Ex-flight attendant quits job to earn £100 per hour as skilled stomach dancer
Lizzie Abou Chedid, 37, worked as cabin crew for Emirates for nearly 10 years before Covid halted her work in Dubai and she turned to belly dancing
Lizzie went from the cabin room to the dance floor (Image: William Lailey / SWNS)
A former flight attendant swapped her cabin crew duties for the glitz and glamour of belly dancing, raking in £100 per hour at events.
Lizzie Abou Chedid, 37, was part of Emirates’ cabin crew for nearly a decade before the Covid-19 pandemic grounded her in Dubai. Having been a belly dance enthusiast since she was 18, the unexpected downtime allowed Lizzie to hone her skills daily on Zoom with her mentor, Leyla, 43.
Training to become both a teacher and performer, Lizzie hit the ground running as soon as restrictions eased in Dubai, performing at various events. After welcoming her son Khalil, four, in October 2021, Lizzie and her husband Naji, 52, decided to return to the UK in August 2022. She hung up her Emirates uniform for good in March of the same year.
Now, she’s shaking things up part-time as a belly dancer, lighting up restaurants and corporate events across Manchester and Liverpool, and pulling in £8,000-a-year, including her teaching income. She also earns around £500 per month teaching belly dancing in three weekly classes.
Lizzie, a full-time mum from Crewe, Cheshire, said: “I always had a fascination with belly dancing. My teacher had been having weekly classes doing online Zoom classes – I was training every single day. She trained me and it became an obsession. We turned the spare room into a little studio for me.”
She added: “That was it, train, train, train and then with Dubai, we came out of lockdown a lot sooner than a lot of other places. I was immediately asked to do group gigs or bits on my own.
“A friend of mine recommended me to […] an agency in the UK without me knowing which was really sweet of her. It went from there – I’m really busy I do one to two gigs a week mostly in restaurants and so some corporate things and occasions like weddings and birthday celebrations.
“I absolutely love it. My husband always says to me if I’m a bit moody ‘you need to go and dance’.”
Lizzie relocated to Dubai in 2013 after landing her Emirates job, met her husband Naji at a mate’s wedding in 2018, and tied the knot just three weeks before lockdown kicked in. After stepping up her training, Lizzie’s belly dancing mentor offered to coach her to become both a teacher and performer.
Lizzie said: “That was a far-off dream I thought would never happen. I thought ‘am I not too old now to be a performer’, I was 31. The tourism industry [in Dubai] wanted to pick back up and get people back in and there was a shortage of dancers. I was still flying at this point too. I would do maybe a flight a month or one every two weeks.”
Lizzie added while she was pregnant she continued to teach the dancing form and even revealed belly dancing while pregnant actually came with health benefits.
She explained: “I carried on teaching whilst pregnant which is great, belly dancing whilst pregnant is so good for you. I went back to performing when he [Khalil] was two months old”.
Lizzie hung up her flight attendant hat in March 2022. After moving back to the UK, Lizzie signed with an agency, and alongside looking after her son full-time, she manages to fit in action-packed weekends of dance.
She revealed: “For a 20-minute performance I’ll be paid £100 but factoring in the drive which might be an hour to where I dance, and my costumes are $500 a piece.” She added: “With my teaching and performing I earn £8,000 per year. I wouldn’t say it’s amazing pay because I don’t think anyone in performing arts is paid enough.”
