Necmi from Oojami has made contact with all applicants, and all should have received his letter. See end of page below

Latest News from Necmi as at 21st May

I am sorry about taking a bit longer than expected to contact you. This is because the venue we are going to use (Darbucka) took another booking on the day and we needed to change the time slightly to fit around it. The audition is going to take place between 1pm and 5.30 pm on Sunday 27 May.

The audition will be open to the public as we need to see interaction with the crowd in a real environment. Please bring one of your own songs to dance to and follow this with a dance to an Oojami song, listed here from the albums Urban Dervish or  Boom Shinga Ling as these are the albums that we cover mostly in our live set.

We need to see little bit of spontaneity and creativity on the spot so be prepared to dance to any one of the songs listed. If you have a strong preference to any particular song you may send us in advance a list of your top 3 options and we will do our best to accommodate you.Email

However if everyone selects the same 3 songs, to avoid monotony we cannot guarantee that you will get your choice. Therefore be prepared for all eventualities!

 You will have around 4 minutes for each song so every dancer has around 8 minutes to perform to their two different songs. There won't be time to change your costumes between the songs but we will have 45 minutes break in the middle and DJ Karim is going to play Belly Dancing tunes (including other Oojami songs from Bellydancing Breakbeats CD) to give you a free platform to use if you think that the time was not enough for you.

We  are not going to do any points system etc such as your technique, natural ability, crowd interaction, costumes etc. We just want you to enjoy the experience. As we said before this is not a competition and there will not be winner. We want to work with as many dancers as possible.

We are going to charge £5 at the door to cover our expenses from the audience. Your performance time is next to your name. Please be there an hour before your performance time and inform us that you have arrived.

After the event we will inform you by email whether or not we would be interested in working together with you in the future.

 Please let us know if you require any further information. We look forward to meeting you all on the day.

Initial Contact letter of early May

"Friday May 4 th was the final closing date for applications for the Belly dancing auditions . I apologise to any of you who applied a long time ago and have not heard anything from us until now . We didn't think it would be fair to contact you before we had received all the applications.

This is the first time we have organised a belly dancing audition for Oojami and it has been a real learning curve for all of us. We have been overwhelmed by the number of applicants, of which there have been around 40.

We thank you all for supporting us, particularly Anne White and the people on the advisory panel Ewa Horsfield , Shafeek Ibrahim and Ahmad Mohammed (Darbucka). Their advice and knowledge has helped us greatly in the organising of this event. However , as you all know , this is an audition for Oojami and final responsibility lies with Oojami.

Ahmed generously has given us a 4 hour (2-6pm) slot at Darbucka on Sunday 27 th May to stage the audition. Usually Darbucka is closed on a Sunday so he is opening especially for us and we really appreciate his support.

However since time and resources are limited it is impossible for us to see everybody and we have had to cut down the number of people we can possibly see. Therefore we have short listed 15 dancers.

As you understand, this is not a belly dancing competition or even about choosing the best dancer. This is about finding more than one dancer that Oojami can work with in the future. It is about finding someone who can be part of our specific band.

We have made our decision based on the information you have sent us to fill the specific needs of Oojami. We are not a traditional band in the way that the dancer is the main focus. Someone can be a very good solo dancer or very good dancer for a different band but may not be what is right for Oojami.

We work with dancers in our own way and perspective. You may be the best looking and the best dancer technically but it may not work for us. The short listing doesn't mean than we will not work with other dancers either.

At the moment we can only see these 15 dancers. We would like to see you all there on the day. There will be free dancing for everybody for half an hour in the middle and at the end of the audition. Oojami has always been part of the international belly dancing scene from the first day, working to make it a popular and respected art form. Once again thank you to you all.

For any enquiry please contact me (Necmi) not Anne White. We will send a more detailed e-mail to the people who are on the final 15 in the next few days.

Dancer short listed are;

1. Zahira (Karin Fuentes)
2. Chantel Philips
3. Cynthia Tabone
4. Cate Brick
5. Norsheen Bhatti
6. Emma Chapmen
7. Patrica Bueno
8. Maya (Joice Marise)
9. Nadia Stucky
10. Caitlyn Schwartz
11. Kerimeh Okan
12. Tulin Ozsoy
14. Stacey Harding "STARSIA"
15. Carrie Schwalbe