A Festival Built on More Than Music
Before Heshk Beshk VOL.2 closed with its Arabic electro night in March 2026, the festival spent three days on something a single club night never has room for: real dance instruction. From March 17–20, Arabic Belly Dance and Baladi classes ran as a three-day intensive — two-hour sessions each night, 7:00 to 9:00 PM — open to the community and building the five-day format from the ground up before the final night at Bankeion Hotel.
Who Taught It
Karine Ghalmi came in from Marseille to lead them. Trained in classical and modern dance from the age of eight, she went on to refine her craft in contemporary dance at CCNRB Rennes and CDC Toulouse. It was her discovery of Egyptian oriental dance that pulled her toward her own Algerian roots — a thread she followed through further study with Leïla Haddad and Caroline Achouri in France, and with Egyptian choreographers Yousry Sharif and Gamal Seif at international workshops.
In 2010, she founded her own company, Compagnie KG, built around a choreographic language that moves between contemporary dance and Egyptian oriental technique — the same fusion she brought to Athens for VOL.2.
Not a One-Off
This wasn't the first time Habibi Shik Shok has run dance classes, and it won't be the last. We're adding more — and unlike a workshop folded into a five-day festival, upcoming sessions will stand on their own, listed directly on our Events page. You won't have to wait for the next Heshk Beshk to join one.