Serpentine Dance Studios

CEO and Founder of Serpentine Dance Studios -

Yasmin Henkesh has belly dancing in her blood - and over 40 years of experience. As a performer, she danced professionally in Paris, London and Egypt alongside Arabic superstars Sabah, Walid Toufiq, Ahmed Adawia, Mohammed El Aizabi, Hassan Abou al-Saoud, Khamis Henkesh, Mona Said, Shoo Shoo Amin and Sahar Hamdi. While in Cairo she also obtained a masters degree in Arabic at the American University of Cairo and began a lifetime of research into Egyptian trance dancing.

In the 1990s she returned to the Washington DC area and taught Egyptian style belly dance at Joy of Motion Dance Studio until she opened her own school, Serpentine Dance, in Bethesda, Md. She is known for her lively, invigorating classes and widely acclaimed workshops, with their depth of research and easy-to-follow movement explanations.

In 2005 Yasmin created Sands of Time Music to share Egypt's rich, multifaceted music with Western audiences. The Henkesh Brothers, from a long line of Cairo’s Golden Era Mohammed Ali Street musicians, agreed to help and can be heard on many of her label's albums (see the store link). Yasmin wrote extensive liner notes for most of these albums, which eventually led to her first book, Trance Dancing with the Jinn, published in 2016.

After being diagnosed with breast cancer and experiencing the physical and mental difficulties of treatment, Yasmin created a unique form of Restorative Dance based on the low impact, body friendly movements of Middle Eastern dance. She offers these classes, affectionately dubbed "Jiggle Therapy," as well as trance dance and traditional belly dance in her Bethesda World Dance studio.