Meet Our Directors
Oasis Dance Camp is the culmination of a dream for two dancers living in Michigan in 1985. Sa'ida and Vashti (Jean Courter and Mary Lynn Buss) organized the first Oasis Dance Camp in Northern Michigan to provide an opportunity for themselves and their dance troupes to study with Cassandra on a continuing long term basis. Eventually each of them moved away from Michigan and established branch camps near their new homes in Florida and Washington. Sa'ida continues as director of Oasis and returns each year to the original camp location in Michigan which continues to fill to capacity year after year. With the addition of Camp New Zealand in 2004 Camp Marrakech in 2005, and the Luxor Retreat in 2010, Oasis has become a truly international dance experience.
Jean Courter (Sa'ida Bint al-Waha) began dancing in 1972 at a community center class called "Belly Dance for Exercise". Totally smitten she has attended every workshop, class, and event which time and funds would allow since then. Teaching in order to grow in dance, organizing events in order to learn from the best instructors, wishing there was more time for both, Jean remains a devotee to the art. In her free-time she is office manager for an architectural firm in St. Augustine, Florida where she was until recently also the administrative director of a large non-profit dance school. “I am amazed and thrilled by the journey that Oasis has taken me on for the past 25 years. I never expected so much from a small selfish idea.”
Mary Lynn Buss (Vashti Bint al-Waha) took up dancing
while studying law at the University of California in Berkeley in the early
70's. She continued her dance study and began performing while lawyering
in Chicago and later in Lansing, Michigan. She founded the Habibi Dancers
and was director of the troupe for 10 years until she left Michigan for
a year long sabbatical in London followed by a move to Vashon Island, Washington.
The break gave her a chance to change direction and an opportunity to leave
a 20 year law career behind and embark on a new career as an artisan tile
maker.
Mary Lynn and her husband spend three to four months a year at different
locations in New Zealand and Australia on working holidays. "Ron
works and I holiday", Mary Lynn laughs, but in fact Mary Lynn continues
her tile work when abroad and makes it a point of getting involved with
the dancers and potters in the communities where she lives. Hence the
connection to New Zealand which led to bringing Cassandra there on a teaching
tour and which then led to the Oasis-DownUnder, our first international
venture.
Mary Lynn took the occasion of Oasis' 20 year anniversary as the proper time
to retire from co-directing the dance camps in order to focus more fully
on her tile work. She dances with Troupe Shadaroba based in Tacoma, Washington
and remains involved in a supportive role with Oasis-West which is held
on Vashon Island. And yes she still has a wonderful standard poodle.