Island of Strangers: How over-60s club with belly dancing is debunking racism

Rahim el-Habache is changing into his belly-dancing outfit inside a cleaning cupboard at the St Mellons Community Hub in Cardiff. His makeup, coin-covered hip scarf and Moroccan leather slippers are stored between a selection of J-cloths, industrial bleach and a mop and bucket.

"At least it's a gay closet," Rahim laughs, gesturing at a feather boa that belongs to one of the other performers, Liana Harding, aka tribute act 'Shirley Classy'. This afternoon, Rahim and Liana are the entertainment at 'Posh Club', a ground-breaking arts event that brings cabaret to the over-60s in communities across the UK.

St Mellons is a largely white, working-classcommunity in the east of the city, which contains some of the most deprived postcodes in Wales. For years it struggled to shrug off Tory stigma, after former Tory Welsh Secretary John Redwood claimed it was a haven for single mums on benefits.

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32-year-old Rahim is a performer, writer and director forced to leave his country because being from the LGBTQ+ community is illegal in Morocco – punishable by imprisonment and often met with violence. Meanwhile, Liana, 76 – like the original Shirley Bassey – is from the established multicultural community of Tiger Bay, on the other side of the city.

The two performers' trip to St Mellons is the scene for our third, 'Island of Strangers'Daily Mirror film – which looks at how people across the British Isles are crossing difficult divides. Battles around LGBTQ+ identity that once felt won, are being bitterly fought once more around the issue of trans rights, and angry anti-drag protests, which spread last year to Cardiff. Meanwhile, multicultural parts of our cities are being pitted against outer suburbs that have seen less change.

"The first time I did the Posh Club I was really nervous," Rahim says. "I thought: 'Will they like me? A brown person in St Mellons? Would they understand what I'm doing'?" Liana’s childhood in Tiger Bay was diverse. "It was a fantastic place to grow up, so cosmopolitan – multicultural," she says. "My mother was half West Indian and my father half-Chinese. We had a few problems with being a different colour, but you just got on with things."

The Posh Club is a "social and showbiz event for swanky senior citizens, elegant elders and glamorous golden girls" – with £5 tickets including food, drink and entertainment. Flamboyance is in its DNA, as the creation of the producers of Duckie, a long-established night at London’s Royal Vauxhall Tavern, the UK’s oldest LGBTQ+ pub.

In St Mellons, Posh Club events – curated by Common/Wealth, a theatre company with deep roots in the area – are a lifeline hung with glitter balls for people trapped at home by pensioner poverty. Widowers Linda Moles-Hampton, 83, and toy-boy Alan Todd, 79, met at very first event in 2022. Alan has kept the flyer in his inside jacket pocket ever since. "She invited me in for coffee after and I was scared to death!" Alan says. "You’re not, no more" Linda laughs.

For guests like Sandra and Allan Jobbins, it's a moment to dress up – usually in coordinated outfits. "There's a lot of loneliness out there," Allan says. "There's a lot of older people frightened to go out altogether, because they hear so many bad things. But you've got to get out."

Meanwhile for Rahim, performing at Posh Club has been about challenging his own preconceptions, and overcoming the prejudice he internalised as a child. "The first time I belly danced I almost 'bleeped' myself," Rahim says. "I remember I didn't even take off my jeans. I couldn't – because I was always told men don't belly dance, men don't wear women's clothes.

"So, in a way, I brought the shame with me to the UK. I didn't realise I had it until I was confronted with it. I had the opportunity for me to be and do whatever I want…. and I found myself literally frozen on stage." Homosexuality is illegal in Morocco, carrying a penalty of up to three years in prison. LGBTQ+ people face violence, and public 'outing'. After being granted asylumin the UK, Rahim found himself sent by the Home Office to Cardiff, a place he had never heard of. He struggled to settle in, until finding Glitter Cymru, a Welsh support group for LGBTQ+ people of colour.

There he met Shrouk El-Attar, an activist for LGBTQ+ rights in her native Egypt, who performs as a belly dancer in an act called 'Dancing Queer'. Shrouk had organised a belly-dancing protest by the statue of Aneurin Bevan in Queen Street, Cardiff's main shopping area. "Jokingly, I said to her, will I bring my belly dancing outfit?" Rahim laughs.

That night, he performed his first public belly dance to loud applause. As he confronted the shame he had felt growing up in Morocco, Rahim says he began to cast off the double identity he had grown up with. "Sometimes to survive, you have to wear two masks and that's what a lot of people still do unfortunately in a lot of countries," he says. "Now, I can't even remember how I lived those two lives."

Rhiannon White, the co-founder of Common/Wealth, grew up in St Mellons during the miners' strike. She says the Posh Club is about providing fun for older people, but also challenging stereotypes about her community. "My mother was a single mum with three children who worked hard," she says. "Life was fun, but also tough for me and the community I grew up with. In 1994, John Redwood the Welsh Secretary of state launched a pointed attack on St.Mellons – brandishing it one of the biggest single mothers estates in Europe and vilifying the community.

"This had a profound effect. It created a culture around me that felt designed to hold me back. We talk about community, diversity and inclusion all the time and what I’d like to see is some clarity around what these words mean and in what context are we using them. How can we challenge those structures?"

As the afternoon goes on, Liana has the crowd in the palm of her hand, belting out Diamonds Are Forever and delivering some brilliant lines as her alter ego. And despite some initial bemusement from some members of the audience, Rahim soon has the crowd up belly dancing, buoyed along to a Moroccan soundtrack.

For the young theatre director, Posh Club is a lesson in reaching out to communities who might never normally visit a drag show.
"Whenever we talk about immigration, whenever we talk about people of colour, whenever we talk about any sort of diversity, we slag the older generation," Rahim says.

"That they are not educated, that they are racist, they’re the ones that cause the problem… and I think the Posh Club is the best example debunking that. The warm welcome I received from the community, the curiosity – my heart fills up with so much joy. And my mission is to give that to someone who is watching me.”

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