It seemed like something scarlet women use to entice men. Belly dancing might as well be pole dancing which might as well be lap dancing.
But it's not! Alisha told me she belly danced (which surprised me) and told me how much she loved it (surprised again). Then she said the most intriguing thing--belly dancing is an escape from secular society. Whaaat? Turns out she had been writing a blog for a class, and chose belly dancing as her theme. I devoured each post. Her statements about belly dancing intrigued me. Things like:
- Regardless of your size, race, life style, dance ability, or anything else that may matter in any other setting, people there accept you for you. Belly dancing, for me, really in an escape from a secular society. My dance class is something I look forward to all week because it is 1-1 ½ hours of freedom. Freedom from gossip, freedom from being judged, freedom from a society that doesn’t accept people how they are. At dance I can be me, and that person is good enough just the way I am.
- I call it empowering, because it gives the dancer so much knowledge about his or her own body.
- Belly dancing teaches you to grasp your femininity and learn to appreciate not only your body, but your internal attributes as well. It also allows you to express yourself in a way that is comfortable to you as an individual.
- Belly dancing is a type of dance that not only accepts, but encourages all females to participate. It does not matter how tall or short you are, how big or thin you are, what race you are, nor what level of beauty a societal scale has given you. ALL women are invited to participate, to learn, to enjoy this type of dance.
- And, after telling her dance class about a remark from a boy about how belly dancing was a dance skinny girls do for men, she got this response " 'Boys, ugh, boys need to get over themselves. Not everything we do is for them. They think we put on make-up for them, and now they think we dance for them...ha.' How can you not smile upon hearing such a response???"
Every since reading her blog, I've wanted to try it. Not because belly dancing itself intrigued me, but because of how Alisha talked about belly dancing and what it did for her.
It took me 6 years, but I've finally taken up belly dancing. And I am surprised to discover that I LOVE it! I can see myself doing this my whole life. The first class was incredibly awkward. I felt vulnerable and out of my element. I immediately started judging my body in comparison to all the other women there. The movements felt strange in my body (you have NO idea how many types of figure 8s you can do with your hips!). The only thing that kept me coming back for class 2 was that I had paid for it already. Class 2 felt a little less awkward, but not by much.
Then something happened during class 3. Earlier in the class period, someone said something about how "you can't feel upset when you're doing a horizontal (figure 8)." And everyone agreed--you can't feel lonely when you're doing a horizontal, you can't feel angry, you can't feel anything but pure joy and contentment. And I thought about it, and it was true. I was extra happy and content while dancing. During the class period I realized that I had stopped judging my body and everyone else's. I felt the acceptance and the sisterhood that Alisha had talked about. At the end of class, a 60-year old Armenian woman (who is now my friend) told me, "This is where we come to love ourselves."
It's so true. It's only been a month, but already this is what belly dancing does for me:
- It teaches me to love my body
- It helps me "inhabit" my body rather than living in my mind
- It lets me express feminine energy, when so much of my daily life requires masculine energy
- It gives me a community of women
- It gets me interacting with women that are different from me in age, religion, culture (there are 3 Armenian women!), and experience
- It makes me feel completely accepted, without doing anything to earn it
Plus the fact that it's scary and hard, and I'm doing it anyway! #VulnerabilityVictory
My dance will be a traditional basket dance from Armenia, similar to this one:
And you know what? You can all come to my performance. It's on April 8th. When I started, I didn't think I'd even let my roommates come, but I'm not ashamed anymore! I'm proud of myself.
My dollar for completing this goal went to in-kind donations to help refugees settling into Salt Lake City. To learn more about what type of in-kind donations the IRC is currently in need of, go here.
