About Us

Empowerment Center

Our Approach

What Women Like About Us

Hip Circle Empowerment Center is a vibrant Bellydance and Fitness Community created to make health and wellness accessible to women of all ages, shapes, and ethnicities. If you identify as a woman you are welcomed and accepted here. An exempt organization as described in Section 501(c)(3) of the US Internal Revenue Code, Hip Circle operates as a non-profit organization reliant on class revenue, donations, and sponsors to continue our work.

  • Our Goal: To inspire Confidence, Health, and Joy through all the stages of your life.
  • Our Mission: Through dance, fitness, and community we empower ALL women to believe they are strong, beautiful, and worthy of attention.
  • Our Vision: The Hip Circle Empowerment Center is a safe space for women of all ages, backgrounds, and economic status. It brings together women from across societal boundaries for shared experiences. Through dance and fitness, women are empowered to joyfully inhabit their bodies. Through personal and professional development, women are empowered to courageously accomplish their goals. Through involvement in the studio community, women are empowered to confidently make their voices heard.

Core Values

  • Inclusion → All women have the right to be respected and appreciated as a valuable member of the community. HCEC creates a space to honor and cherish women seeking a circle of empowerment. (It’s in our name!)
  • Acceptance → Hip Circle Empowerment Center is for all women regardless of age, race, religion, size, weight, ability, experience, economic resources, or other societal classification. We value and welcome all who identify as a woman and seek the space and community to pursue movement and wellness. Through acceptance we embrace authenticity, accessibility, support, and maintain a safe environment.
  • Movement → Movement is a fundamental aspect of our health, physically, emotionally, and socially. Encouraging and celebrating movement in all women’s lives positively impacts everything from circulation to immunity. HCEC embraces movement both in the active pursuit of health and in taking positive actions in the world.
  • Practice → Mindful practice, including all of the specific actions and decisions that we make in a variety of situations, meshes well with our value of encouraging all women to participate in focusing on process over product. Hip Circle draws on the yogic principle of "Tapas", or discipline, in which steady practice provides a path to greater knowledge of ourselves, inside and out.
  • Feminism → Hip Circle fully embraces feminism as the only route toward achieving gender equality. We want to ensure that all women are empowered to recognize they should not be held back by gender roles or expectations.

Our Story

Our studio was founded by Malik Turley in 2010, with a focus on Bellydancing, Zumba, and Fitness. We have since expanded to offer a broad variety of classes, workshops and community events.

The more Malik has worked with women, the more fully she has witnessed the impact of body image on self-esteem–how a woman’s self-worth was often tied to her body. She decided to reinforce the physical and emotional benefits of strength vs the common focus on appearance. Hip Circle honors your inherent power and worth as a woman. You’ll experience this through our guiding philosophy, and through a diversity of dance and fitness classes, workshops, and events—all led from a place of acceptance and celebration of a woman’s uniqueness and strength.

Recognition

Guidestar Silver Recognition Seal
We earned a 2021 Silver Seal of Transparency! Learn more about our organization’s impact through our NonprofitProfile on @CandidDotOrg

As a community-minded space, we were a member of the Black Owned Business Consortium of Evanston/Northshore.

Hip Circle Studio
Malik and Kjers
Hip Circle Equipment