Taking A Bolly X Class With Katie

“I feel like dancing,” I said to Katie when I walked into the Co-op heard the Bollywood music.  This was a few years ago, when Katie had just started working there.

We started talking dance.  I told her about my Bellydancing and she told me how she taught Bollywood dance, with her sister, at Hubbard Hall, the theater in town.

Off and on for years after that Katie expressed an interest in our Bellydancing class. I never even pretended that I’d be able to take one of her classes.  Bellydancing was already almost more than I could handle.

Eventually Katie lost the venue for teaching her class and a few week ago Jon and I met her and her husband at the Cambridge Farmers Market.  Katie was saying that she missed dancing, Jon reminded her about my Bellydancing class and I gave her the information she needed.  The next week Katie and her sister showed up at Bellydancing Class.

So when Katie told me she was teaching a one-time Bolly X class at a winter program at Hubbard Hall’s Mud U, I signed up.

(Mud U is a series of all kinds of classes from dance to composting year round with red worms)

That’s where I was last night.

There were about fifteen women in the class.  Somehow I ended up, right behind Katie, front and center on the dance floor.  It made me wonder if I’m not more of a ham than I think I am.

Katie is a gentle teacher who always has a smile for her students and audience .  She told us this was most of all about having fun.  She spoke about how she dances a lot with her face.  Something I never thought of.  As we danced I watched  her facial expressions change as she moved.

Before each song Katie taught us the important dance steps we’d be doing, then we danced.

I tired to remember to have fun and keep smiling as I was stepping on my right foot while she stepped on her left.

My Bellydancing experience definitely helped.  I’d have been useless without it.  I realized I was so used to moving my body in ATS Bellydancing moves, making the switch to Bollywood was like starting over for me.

I was all angles and jerky movements, I didn’t come close to replicating Katie’s smooth moves. Once again I was reminded that I was watching someone who made it look easy because they were so good at what they were doing.

I’m certainly not a natural at Bollywood dancing (or any dancing really) but I wasn’t embarrassed or afraid to try it as I would have been in the past. And I didn’t feel bad that I messed up the most basic moves again and again.

But most important, I had a new  dancing experience and I had fun.

Below is Katie and her sister Tessa’s Bollywood Dancers at the Farmers Market last year.