Covid pushed me to become a belly dance performer

A former flight attendant ditched her day job to become a full-time belly dancer after taking up lessons during Covid.

Lizzie Abou Chedid, from Cheshire, had daily online dance classes while living in Dubai during lockdown, prompting her tutor to suggest she trained as a performer and teacher as a “side hustle”.

She found there was a “massive shortage” of belly dancers in Dubai due to many leaving in Covid and so started performing “more or less straightaway,” while working part time as cabin crew.

The 37-year-old moved back to Cheshire after the birth of her son and now performs at venues across north Staffordshire and the North West.

When she first moved back to the UK with her husband and young child, she was concerned about getting the levels of work she had in Dubai.

But another performer had recommended her to an agent in the UK and she was quickly offered a job and was sent to perform in a restaurant.

“It kind of went from there, I never expected to be as busy as I am..all year round, I must do at least one to two gigs a week,” she said.

She also teaches belly dancing in Nantwich, Cheshire, and Market Drayton, Shropshire, “so my presence as a teacher and performer has gone from being a side hustle to my full-time job, it’s fantastic!”

The 37-year-old said it was something she had always dreamed of, even while flying, a job she loved, but it always felt like a far off dream.

There are so many misconceptions about belly dancing, she said, describing it as a celebration of the body, and a liberating form of dance.

People might assume it is “just sort of going around wiggling,” but it actually takes a long time to train different muscle groups to isolate, to teach the body to move in separate blocks, she said.

“It’s a fabulous form of exercise, and promotes body confidence.”

Having first tried belly dancing at 18, she said her time spent working on aircraft gave her the confidence to perform in public.

“You’re in a very small confined space, with lots of passengers, and your every move is watched for up to 16, 17 hours if you’re on an ultra-long haul flight.”

Having fallen over and dropped things in front of passengers during more than a decade in the air, she learned to laugh at her own embarrassment, and not to take herself too seriously.

Her confidence had also naturally grown with age, adding that had she had started performing 15 years ago, she would have found it “way too intimidating”.

Living now in a rural area, and having an unusual job, the performer said she is known in her village as “oh yeah, that’s the belly dancer..I get that one quite often, it’s seen as a novelty!”