Nagua Fouad

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Nagua Fouad (Arabic: نجوى فؤاد) (born 1943) is a noted belly dancer.

Nagua ran away from her Alexandria home at the age of 15, to work as a telephone receptionist at Orabi Agency for Stars in Cairo, Egypt. Nagua's dream was to dance like her idols the belly dancers of the 1940-1950s era including: Naema Akef, Samia Gamal, and Tahiya Karioka.

At the age of 16, her employer Orabi spotted her belly dancing while on the job and persuaded her to rent a costume for 50 piastres from Nemat Mokhtar and helped her perform at the Sahara City Tent. A few months later and she was dancing at the famous Auberge Nightclub run by Mohamed Abdel Nabie where she was arrested by the vice squad for dancing professionally at an illegal age.

After her release she performed at the Abdeen Casino where she met Ahmad Fouad Hassan (her future husband for 6 years), a producer of stage shows that later became a famous conductor. He convinced her to perform live at the most prestigious music and dance show in the 1960s called Adwa El Madina (City Lights) which had featured such superstars as Shadia, Abdel Halim Hafez, Fayza Ahmed, and Sabah.

In 1976, the famous composer Mohammed Abdel Wahab wrote an entire musical piece exclusively for her belly dancing show titled Qamar Arba'tashar (meaning the full Moon of the 14th), it was her transition from traditional oriental dance to a choreographed stage performances.