High marks from Saudi women as Aerial yoga trend takes off in the Kingdom – Arab News

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RIYADH: Hovering a few feet above the ground, flying weightlessly and defying the laws of gravity is attracting women to practice the art of aerial yoga.
In an aerial yoga class, similar poses to yoga done on the mat are performed, but instead of using your body weight to support yourself, you use a silk hammock suspended from the ceiling.
Sarah Farhoud, a Saudi aerial fitness freelancer and yoga teacher, was introduced to aerial yoga classes while she was in medical school. “I used to go to do yoga and relax, and for a change, I decided to take an aerial class, and I never looked back,” Farhoud told Arab News.
She loved the sport so much that she became a freelance instructor in 2016 and has been taking aerial fitness classes in multiple studios across Riyadh.
The high demand was after 2017 when it was permitted to open licensed ladies’ gyms. I got the TOT (the Training of Trainers) from Cirque Fitness USA. Today, we have 508 certified instructors in aerial hammock, silks, and hoop by aerial arts in Saudi Arabia.
Roa Al-Sahhaf, Aerial yoga instructor
“Girls are interested, and they like the challenge. They trust the hammock, and they do not fear being upside down. They are encouraged to take harder poses and they trust their bodies. I think the new generation is more courageous and excited,” she said.

The hammock is designed to help you increase your flexibility and strength while enabling you to perform more difficult poses without putting additional strain on your shoulders, spine or head.
“If your life is stressful, try aerial yoga as a way to break up your routine and rediscover the joy of being upside down, using the fabric to lift you to the other side, or using it as a swing. I’ve attended many classes where everyone is laughing and giggling because they’re having a good time, and you can allow yourself to take a deep breath and enjoy the moment,” Farhoud said.
She believes that Vision 2030 will encourage more studios to open and make sports more inclusive and accessible for everyone by opening parks and community centers.
Roa Al-Sahhaf, an aerial yoga instructor, was in Paris when she was introduced to aerial yoga and decided to take it back home.
“I tried aerial for the first time in Paris, and when I came back to Saudi Arabia I couldn’t find it anywhere in Jeddah, so I decided to open one in Jeddah. It started as a home studio, and then I started giving classes to other gyms. Eventually, in 2018, I opened my own studio named Aerial Arts in Saudi Arabia,” Al-Sahhaf told Arab News.
Al-Sahhaf noticed that there was a high demand for the sport, but there were not enough instructors.
“The high demand was after 2017 when it was permitted to open licensed ladies’ gyms. I got the TOT (the Training of Trainers) from Cirque Fitness USA. Today, we have 508 certified instructors in aerial hammock, silks, and hoop by aerial arts in Saudi Arabia,” she said.
Al-Sahhaf said that many people enjoy trying new things and that aerial yoga can be more popular than traditional yoga due to its greater difficulty and the enjoyment people gain from it.
“Aerial is like a water sport. It’s good for people who are not flexible or who have roughness in the knees or fragility in the disc. It’s good for people who can’t do any kind of sport because the hammock lifts so much weight off them,” Al-Sahhaf said.
“It’s like doing an exercise with another person, and by the end of the session we always give a meditation (exercise) so they can be tangled around the hammock and meditate,” she said. “It gives them a great feeling.”
Yoga is gaining popularity as a fitness trend in Saudi Arabia, and the Ministry of Commerce approved the teaching and practice of yoga as a sport in the Kingdom in November 2017.
“The facilities have improved a lot in the fields of licensing, support, sponsorship, and we are happy with this,” Al-Sahhaf said.
 
PARIS:  If you think that Saudi Arabia’s cuisine is only famous for kabsa, think again, and the Eiffel Tower is a witness!

Paris hosted one of the biggest gourmet events this weekend, which took place from Sept. 1-4.

The fifth edition of the International Gastronomy Village offered four days of conviviality with popular cuisines and cultures from over 50 countries. This year, Michelin-starred chef Guy Savoy sponsored the village.

All this is very familiar to the CEO of the Saudi Culinary Arts Commission, Mayada Badr, who took part in 2016 as a chef.

“I realized the impact of how just sharing a meal with someone can change the perception of a country through gastronomy. It honestly is such amazing soft power,” she told Arab News.
 
At the foot of the Eiffel Tower, the Kingdom set up seven pavilions, making it one of the largest participants at the event — welcoming visitors to witness live cooking sessions, enjoy traditional music and shows, and taste authentic dishes and Saudi coffee.

“We have seven pavilions for Saudi Arabia to indicate all the regions and diversity of our cultural offerings,” said Badr, adding that one can experience all five regional Saudi coffees with a variety of dates.

She highlighted that 2022 has been dedicated as “The Year of Saudi Coffee” by the Kingdom’s Ministry of Culture.

Next to the coffee pavilion, there was an area dedicated to dates that offered date-based desserts such as qishd and mehalla.
 
Two pavilions were devoted to Saudi dates, helping to introduce festival goers to the Kingdom’s rich heritage and highlight the large variety of dates that grow in the country.

Badr said people assume that Saudi Arabia is all desert, but after visiting the pavilions, they understand that the Kingdom has coffee farms and grows mangoes and bananas.

As well as a craftsmanship pavilion, there are culinary tents with the flavorsome aroma of jarish, banana mutabbaq, mandi and veggie markouk.
 
The Saudi chefs offered traditional mouthwatering dishes that you can find in Saudi homes, hence bringing a part of the Kingdom to the very heart of Paris.

When asked about jarish, Chef Carly told one visitor: “It is a traditional Saudi grandma’s dish. It is similar to risotto in a way, but instead of rice, we use cracked wheat. It can either be done with chicken or with tomatoes for a vegetarian option.”

After a good meal, it was time for some sweets. In another pavilion, chef Omar Mulla was busy preparing Saudi Arabia’s most loved luqaimat, magshush and masoub.
 
While preparing freshly made sweets, he told Arab News that luqaimat, which translates into small bites, are fried little dumplings with sugar syrup and cardamom, crisp on the outside and soft on the inside.

Masoub is a famous sweet dish in the Hijaz, made from sajj bread, banana, honey and ashta. Maghough comes from Hail, where it is made with bread and date molasses.

When asked about future projects, Badr said there was a memorandum of understanding signed with Le Cordon Bleu to open a culinary school in Riyadh soon.
RIYADH: Misk Art Institute’s latest art residency showcase brought together a variety of culture vultures to experience a wave of emotions — from inner demons to journeys of self-exploration — through silkscreen prints.
The residency, a month-long intensive program that took place at the Masaha art hub throughout August, saw six residents fully immersed in the contemporary art of silkscreen printing, supervised by an expert team of in-house printmakers.
The residents brought their own unique ideas to life, from the curatorial phase to the production phase through access to the institute’s screen-printing facilities and individual studio spaces.
“The residency was great. The printing methods helped me to deliver the message more prominently and more easily. I think that we achieved a lot in a one-month residency,” resident and film photographer Haitham Alsharif told Arab News.
His work further explored the conversation of self-awareness, coping mechanisms, and contemporary social pressures. The vulnerability issues his generation faces in their daily lives act as an influence on his work, focusing on creating a printed representation of various expectations and criticisms such as the pressure of marriage or wearing labels.
• The micro-residency was organized to bring together artists from various disciplines to experience this delicate but immersive technique, gain a deeper appreciation for silkscreen printing and showcasing their work to the Saudi community.
• The art residency comes after three cycles of three-month intensive programs, the Masaha Residencies, which have featured artists from all over the world coming to Riyadh to develop their craft and explore their designated themes.
“In photography, I think printing is an essential way of showcasing a photo, but using different colors and different formats of printing, it can add another layer of creativity so you can deliver that message in a more creative, attractive, and prominent way,” he said.
By contrast, fellow resident Shatha Altumihi explored the inner pressures that one creates within themselves. Her work, an audience favorite, centers around characters that individuals can morph into in the process of expressing themselves emotionally by dealing with their inner demons.
“I decided to choose this subject because I often feel misunderstood. I’ve gone through certain experiences so I wanted to visualize that in a funky and visually pleasing way so that people don’t feel that these emotions are negative or that monsters are a bad thing,” she told Arab News.
Altumihi has used this opportunity to delve into silkscreen printing to further enhance her graphic design and illustration background. She’s used various techniques, such as bitmap photoshop effects, to bring texture and vividness to her artworks.
Resident Mohammad Fattal brought an emotional display to the halls of Masaha. His pieces, printed on draped sheer fabric, represent our relationship with abandoned or old buildings.
Photographs of torn-down places and homes shed light on the emotions we endure when we leave precious memories behind, either willingly or forcefully. On a personal level, it’s an ode to his home country, Syria.
“I haven’t been to Syria since the war, so when I saw these scenes of torn down buildings, I got the feeling, even if they weren’t real, of how I would feel if I saw this in my country, in places that are dear to my heart,” Fattal told Arab News.
As a digital photographer, he tested the contrasting reactions to his digital photos with physically printed works, playing around with fabrics and textured paper.
“It gives you a different feeling, and that’s what I wanted to transfer from my personality to things that are more artistic, not just photography. I’ve found that in printing in a beautiful way… with every print or try, we get a new artwork,” he said.
The micro-residency was organized to bring together artists from various disciplines to experience this delicate but immersive technique, gain a deeper appreciation for silkscreen printing and showcasing their work to the Saudi community.
The art residency comes after three cycles of three-month intensive programs, the Masaha Residencies, which have featured artists from all over the world coming to Riyadh to develop their craft and explore their designated themes.
The showcase will be running until Sept. 8 at Misk’s Masaha space, open to the public daily from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m.
 
RIYADH: Food content creators on social media have stepped up their game by posting cinematically shot food pictures and videos to create a tempting and glossy gallery of images.
One of them is Jeddah-based Raneen Joudah, a housewife and a digital creator with 305,000 followers on Instagram, 33,000 on Tiktok, and 350,000 on Snapchat. She also has 172,000 YouTube subscribers.
Joudah started her social media journey by making simple food vlogs of delicious home-cooked meals but decided to take things up a notch when she realized there was a lack of creative, professional, and informative content.
“I am a content creator who cooks food and shoots at the same time. Before, people viewed me as a housewife who cooks, but now I elevated my content by cinematography,” Joudah told Arab News.
She offers tips and tricks for baking, and ideas for children’s lunchboxes, sweets, spreads, and salads. Her Instagram shows a range of recipes, mostly covering the Arab and Mediterranean regions.
Raneen Joudah offers tips and tricks for baking, and ideas for children’s lunchboxes, sweets, spreads, and salads. Her Instagram shows a range of recipes, mostly covering the Arab and Mediterranean regions. She also shares proper cooking techniques and the science of food in her perfectly shot and aesthetically appealing videos.
As a content creator, Joudah shares more than just recipes. She also shares proper cooking techniques and the science of food in her perfectly shot and aesthetically appealing videos.
Simple recipe videos take around six hours comprising cooking, filming, and editing, but a creatively shot video can take anywhere from three to seven days of work, which includes building the creative concept, shooting, and editing.
“Creating content as in production with a certain style of cinematography is something that we lack on social media and I like that I’m filling the gap here.
“The market lacks content creating production, and in Saudi Arabia, we don’t have a middle ground. You either find an immature cinematographer or pay so much for a professional production company, so I established a creative production house and named it Creative Table that’s going to be launched soon.”
Joudah believed that Creative Table, a location to shoot and produce content, bridged the gap between big production houses and small solo videographers working on creative campaigns.
She said all social media platforms could work together to create a brand.
“I use Snapchat as a curtain raiser of the recipe video that I, later on, post the professional content on Instagram. Snapchat is a good engagement tool to get people excited and communicate with the audience, and having more than one platform like Snapchat, Instagram, and now, Tiktok all serve together.”
Joudah preferred Snapchat because she could be herself more and be close to people.
“Snapchat people can see the behind-the-scenes most of the time, so they know the effort and appreciate it.”
She also thought working on social media was better than opening a restaurant.
“Many people advised me to open a restaurant since I’m a food content creator. However, opening a restaurant is my last priority, and I won’t open one under my name because I don’t like to link my name to a place, and everything that may go wrong in the restaurant can reflect on my name.”
 
RIYADH: The Ministry of Culture is sending 211 students on scholarships to international higher education institutions, the Saudi Press Agency reported.
The Cultural Scholarship Program, supervised by the ministry, intends to prepare Saudis to meet the labor market’s need for qualified and talented nationals specializing in the arts and culture sectors.
It is the first program of its kind in the Kingdom and covers tuition fees and all study costs of the participating students.
This latest group of students — comprising 133 women and 78 men — is the seventh since the program first launched in December 2019. Among the students, 123 are enrolled in bachelor’s degree programs, 83 in master’s degree programs and the remaining five in Ph.D. programs.
The students’ specializations cover food and science technology, theater, music, heritage and archeology, fashion design, libraries and museums, filmmaking, visual arts, literature and linguistics, architecture, culinary arts and design.
This latest group of students — comprising 133 women and 78 men — is the seventh since the program first launched in December 2019. Among the students, 123 are enrolled in bachelor’s degree programs, 83 in master’s degree programs and the remaining five in Ph.D. programs.
They will attend institutes and universities including Culinary Arts Academy, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Culinary Institute of America, University of the Arts London, Pratt Institute, Manchester School of Architecture, Virginia Commonwealth University, Australian National University, Indiana University Bloomington, University of Edinburgh and Durham University.
The majority of the students will continue their educational journey in the US, which will host 115 students, followed by the UK (56 students), Switzerland (20 students) and Australia (10 students). Egypt and France will each host two students, while the three remaining students will be divided between Italy, Singapore and South Korea.
Since its launch, the scholarship program has benefitted 683 students: 443 women and 240 men. Students studying for their bachelor’s degree composed the highest share of the program with 384 students, followed by those studying for a master’s degree (291 students) and a Ph.D. (eight students).
The Cultural Scholarship Program is distinguished by its comprehensiveness and specializations diversity in cultural and artistic fields. The selected students will benefit from financial coverage for tuition fees, living expenses for both themselves and their companions, health care, travel tickets, as well as follow-up and evaluation guidance programs.
 
RIYADH: The King Abdulaziz and His Companions Foundation for Giftedness and Creativity (Mawhiba) reviewed its successful experience in research programs at the 18th European Council for High Ability between Aug. 31 and Sept. 3.
The ECHA seeks to create communication opportunities for teachers, researchers, psychologists, and parents and enhance the exchange of information among people engaged in this field.
The conference, held in the Netherlands, was attended by more than 800 people from 15 countries.
Three Mawhiba students, Abdulrahman Al-Fheid, Rafif Hubani, and Hanin Al-Tamar, participated and exchanged ideas, expertise, and culture with people from other countries.
The director general of the Excellence Center, Khalid Al-Sharif, reviewed a paper that discussed the steps Mawhiba had adopted to increase the quality of student research and how these had helped the body win 22 awards at the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair and a Mawhiba student receive an award for being the best researcher in the world.
Al-Sharif went over Mawhiba’s efforts in caring for talented youth and its approach to offering research programs.
The conference saw the participation of specialists from the US, Europe, and Africa. There were scientific papers, workshops, and lectures on areas including innovative educational practices, supporting talent development, self-development, the necessity of engaging every educated person, considering student opinions, and creating new norms to invest in talent.
Recently, Mawhiba launched its second training workshop this year to prepare 200 secondary school students for admission to top US universities.
The seven-day workshop is part of Mawhiba’s Excellence Program, which helps outstanding students enroll at leading institutions in the US. The students receive career guidance, counseling, and intensive courses on academic writing.
 

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