The Palestinian Belly Dancer Keeping Her Culture Alive
In the center of her mirror-walled dance studio, Janelle Jalila Issis is busy setting up her class. As her students file in, wearing shimmering hip skirts over leggings, she greets them warmly — often by name — encouraging them to grab a spot and begin warming up. As we get started, I feel gangly, overly aware of my long, stiff limbs. But it doesn’t last long; after demonstrating a few classic movements, Issis leads us in a taqsim, a mostly improvised dance set to a single instrument, and after a few rounds of improvising, I feel reasonably prepared to move on to the choreographed piece.
Issis moves fluidly and intuitively, allowing the music to guide her legs; her arms; her round, six-months-pregnant belly. Our teacher is somehow both unhurried and swift, melting her hips into a circle before rapidly twisting them from side to side. She shows us how to undulate our limbs as if a gust of wind is blowing into our underarms, and I’m astounded by my ability to create some semblance of the effect. It’s not just that she’s comfortable in these movements — she’s comfortable in her skin, and that feeling of safety emanates from her, touching us all.
As we conclude the class with a performance of the choreography, which turns into an improvised dance circle, a collective feeling of happiness becomes so overwhelming it nearly brings me to tears. This joyful confidence is part of what drew in photographer Sabrina Santiago, who attended several classes just like this one and documented them with her camera. “You can see how free people feel, and it’s so wonderful,” says Santiago. “The energy in the room is just amazing.”
As the soft twang she speaks with suggests, Issis grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, where she was heavily involved in her local Arab Catholic church community. At food festivals and other events, there were always traditional dances, and by age 4, she had started taking classes in traditional, folkloric dance styles like dabke as well as for ballet, tap, and jazz. She quickly became the protégé of a teacher at her church and began to train in belly dancing. But throughout her childhood, she kept her belly dancing to herself. “I always belly danced, but I hid it,” she says. “Because I was made fun of, called all the things, as western media oversexualizes belly dance.” It wasn’t until she started college at the University of Alabama that she began to publicly lean into her first love. In 2012, at 23, she auditioned and was chosen for So You Think You Can Dance, becoming the first contestant to compete as a belly dancer.
For years afterward, she continued pursuing all forms of dance, auditioning for Hamilton, doing consistent commercial work, and teaching classes at Alvin Ailey and Broadway Dance Center. Around 2018, she decided to devote herself entirely to belly dance, and when COVID hit she started her own business by teaching online. It’s safe to say it has been a success; her beginner classes are always packed, in person and on Zoom, and last year she was featured on The Wendy Williams Show.
Through it all, Issis’s Palestinian identity has been inextricably tied to her artistry. She’s a third-generation Palestinian American whose family left Palestine in the 1948 Nakba, and growing up she was encouraged to assimilate as much as possible into American culture. Food, language, and belly dancing were what kept her connected to her Palestinian lineage — and now, as a teacher, she shares pieces of Palestinian culture in every class through music, dance, and her own luminous presence. Like many of us, she has been deeply affected by the horrific violence and mass death that Gazans in Palestine have faced for the past four months. As she grieves the lost lives while preparing to birth a new life, belly dancing has kept her sane. “It’s the one thing I can do to share a positive light about my culture — of Palestinian people, of my heritage — in such a beautiful way,” she says. “Most nights, I’m going to bed pretty upset. But my doctors have said, ‘You need to keep your mind and your body healthy for this baby.’ The baby has been a saving grace in that sense, forcing me to focus my love and energy on my body.”
In every class she teaches, Issis is keeping Palestinian culture alive. For herself and her dance students, her classes are also a source of real safety and comfort. “Dance is extremely healing,” says Issis. “I have a lot of students who are coming to take class because they need to escape the pain. And I also have students who are sharing with me, ‘I want to come, but I just don’t feel right dancing right now.’ Because they’re so hurt. And I respect both. Dance is personally a way to stay connected and to do something healthy for my body — because everything we’re watching is far from it.”
For Santiago, capturing the classes was the start of what she feels will be an ongoing relationship with the art of belly dancing, something she first encountered while watching her mother’s belly-dancing lessons as a child. It’s a full-circle moment she doesn’t take lightly: “It can be very vulnerable to dance in general, let alone to be photographed,” she says. “I was very grateful that they allowed me to be in that space and to document them moving.” The care behind the lens is tangible in the images; the dancers’ faces and bodies are soft, open, comfortable. Santiago’s eye puts a spotlight on the dancers, but more important, she embraces them. “I wanted to highlight Janelle and her Palestinian culture,” Santiago explains. “Dance is a way of preserving cultures that are under the threat of erasure.”
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