Biographies

Born and raised in Rochester NY, with a minor in dance from SUNY Brockport College, T-sha has 31+ years total of dance experience in many different styles including jazz, tap, ballet, modern, Afro-Caribbean, Irish and salsa with a longstanding focus in bellydance.  In 2001, seeing Shakira on TV at the Latin Grammy Awards inspired her to start learning bellydance from instructional VHS tapes at home.  In 2007 she moved to Fort Lauderdale FL where her interest in bellydance grew as she found classes with and joined Masala Middle Eastern Dance Fusion.  Despite dabbling in so many dance related things while in South Florida, her growing passion for bellydance remained constant throughout the years as she continued to perform in local shows/festivals with Masala and became a regular bellydancer at My Big Fat Greek Restaurant.  Even though she recently moved to Baltimore MD, she still performs with Masala at the Florida Renaissance Festival for a couple weekends annually, continues to take zoom bellydance classes from Bryanna of Masala and is honored to be welcomed as a guest bellydancer with Boom Boom Shake.  When she isn’t dancing, she works as a certified veterinary technician caring for animals.

Ghost Siren is an artist who hails from a small mountain in NY. She has been dancing since 2012 and it has been one of her favorite ways to express herself creatively and feel empowered in her own body. She enjoys sharing her progress in learning new things in dance on her YouTube channel. There she also enjoys fusing bellydance with gothic and fantasy elements into dance videos to some of her favorite metal and pagan folk bands. She began performing in 2016 and has shared the stage with Psyche Corp, Cu Dubh, Ally the Piper, and has been a long time dancer for the wonderful Boom Boom Shake. She has performed at conventions and renaissance fairs such as Rufflecon, Glimmerdark, Wicked Faire, The New York Faerie Festival, Kingdom Faire, and the New York Renaissance Faire. She looks forward to performing with Boom Boom Shake in 2024!

Classically trained since the age of four, Claudia ran away to join the circus (OK, a Renaissance Faire) at 17, and has never looked back. Along with spending darned near half her life playing with the Philly-based band Gypsophilia, she’s also fiddled about with The Arcona Reel Band out of Harrisburg, PA; The Pyrates Royale, long of the Maryland Renaissance Festival; and most recently, The Ogham Stones of Lancaster, PA. You can find her on a few recordings by these bands as well as others she’s parachuted in to play with.

Claudia is happiest making music with some wiggle room, when the band has space to make stuff up and surprise themselves as well as the audience. For this reason as well as the excellent company and extraordinary creativity, she’s thrilled to be part of the “artist’s collective” that is Boom Boom Shake.

Liz Azi is a professional dancer based in Denver, Colorado. Her movement specialties include several different styles of bellydance and regional folk dances from the Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and North African region. Her dance background was founded upon a decade of theater and musical education and has continued through continuous travel to countries such as Turkey and Egypt. She has been a featured dancer in cabaret, vaudeville, and dance shows all over the country.

Melanya Zerpa is a Venezuelan-born, New York-bred dancer who studies and performs contemporary raqs sharqi/belly dance and dances of the MENAT region. She started her formal training with Andrea Beeman in 2013 and soon after branched out to Serena Studio, Anahid Sofian Studio, and Bellyqueen School in NYC, where she was invited by Kaeshi Chai to become part of the Bellyqueen group as an understudy in 2014. Through the instructors at Bellyqueen’s local and international guest teachers, and the tight-knit, encouraging, and knowledgeable community of dance artists in NYC, Mel's formative training was sewn and nurtured.
Organic, fluid movement and the prospect to incorporate themes, concepts, props, costuming, improvisation, and more into her performances, makes belly dance her preferred form of dance. She is deeply inspired by exploring non-verbal forms of communication, expression, and connection, and strives to keep creating using the many forms of Raqs Sharqi/belly dance as a medium.
Mel continues finessing her practice by frequently performing and teaching, dancing with troupes and as a soloist, and by traveling to take workshops with regional, national, and international instructors. As of 2018, she currently resides in the beautiful mountains of Asheville, NC and regularly performs in the NC, SC, TN, GA area.