Love like you've never been hurt;
Dance like no one's watching.
(Written sometime in 2002)
I thought I'd talk for just a minute about why I love bellydancing, and why I started.
I've always loved dancing, even when I was a little girl. I loved "I Dream of Jeannie", and for several Christmas in a row, I received (and subsequently wore constantly) harem-outfit-type pajamas. (I'll get the photos from Mom next time I see her so I can scan them and hook them up here.) I loved costumes (can you tell from my Halloween photos?) and dressing up and dancing around and taking up space with my body. I took ballet and gymnastics (and one day I'll forgive my mother for allowing me to quit ballet when I told her I wanted to - what ever happened to good, old-fashioned parental enforcement of their will?) and eventually joined the dance team in high school.
In college, for several years, my dancing consisted of driving three nights a week with friends to a dance club and boogie-oogie-oogie-ing 'til the early morning hours. I stayed fit and thin and very happy about life in general.
After college, I still went out from time to time, but as I got older, I grew to dislike the traffic and crowds and smoke and spent more time at home with my friends. In my late 20's, after several years of a desk job (on top of several years of a sales job that had me taking clients out to expensive [very yummy] dinners all the time), I had some unwanted weight, and I was losing my muscle tone.
I hate aerobics. I hate "working out". I hate treadmills and stairsteppers and rowing machines. (I may soon grow to love free weights, but that's a different story.) I hate sweating in long lines while instructors scream out "feel the burn"! I own videotapes of Tae Bo, Callenetics (actually not all that bad, but you have to set aside time to do it in the morning and evenings), 6 Minute Abs, Hip Hop Aerobics and goodness knows what all else. I would do them once or twice and never do them again. I stuck with the Tai Chi tape more than anything else, but that was more for mind and gentle muscle toning than anything else, not for losing weight.
Sometime in early 1997, I just wasn't happy with my body, and I was desperate to do something. Lane and I had started a habit of taking a class each semester for our own enrichment and pleasure. We took a wonderful mosaic class and made some beautiful things. We took a stonecarving class, too (head to the "Me" section for photos). Then I noticed belly dancing class was being offered and I decided to show up. At the time, I had a shaved head and was a year out of a difficult divorce and time in my life. I felt attractive in a simple way, but I didn't feel graceful or beautiful any longer.
My classmates ranged in age from 18 to 50+. Some were overweight, some were underweight, some were wrinkled and some were young. Some had long hair, some had short. Some were white, some were black, some were hispanic, and some were asian. All of us had our bellies covered (except for those couple of rock-hard co-eds I tried not to resent). Then our teacher came in. She was in her late 30's, and she wasn't model-quality pretty, she wasn't an ingenue. The first thing she did was dance for us. She didn't have a perfect body and her belly had some flesh on it, and it wasn't the kind of belly we were used to seeing in magazines and around on campus. At first people tittered self-consciously, but as she moved and spoke and danced, you could see the beauty within her coming out, and it radiated, and she was incredible - she was a goddess dancing! It didn't take long for the class to begin taking out their bellies (some of us had more than others!) and starting to learn the moves. As we progressed, the beauty within all of us began to come out, little by little, as we began to love our bodies (at least I did) as they were, not as they used to be or as we hoped they might someday be again.
I took a beginning and two intermediate classes over three semesters, leaving the university setting for private lessons with my current (fantastic) teacher, Almaazah. I've been with her since late summer, 1998. I dance every week with a group of women I consider blessings to my life. It's a time of release and freedom for me, a time of (yes, I'm going to say it) sisterhood. Even the women who come in and take for only one or two classes enrich our class, and enrich themselves in the process.
And did I lose weight? Yes, some...but mostly I'm toned and fit and very, very happy with my body. I have a womanly, curvy body and I love it. I no longer consider bellydance as a means of losing weight, but as a means of keeping in touch with my soul and the beauty I find there.
(And then there's the costumes, the "shiney things" and glitter and sequins and silks and satins and coins and beads and fringe, and how it's all just dress-up for grown-ups, but that's a whole 'nother story!)
I've been to many bellydance shows over the years, and I've seen dancers as old as 80 and as young as 17 perform with grace and beauty and elegance. I've seen women who would be labeled as "fat" move like waterfalls and women who are "stick-thin" become graceful and soft. Women who have had cancer and have lost breasts dance like angels. Women who are bald dance with pride. Just recently, a woman who had suffered severe burns over her entire body made her dancing re-debut. We are old, young, large, small, extremely tall or extremely short, and we dance. We dance. We feel the music and we move with it in us. To me, bellydancing is all about reaching inside and finding the beauty in you NOW, not somehow recapturing what you had when you were younger or thinner or in better shape. It's about what you have now and what you can take with you in the future, no matter what shape your body ends up in. Bellydancing is in your soul, and if you take that with you, you'll always be beautiful, no matter what your body or face is like.
I feel blessed to have found this kind of dance at this time in my life. My late 20's (continuing on into my early 30's) brought about many changes in my body and my face, and bellydancing has helped me not only to accept that, but to relish it. I'm looking forward to all the changes the future and aging brings to me, and I assure you I will be dancing forward to meet it!
of insanity, wanting to know reasons,
knocking on a door. It opens.
I've been knocking from the inside!...
Dance, when you're broken open,
Dance, if you've torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of the fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance, when you're perfectly free.
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- Jelaluddin Rumi
- Help Me Keep My Site Afloat!