Hilde is originally from Belgium. In 2004 she moved to Brighton to pursue her career as a belly dance teacher and performer and to study dance and visual arts at Brighton University. Currently she is teaching Egytian fusion bellydance, Belly Dance Fitness fusion tribal bellydance (ATS) and tribal fusion bellydance in Brighton and Portslade. Click here for more info on classes.

At a very young age she became passionate about dance and she took her first dance class in 1995. She started with streetdance and funk classes with Majid Ghadiri (NL), Marsha Momerency, Haider and Saho (BE), but it wasn't long before she discovered belly dance.

After spending quite some time in Egypt, her passion became even greater and for years to come she practised the different techniques and rhythms. She followed lessons and workshops with many famous belly dance performers and instructors such as Rachel Brice, Unmata, Mardi Love and Suhaila Salimpour (US) and the Fat Chance dance company (US). She has been studying flamenco with Sofia Yero and Celine Van Rossem (BE) to expand her horizons and her main focus now is Tribal Fusion and American Tribal Style (ATS). In June 2006 she went to San Francisco to study the tribal style further and in August 2006 she went to Rwanda where she had the fantastic opportunity to dance with some of the native tribes up in Simbi, one of the villages in the hills of Butare.

Hilde is Fat Chance Belly Dance certified (ATS general skills - September 2007) and received certificate of Achievement (August 2007) for the JWAAD teacher training foundation course.

Hilde has a Bachelors degree in teaching (Belgium) and a BA Hons in Dance and Visual Arts. She began teaching street dance in Belgium in 2000 and belly dance in the UK in 2004 and has performed at numerous events in Belgium, Rwanda and in the UK, such as Brighton Orient, Arabian Spice, de Wereldfeesten, Sport en Spel dag,... She also performed as a guest performer with the hybrid London based live band Oojami, where her eclectic style really shined through and with the Balkan brass band Fanfara.

Over the years she has created her own style of dancing, where Middle Eastern techniques are combined with Western influences which has made her very popular as both a teacher and a performer.

In 2007 she founded Masmoudi, her dance troupe that focuses on tribal and fusion belly dance. Current members are: Hilde Cannoodt, Alicia Meseguer and Rachel Thomas. To watch a video of Masmoudi, click here.