The SIDEWALKS team takes a look at the world of belly dancing at Northern California’s Carnival of Stars, an international festival of World Dance.
July 20 and 21, 2019 marked the 16th year of the annual Carnival of Stars, a belly dancing festival featuring performers around the world. The two-day event, held in Alameda, CA at Elks Lodge, showcased a long list of variety of dancers and students, who are being regarded as accomplished and skilled in Middle Eastern Dance. There are hundreds of performances back-to-back for the whole two days.
While Carnival of Stars primarily focuses on world dance, the convention — which include displays of dancing outfits and accessories for any dancers — has also turned into a semi-Comic Con-like convention, with booths for science fiction toys and costumes. The lineup, which had a “Star Trek” theme for 2019 event, had a cosplay contest for participants and guests. There were some guests walking around in Starfleet uniforms from the various “Trek” programs.
Dancer Pepper Alexandria, who also appeared on an early episode of the original “Sidewalks” TV series, is the founder and producer of Carnival of Stars. Her vision of the event began with a desire to provide a venue for friends to dance. Now that vision has turned into a successful venture for performers and family.
“Sidewalks Entertainment” crew — J.P. Langston, Hector Botello, & Rebeca Zuniga — and host Richard R. Lee were on hand for part of the event and captured footage and interviews with some of the performers.
Full TV Episodes:
Extended Individual Videos:
MORE VIDEOS ADDED! Longer performances and/or interviews.
- Founder Pepper Alexandria’s Ghawazee (Performance and Interview)
- Actress / dancer Tanya Lemani (Interview and Performance)
- Designing a Belly Dancing outfit
- Sumaia (Performances and Interview)
- Aditi (Interview and Performance)
- Jennifer (Performance and Interview)
- Raks Jawhara with Sudeep (Performance and Interview)
- Tre Bella (Interview and Performance)
- Jennifer Cooper (Performance)
- More Belly Dancing, including Sausan and The Crown Jewels (Performances captured by videographer Hector Botello)