…and so it begins.
Hello. My name is Helen, and I have a confession to make.
I.. I am.. Oh, here it comes! I am a dancer. There, I said it, the Internet saw it and nobody can delete it now. Except Nico, she can.
Referring to myself as a dancer or a bellydancer still creates unease and tension in my chest as it elicits a certain level of confidence and experience one has with what is colloquially called belly dance these days. I much prefer to be referred to as "a perpetual student of dance" neither limiting myself to being an expert nor trying to shove something like Debke into the bellydance category. I see - I like - I want to find out more.
However, this is not how I felt in my first belly dance class years ago.
Unlike many of my fellow dance students, I had exactly zero experience in performing arts, organized sports or physical group classes for adults. Yeah, OK, a bit of basketball in highschool may or may not count.
So there I was, a middle-aged woman with no skills or previous experience in anything dance, taking my first ever belly dance class. I don't need to describe that experience in detail, but if I had to do it in just one word it would be "confusion".
That initial confusion gave me the momentum to grab onto what I could in class, then go home and research. I vividly remember the embarrassment I felt when I looked up the name of the song the class was learning the choreography to. To my great surprise "ney" and "oud" are musical instruments and not just quirky sounding three-letter words. (In case you're wondering, the song is Ney I Say Unto Oud by David Brown & the Krewe of Sound. https://youtu.be/l92Fz12HV2c?si=hKcSOVdFvqJdDQCl )
So, on top of being kinesiologically challenging, those beginner belly dance classes gave me plenty of food for the brain I had to tease apart and digest for myself.
However, it wasn't all unicorns and rainbows from then on.
Oh, how many times have I heard other dancers say "I fell in love with the music right away!" or "from day one I could see myself dancing on stage in one of those pretty sparkly costumes!"! Or, my favourite, "I have finally found my feminine side!". It always sounded like they fell in love with belly dance at first sight. Pass the peanut butter ‘cuz I'm so jelly!
I felt none of it and sure as hell I wasn't in love with everything belly dance. I was just... chugging along: showing up to class regularly and practicing the moves I was taught at home with mild enthusiasm. That's it. Bellydance wouldn't even qualify as one of my numerous hobbies at the time - just a side quest I felt I had to complete. After all, I did pay for it!
And then something happened by the end of the 10 week term. The thought of having no classes between June and September gave me that strange sadness some of us get when days get cooler in the fall. The kind of sadness that makes us want to hold on to the sunny days and wear shorts in October. Not doom and gloom, but... I wished the term wasn't ending.
That's when everything changed.
Within a few days, the book by the one and only Morocco ( https://www.casbahdance.org/shop/you-asked-aunt-rocky-answers-advice-about-raqs-sharqi-raqs-shaabi-oriental-folk-dance/ ) made it to my summer reading list. I could say "and the rest is history", but I shall say "Omg, Aunt Rocky, thanks for dialing my confusion to 11!" instead. Nonetheless, I've spent that summer reading, Googling, reading some more and getting pretty opinionated about certain topics on belly dance. When in-person classes resumed in September, I came in with guns blazing! Well, no. I was still a timid blob of confusion - only now I had questions. Lots of questions. Like, hours worth of questions! What's the difference between Shaabi and Baladi dresses? When is it better to dance on stage in relevé? Where does bedlah as a belly dance costume staple come from? How do I start playing zills? What makes the Golden Era dance style so special? - these are but a few I had at the time. Thankfully, my teachers were more than happy to provide answers when they could and honestly admit they don't know when they couldn't. By then my incessant hunger for knowledge and understanding has crystallized into the fuel that keeps me seeking answers to this day. It also is a great source of tangents in class!
There will never be a shortage of topics within the art of belly dance where an answer to a question isn't simple, definitive and without some form of controversy. We humans are an opinionated bunch with crappy memories and enormous egos. The thing to keep in mind is that all opinions deserve to be heard, but not all deserve to be respected equally. Check your sources, keep learning and question everything. Never stop looking for the answer to the most important question of all: why do you dance? And if your answer is "'cause I wanna!", we are on the same page.
What's your origin story as a bellydancer? I'd love to know what brought you in and kept you coming back for more!
Hugs & kisses,
Your Feral Dancer Auntie Helen
Get in touch, share your thoughts.
Helen's email askauntiehelen@gmail.com
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