in the summer of 2007. She sees ATS belly dance as a powerful foundation on which to build her personal form. Grace is also a 2 year student of West African dance, and currently studies with Harmony Harris and Dr. Djo Bi in Bloomington. At home she is the mom of three great kids, and is building a small farm with her husband. Along with other ventures, Grace has recently been seen wrestling rams, riding horses through the Black Hills of South Dakota, modeling rooster feathers, and drinking way too much coffee! Love.

Alice Dobie-Galuska

Alice became a member of Dark Side Tribal in 2007 and has been studying American Tribal Style Belly Dance since 2002. She began to study and perform dance while attending Beloit College in the late 1980's. Alice is a mother of two and works as an academic advisor at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. She and her husband and children have recently become "urban homesteaders", living and working in town to grow food for their own use and to share with neighbors.