In 2003, Sandra was interviewed by Lizette Menendez of AIWA, an international, online bellydance publication based in South Florida.

WHO’S WHO IN BELLYDANCING
Our bellydance community is not limited to South Florida. In the past I have been able to bring you dancers from other areas. This time we re-visit the West Coast, San Francisco, to bring another new face into view, Sandra.

1. How did you get interested in Belly Dancing?
I didn't have any background in dance when I was younger, and when I went to Berkeley for college I decided that I really wanted to be a flamenco dancer. I had taken a trip to Spain the summer after high school graduation and was completely enraptured with the drama and beauty of the Spanish flamenco dancers. They were just everything that I wasn't - dramatic, passionate, graceful, and powerful.... So while at Berkeley (ostensibly to study math) I decided that I would dedicate myself to flamenco. Except I showed up to class at the wrong time, and instead walked into Nanna Candelaria's bellydance class. She was the most beautiful and graceful woman I had ever seen. That was that... I’ve spent the last 10 years working on what she taught me and discovering those qualities in other dancers as well.

2. Is your family supportive of your dancing?
My family thinks my bellydancing is great. They thought it was a funny hobby in college, and then they thought it was good exercise in graduate school, but when I finally quit my day-job last year... I think they were a little concerned that I had gone completely mad and that I would be showing up at their front door asking for money.
Being a professional bellydancer is completely inexplicable to my parents, and they have no idea where it came from, but as long as they don't have to pay my rent, they're very supportive. Although they have asked me what I intend to do with my MS from Stanford. I just tell them "absolutely nothing." I'm having too much fun right now.

3. What aspirations and goals do you have with the dance and outside the dance?
Now I finally have time to devote myself entirely to dancing... I've always felt that my dance training has a lot of holes in it that I always feel insecure about. I need to spend a few years in Jazz and Ballet to fill in some of the gaps in my technical ability. I have trained almost entirely in more eastern dance forms, classical Indian, Flamenco, central Asian... but the western opinion that these aren't "legitimate" art forms is really pervasive. It's insidious. I can't tell you how many performances I’ve had where an interested audience member approaches me to compliment me on the show and asks "did you have to take classes for that?" It makes me want to scream! A ballerina never has to answer those inane questions. My current goal is just to practice and to be as good as I can, as a dancer, to contribute in even some tiny way in elevating others' opinions about bellydance.

4. How have you seen the dance evolve over time?
My first instinct is to say "I’ve only been bellydancing for 10 years. I'm just a baby!" There are so many well-established divas in my neighborhood (San Francisco) that I always try to be humble about my own experience. The one thing that I have really seen change is the nation-wide and really international explosion of 'Tribal Belly Dancing'. It's always been a staple of the SF dance scene, but now it's really everywhere. New dancers in the Bay Area right now are really going more for the tribal-style. For some reason there seems to be some big backlash against beads and sequins. I don't really understand. After a while I just can't take all the black. It makes the purist, ethnic dancers around here absolutely crazy! As for myself, I’m finally to the point where I can really appreciate some of the looser, Egyptian style performers who in the past didn't impress me because I wanted to see all technique - I was too inexperienced to appreciate the nuance of what they were doing. Now I’m really looking for a teacher with a loose Egyptian style but it seems to be tribal, tribal, tribal. I never seem to be in sync with the trends.

5. What kind of acceptance or rejection do you see with this dance?
Well. I'm dancing in San Francisco, where in a social setting, everything is accepted. There are so many restaurants that want experienced dancers that there aren't enough bellydancers to fill all the spots. Even in a very down economy, things are great for bellydancing - but at the same time, I was very interested in studying different aspects of the dance in an academic setting... and when I approached 2 or 3 academic departments with what I thought was a literate and well-thought-out plan of study fusing Middle Eastern history, women's studies, and performance art history (which are all hot topics lately).. I was shocked at the big middle finger that I got from dance and liberal arts department directors. One 'World Dance' department head even made me cry. She told me that she was glad “I had a hobby”, but that a university setting wasn't really the place for it. I was amazed at her lack of curiosity and insight, and also amazed that she wrote me off so quickly. It really opened my eyes to how the 'establishment' still views our dance-form.

6. What advice would you give the new girls starting out?
I've had lots of really bad nights, and lots of run-ins with other dancers, and lots of side-long glances from people who think that they are spending their lives doing something 'important' like investment banking, and that I’m doing something totally frivolous with my existence. But really, does the world really need another stockbroker? I'm having so much fun and really attaining a sense of confidence for myself, and helping other women do the same. I would say to new girls starting out that if they had fun in their first 6 months, and if you're having fun dancing, then nothing else matters. People at shows always comment on how happy I seem - of course it's my totally immovable 'stage smile', but I honestly answer them with "I’m a professional bellydancer. That's just about the most fun you can have in life." I would recommend this gig to anyone!