Overview
Salah Benlemqawanssa (born June 28, 1979), also known as Salah the Entertainer and Spider Salah, is a competitive hip-hop dancer from France who won the inaugural season of La France a un incroyable talent (France has Incredible Talent), the fourth season of Arabs Got Talent and the fourth season of Tú Sí Que Vales (Italy). He was born in the Paris suburb Saint-Denis and is of Moroccan (Father) and Algerian (Mother) ancestry. He calls his personal dance style P.A.B.E. which stands for Popping, Animation, Boogaloo, and Effects. Although Salah is best known for popping, he is also skilled in b-boying.
Career
Salah started dancing in 1996 after he saw the dance crew O Posse practicing their moves in front of the mirrors of the Théâtre national de Chaillot. Two years later, he and his crew The Family won second place at the international b-boying competition Battle of the Year (BOTY) in 1998. In 1999, he joined the contemporary dance company Montalvo-Hervieu.
In 2006, Salah won the first season of Incroyable Talent. In 2007, he performed a one-man stage show at London-based Breakin' Convention called "The Dream of Gluby". In 2008, he starred as himself in Beats Per Minute, an independent film about a French popper who discovers he can rewind time with his dance moves. In 2009, Salah served as a judge at BOTY's international one-on-one b-boy battle in Germany. BOTY is a b-boy competition exclusively for b-boy crews; however, to celebrate their 20th anniversary they had a competition for b-boy solo dancers.
In 2011, Salah led a digital project called Breathe the Beat. Through Breathe the Beat, he released a series of five video tutorials explaining how he takes inspiration from the world around him to create his P.A.B.E. dance style. He also judged an online competition based on the principles of his tutorials to see which dancer could create the best one-minute performance. The winner, chosen by Salah, that created the best routine was James "AnimatedJ" Jimenez from the USA. The project also featured a series of roadshows around the UK taught by Brooke and Roxy from Funkstylerz and Plague dance crews. After Breath the Beat, Salah toured North America from October 2011 to October 2012 as a featured dancer in Cirque du Soleil's production Michael Jackson: The Immortal World Tour.
From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).