Category: Bellydancing

I didn’t tell anyone it was going to be my last bellydancing class.  Not even myself.  I said that I’d be leaving by the end of the month. But I decided not to go back again because I didn’t want to have a “last class.”

There was more than one reason for me to leave Bellydancing.  I’m sad about it, but it’s also the right decision.

I came to feel that the class was a kind of surrogate family for me. But I know now that isn’t realistic and not something to expect from a dance group.   There was an incident in class recently that revealed this to me.   It was painful and unexpected, but not unheard of when groups of people come together.  It was, actually, all too familiar.

It also gave me the opportunity to rethink how Bellydancing fit into my life.

For a while I’ve been understanding some realities about myself relating to dance class that made me question if  I wanted to keep dancing.

One of them being that I don’t like to perform.

Over the years I have tried and gave it my all.  But honestly, performing, being in front of a lot of people terrifies me.  I thought maybe I could work through this, I tried all the tricks, but it has actually only gotten worse.  And I’ve come to see it’s just one of those things I don’t want to do.

That in itself is not enough for me to think about leaving the class.

But I’ve also been awakened to the fact that even when I take the lead in class (Constantly switching the leader is part of the dance) I am still, after 8 years, always nervous.  I smile and pretend I’m not, I try to let the music move through me, but mostly I freeze, forgetting the moves and wishing I was somewhere else.

The other part I know I’ll never really get, is Zilling.

When we dance to a fast song we are also  playing finger cymbals to the beat.  There are a few different patterns that we practice.  And although I’ve improved greatly since I first began, I still have a very hard time hearing the beat in the music.  Mostly I just try to listen to my dance partners Zilling and keep up with them.

Recently I found that I no longer had the desire to even practice.

I know I could always learn more, continually learning is one of the things I love about this kind of dance.  But I also feel like I learned some important things about my self and my abilities.  And that I wouldn’t be getting to much better than I already am.

All of that might have been okay.  I could continue going to class just because I enjoy it.   Because it feels good both physically and emotionally.  I always left class feeling better than when I got there.

But for me, Bellydancing  was also always about the connection to the other women in the class.

For eight years I got together with the same group of women every week and danced.  Our dedication to the group is what helped made me go every week.  Even on the darkest, coldest winter nights when all I really felt like doing was cuddling up in front of the wood stove.

We were there for each other, in this way.  I’ll always be grateful to all of them for that.

One of the driving ethos of the class was that we look out for each other.  That we never do a move we know someone we are dancing with can’t do.  We are conscious about making sure everyone gets their chance to lead.  We never try to make someone else look bad or steal the show.  We do  just the opposite, really, always try to help each other out to do our best together.

I became friends with a few of the women in the class, but mostly we just saw each other once a week.   We all had our quirks and annoyances, but we didn’t  let them get in the way of  dancing.

I couldn’t write about leaving bellydance class until now.

Because, I’ve come to understand, especially since leaving, that  to me it was about  a lot more than just the dancing.   I’ve been grieving the loss of it.  Trying to sort it all out.

When I first started dancing I could’t even step to the beat.

Our teacher Julz took me under her wing.  She was  kind and patient with me.  I remember one time when I just couldn’t step my feet in the pattern of a certain move, asking her if she thought I was stupid.   I was so insecure about what I was trying to do and she was always so reassuring.  As if she saw in me something I didn’t in myself.

Now I understand that Julz was mothering me in a way I never had been and always wanted. (I suspect she was working out some of her own mother issues too).

There was other things I got to experience  in the class that I never had as a young person.   I remember in the first year,  Jackie, another student,  taking off her coin belt and tying it around my waist.  “This way,” she said “you can hear the coins jangling so you know if you’re shimming or not.”

Kat, Emily and Julz all taught me how to put makeup on. It as the first time I ever wore makeup. It made me feel like a kid at a slumber party, something else I never experienced.

But it was the group dynamic, that alternate family that kept me coming back.

That place I could go and trust that I was safe.  Not that is was perfect, that we never got on each other nerves, or even hurt each other.  But that ultimately we could work it out because dancing together was greater than each one of us.  And we couldn’t do it without each other.

I loved that feeling of belonging.

And I took it seriously to be inclusive, to welcome the new people when they came and do my best to be the “big sister.”  I know I didn’t always succeed, but I wanted it and worked at is as much as I did my dancing.

For eight years I got to experience what it felt like to belong to a group of people with a common goal and do it well together.

I feel like some of the missing parts of me were found though Bellydancing.  That some of the emptiness in me has been fulfilled.

I think it’s like having had love.  Once you’ve had the real thing, even when the person is gone,  love still fills the heart.

So I’m grieving more than just a dance class.  Once again, I’m letting go of a family.

I still have the friendships I’ve made over the years.  They are important to me.  I’ll work to keep them.

At some point, I’ll give my Bellydance clothes and jewelry away, or rework them into something new.  But I’m not ready to do that yet.

Writing about it here, on my blog, helps to make it final and real.

I don’t think I’ll try any other kind of dance.  I’m not a dancer really, although I’ve always been curios about Contra dancing.  Now, if I ever decided to try it, I’d be more confident about being able to do it.

Bellydancing has  taught me things about my body and how it moves. Things I never learned anywhere else.

They are basic, but I feel, important.

Like how to stand and sit up straight, allowing me to carry myself with more strength and confidence.    How to walk heel first instead of on my toes making me more grounded and secure.  And how to reach my torso up while having my hips, legs and feet firmly rooted in the ground, occupying the air and earth at the same time.

I feel like I have more head space since leaving class.  And I know I will fill the other spaces it leaves with things that work for my life now.

I’ve noticed  how the camera that Jon got me has me thinking in new ways and I have a lot to learn about how to use it,  which I’m looking forward to.

And tonight I’m going to a Yoga class.  I’ve practiced Yoga on and off since my early 20s.  I feel like I’m ready to go back to it again.

Last week I took apart the outfit I made from our last Bellydance performance at the Witches Walk in Pownal, Vermont.  I made a ritual of untying the the bones, feathers, wool and thread from the black velvet jacket I’d sewn them to.  Then I tied them together again, using yarn from my sheep and hanging them off one of the bones.

As I did, one of the bluejay feathers came undone and no matter what I did I couldn’t get it to stay with the others.  So I took it with me when I went to the Battenkill to swim and let it go in the river.

I watched it float downstream until I couldn’t see it anymore.

Every year in our Bellydancing class we have a Holiday Hafla.  Sometimes we have food and dance sometimes we just dance.

This year, four of us, Callie, Emily, Trish and I  were dancing to a set of two slow and two fast songs.  But in  the weeks leading up to the Hafla many of us were out sick or the weather prevented us from showing up.  There were was only one time when all four of us were in class together.

Julz, our teacher had plans for us to video our dancing and put one of two of them up on facebook.  Even though our dance is improv,  we still have to practice together and learn the songs together. If  our timing is off or we don’t pick up on each other cues for what moves we are doing, it’s not a dance we’d want anyone else to see.

But even without much practice together I think we did really well.  And we certainly enjoyed it.

There are two videos from that night. A fast song and a slow song.  I couldn’t download the second video with the slow song, but you can see it here. 

Remember this isn’t choreographed.

The person up front on the right is the leader.  We all follow her and when she gives away the lead we don’t know who will take the position.  It’s important to make sure everyone gets a chance to lead.  And we don’t do any dance moves if we know there is someone in the group who doesn’t know or can do that move.  And we have to be very clear with out cues or the other dancers won’t know what we are doing.

Julz wrote about her and Kathleen dancing at the Hafla on her blog Julzie Style and you can see videos of them dancing here. 

A few days ago Trish reminded me that this January she’s been bellydancing for eight years, which means in June I’ll be dancing for eight years too. I can finally say that I’ve gotten pretty good at it.  Especially since when I first started I couldn’t even step on the beat.

The best part is there is so much more for me to learn.  Even Kathleen who has been dancing for 30 years  and Julz who has been dancing for over 20 years are still learning.

“I’ve never seen you look so confident,” Julz said to me.  “That’s because I decide to have fun,” I told her.

It was the last dance of the class.  Emily, Callie, Trish and I danced while Julz and Kathleen watched.  They give us pointers, tell us what we did wrong and what we did right.

Whenever I’m dancing now I remind myself to have fun.  When I feel myself tightening up, afraid I’ll make a mistake, start to panic about taking the lead or I’m just thinking too much, I say to myself… “Maria have fun!”

Suddenly I can breathe again, the tension gives up and my whole body sinks down into my feet which are now flat on the ground.  It’s like I’m seated in myself.  Then I smile.

Thank goodness for my metatarsalgia, that burning pain in the ball of the right foot.  It keeps me flat on feet and has improved my dancing.

“Look at you walk,” Julz tells me as we make out way through the dark parking lot to our cars.

I could feel it.  My heels making contact with the ground make my shoulders drop down my back.  I rock on the soles of my feet in a slow, intentional, grounded kind of swagger.

Which came first my epiphany to have fun, my growing confidence or keeping my feet flat on the ground?

Maybe they all just happened at the same time, a three way collision, my own Big Bang.

“[Alessandra] Ferri is one of the great dancers of the last half century and at sixty-one, she carries herself like a woman with a past. Even the smallest movements register in her aging shoulders; her body, though still lithe, is also stiff and fragile, young and old in the same breath.  She keeps an eye on herself as she moves. Can she trust that step into pointe? Will it hold? And when it doesn’t, quite, we watch her body gracefully rebalance.  She doesn’t hide her limitations, instead allowing them to sharpen her physical attention. ” by Jennifer Homans from “Dances With Woolf”

Older dancers, it’s what we are.  The youngest of us are in their forties.  And the two woman who have been Bellydancing the longest (around thirty years) are coming on sixty.

I was struck by Homans’ beautiful description of how Ferri, deals with dancing at sixty one.

I am in no way comparing myself to Ferri, but I am inspired by her.   When I first started dancing I was fifty three and thought that by the time I learned what I needed to know to dance in a performance I’d be too old.

But it turns out that was able to perform before I got too old. I was nervous and even scared, and I’m not sure how well I did, but I still did it.  I’m also certain that I get better each time I do.  And tomorrow I’ll be performing  once  again, with the women I dance with every week.  This time at the Manchester Library in Vermont,

It’s a Bellydancing Workshop from 6-7pm.  We will perform two songs, one fast and one slow then Julz will lead a class with all of us and the people who show up for the workshop.

It’s the same kind of thing we did last year at the Library in North Bennington Vermont. Only this time there will be more workshop than performing.

Last year we danced outside in temperatures in the 90s.  This time we’ll be inside the library. “My classes are first of all fun,” Julz who will be teaching the workshop wrote,  “teaching steps almost anyone can do no matter their age, shape, or gender.”

I’m looking forward to it and if anyone out there reading this  lives in the area, please join us.  The workshop is Monday July 29th.  It’s free, from 6-7pm at the Manchester Library at 138 Cemetery Road Manchester Vermont,  (802)362-2607.  

For more information click here .

“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.

It’s dark, but the clear sky is filled with stars and a sliver of moon, which makes it easier to see. I’m driving home from belly dancing class listening to Salio El Sol by Don Omar.  I’m clapping  my thumb  and middle finger together as if I’m wearing Zills, my hand is above my head my wrist flicking.

I’m counting the beat.

Last week our teacher Julz talked about Zilling above the beat. She’s talked about it before but last week was first time I began to really understand what she was saying.  Then yesterday in class,  I not only grasped the idea, but was able to do it

The idea of Zilling above the beat is hard for me to explain.  I have found for me it’s more a feeling.   It’s not that I’m Zilling faster but with more snap with more energy.

In the car my my hand and wrist are is getting tired. The music starts to drag, I feel myself being lulled into a trace.  I’ve fallen not even on the beat, but below the beat.

The thing is it doesn’t feel good, my brain gets loggy, as if I’m hearing in slow motion.

But now I know why.  And I know how to get back  to that snap and spark that I feel not only in my fingers and wrist but throughout my body.  As I once again clap my fingers and count above the beat I feel my brain sharpen and the music comes alive again.

I’ve always loved this song from the first time I danced to it  it over six years ago  but I’ve never been able to Zill to it.

Now I understand why.

The interesting thing is that it’s easier to Zill above the beat.  It’s more work and takes more energy but it makes Zilling easier.  It makes keeping the beat easier, which in turn will make my dancing better.

Although I’m not sure I can Zill above the beat while dancing.  Right now it seems enough for me to do it while standing still (or driving home).  But I bet it comes quicker now than it would have a few years ago.

Zilling above the beat is like dancing with attitude.

Which is what  drew me to bellydancing to begin with.  When I saw the Benninton Beledi Bellydancers for the first time it was the attitude of the dancers as much as the dance that I wanted to experience.

So now it’s not enough for me  to dance with attitude, I’m going to learn to Zill with attitude too.

Last night was our Bellydancing Hafla.  Our Hafla’s (which are gatherings with dance and food) change every year.   The first one I went to six years ago was equally based around food and dance.

This year it was all dance with some fruit and chocolate.

For me our Bellydancing Hafla has become an important celebration of the season.  Like tonight’s Solstice fire, it has more meaning for me than Christmas Day.

Last night Julz, (our teacher) put on a playlist of fast and slow songs.  We danced with each other in duets or quads, in large groups with everyone in the class or alone.  Two people would be dancing and someone would jump in and join them, while other people took a water break and rested.

I barely stopped dancing.

At the past Hafla’s I was still shy about dancing alone. I would have been embarrassed to think that someone might have been watching. Afraid I was doing something wrong or that someone might think I was trying to “show off.”

But last night I didn’t care.  Maybe it speaks to the trust I have for my fellow dancers.  Maybe it’s that I’m more confident.  Perhaps a bit of both.

I do feel that in the past couple of months something has shifted with my dancing.  I feel unquestionably that I am a welcomed part of our dance troupe.  And for the first time, that I have something not only to learn but to contribute.

At the end of the night, Julz handed out “Sister” Bracelets to each of us.  Four silver hearts on a black cord.

Later I texted Julz to thank her for the bracelet.  She texted back that she believed that “dance was in my soul.” Julz had a vision of us all dancing together in another lifetime.  “I’m pretty sure that’s why I saw potential in you from the beginning.”  She wrote.   She wanted to help me that remember we danced together  before.

I’m grateful to Julz for her patience and taking the time to teach me to dance.  I literally couldn’t step to the beat when I first started.  I was always off beat or on the wrong foot.  One time I even asked her if she thought I was stupid because I had such a hard time learning.

She assured me I wasn’t stupid and just encouraged me even more.

From the beginning, Jon said that bellydancing brought out who I really am.  From the moment I first saw the Benninton Beledi Bellydancers, I knew the dance had meaning for me.  But it’s only now that I’m  beginning to believe what Jon and Julz have said is true.  That I really am a dancer.  That dance is in my soul.

On Monday I made a new coin belt from bellydancing jewelry that someone sent me a few years ago.  I sewed it onto a  fabric and added a few shells and buttons to it. I made it to have something special and new to wear to our Hafla.

At the end of the evening I asked Emily to take a video of me shimming in it.  The video is  short but you can see how the coin belt swings and sings.