Solstice is known for walking the edge of Bellydance with strong influences from Electronic Music and a counter-culture perspective. Solstice is a community of around 250 active members. Our tribe has two distinctive student groups and movement vocabularies: Lunar and Solar, as well as a smaller selection of dancers who represent our presence in the larger community through performance. Solstice choreography and direction is by its founder: Sera Solstice.
 
The name Solstice is chosen as a reference to pre-historic ruins around the world where once celestial structures were built in alignment with the Winter and Summer Solstices. We like to ask the question of “What did they dance like then?” “What did they dance for?” “What was this art about?” We reach specifically for the story of women in those times with our imaginations and our impressions of our own ancestral links, acknowledging that each of us draw from an indigenous lineage and draw not from the historians, but rather from our intuitive and private experiences. These experiences hold an underlying and unspoken place in our work, and we strive to hold this unspoken place during class time and rehearsals, which are typically light-hearted, fast paced and sometimes trance-like in the level of heat and high-energy flow.
 
The style of Bellydance that we are categorized within, according to others, is Tribal Fusion Bellydance, as well as Contemporary Fusion Bellydance, and sometimes just straight-up Fusion dance. We have coined our style “East Coast Tribal” as a notable difference we hold from much of the common vocabulary and approach on the West Coast USA, which is the birthplace of Tribal Fusion Bellydance and American Tribal Bellydance. At heart, we are non-conformists, even to our own style. And we delight in making new rules just to break them.
 
Read more at solsticetribe.com…

Sera Solstice is a performer/choreographer/instructor/artist/shaman/warrior/pioneer of Bellydance. Founder and Director of Solstice Studio: a Bellydance Studio in Times Square New York City. Sera is director and choreographer of the dance troupe Solstice, Creatrix of “East Coast Tribal” (a Tribal Fusion DVD produced by World Dance New York), and the director of the East Coast Tribal Community in NYC, a community of women who use Bellydance as a means for building self-empowerment, expression, and creativity. Sera’s Choreography has been described as “complex, content-rich, sublime, technically superb, physically demanding, at the forefront of evolution of bellydance as an artform.” Sera is fed artistically from underground electronic music culture as she works in collaboration with musicians such as Chronomad, Freek Factory and Sub Swara, collectives of cutting edge artists who fuel her choreographies. Sera has a passion for electronic music, but also finds balance in earthy, acoustic elements: she has participated in fire-circle culture for nearly 2 decades, therein developing bellydance as a sacred movement form, used in ritual and for healing. In 2005, Sera was invited to India to teach movement as a form of healing and empowerment for young women who had been rescued from sexual abuse and other oppressive circumstances. Sera was a full-time Sculptor upon discovery of Bellydance, and has transferred from her medium of clay and metal into the body moving through space. These experiences have opened Sera to further discovery of dance as a medium for communication, spiritual manifestation, and artistic expression. Although she challenges dancers to find deeper expression in their movements, Sera is know for being hard-driving and highly technical in class-settings. She believes one must first master their tool-set before putting it to use. Sera is a former core member of 3 internationally respected Troupes: Bellyqueen, Raqs Sahara, and The Silk Road Dance Company; a founding member of DC Tribal, Transcendance Tribal, and Raqs Caravan West. Sera’s foundation of technique, form, and discipline was by means of her two-year apprenticeship with Rachel Kay Brookmire (of DC’s Sahara Dance).

GlitchFairy was founded by the Designer/ Artist Masha Pekurovsky and New Media Artist Igor Molochevski in Fall 2011 to collaborate on creative endeavors in the realm of installation, video and media art. We create live video performances (a.k.a VJ production), interactive installations, conduct research in new media and write custom applications to help us do what we do even better.
 
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Backed by deep beats, percussion, and resonant frequencies, Kai Altair’s voice weaves rich melodies through electronics and live instrumentation. With music called ‘hypnotic’ by SoundCloud, and hailed by CBS News as a ‘modern day mermaid,’ Kai is influenced by transformational culture, myth, and dreams when creating music and multimedia stage shows. She is currently preparing to release her first full length album, which she recorded with producers Dave Sharma and Dhruva Ganesan of acclaimed subsonic & live percussion group Sub Swara. The songs are full of dense bass exploration, vocal dreamscapes, and sounds rooted in traditions of blues, rock, and ancient global migrations. Dreamwalker explores doorways to other worlds, lucid dreaming, time travel, metamorphosis, and sacred bliss.
 
Kai performs with a rotating cast of musicians and performance artists at venues and warehouse parties across New York City and Brooklyn. Her passion for storytelling continues to lead her towards collaboration with rising stars from the dance, fire, circus, film and festival worlds known for conjuring other realities with their creations. She stars in shows produced by The House of Yes & Flambeaux Fire, and is the creatrix of Mermaid Lagoon: an ocean conservation variety show that sends thousands of dollars annually to local and world water organizations. A student of ancient musical, movement, and healing traditions, Kai Altair’s intention is to inspire connection to the multiverse, and help create an elevated state on the dance floor.
 
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One of NYC’s most in-demand performers and producers, Dave Sharma’s been extremely busy both on stage and in the studio: In recent months, he’s been a featured performer with the Chicago Sinfonietta, headlined the Montreal Jazz Festival and toured Europe and the States with Brooklyn’s disco orchestra Escort (who’s eponymous debuted was one of Rolling Stone’s top 50 records of the year); performed on “Late Night with David Letterman” with Ultra Records’ MNDR; produced the debut record by Broadway star Josh Franklin (Jersey Boys, Anything Goes); held a residency at Carnegie Hall with Hindustani artist Falu; developed sound design for MAPP-sponsored artist Samita Sinha’s “Cipher”; produced and mixed the breakthrough “Turn Up the Stereo” LP for Juno-nominated band Delhi 2 Dublin; and written songs with the likes of Peter Wade (Jennifer Lopez), Jason Castro (American Idol), Polina (Steve Aoki), and Arama Mara (Hannah Montana, Enrique Iglesias). He has performed at some of the most iconic venues in the world, including Wembley Stadium in London, Madison Square Garden in New York and the Gaité Lyrique in Paris, with artists including Moby, Cheap Trick, Kailash Kher, and Malkit Singh. An original cast member of the A.R. Rahman/Andrew Lloyd Webber musical “Bombay Dreams,” Sharma teaches Indian percussion at the Chhandayan Center for Indian Music, and is a teaching artist via Carnegie Hall’s Weill Institute.
 
Dave Sharma on Soundcloud