Belly Dancing with Brittany..
30
September 2002
Well I'm not Brittany but I've got a belly and if it's good enough for Brittany to go to a beginner's belly dancing class then I must be onto something…maybe a new dance trend?
My roommate (American term for flatmate) and a couple of friends were co-erced into coming with me. We were all curious to find out what you did in a belly dancing class (It looks pretty straight forward the times I have been to Bodrum…mind you anything after a few wines looks easy!) and we were also all a little curious to see whether Brittany would show up again.
The Broadway Dance Centre where the class was held reminded me of the programme FAME. 3 levels of dance classes. You name it they had it going on; Ballet, Jazz, Theatre Dance, Tap, Contemporary, Hip Hop, House, Latin, Funk, Street Jazz, Video and of course Belly Dancing for Beginners. Any moment Leroy was going to leap out of his ballet class in his tights with his slicked back ponytail flapping behind him. Alas, no (I was keen to find out how he managed to scrape his hair back off his head so tightly, and did it give him a headache?). We were definitely in the right place. There were hoards of dancers everywhere, either in class, on their way to class or off to the changing rooms. A quick dash to the toilet for a last minute nervous wee was like walking into the changing room scenes from Any Given Sunday…except it was all women.
All good to go, off we went to find our studio and start shimmying. We could tell we were going in the right direction when excited girls ran past us up the stairs dressed in those exotic muslin skirts with jingly bits and pieces attached. Maybe the skirt was something you got as a rite of passage once you passed the first class?
The class was huge, at least forty women of all ages, shapes and sizes. Noticeably all the non-muslin skirt wearers were lurking apprehensively at the back attempting to look casually confident about what was to come. What was to come??? The skirt wearers with the jingly bits looked excited enough and were all in full view of the wall to ceiling mirrors. (Call me a wuss but I didn't fancy seeing myself learning the ancient art of belly dancing for the first time in full view of a mirror. Who knows how my reluctant body would react without the few wines inside to help it along!) A few supportive boyfriends and husbands stood at the back to observe. Supportive aye? Yeah, I'll bet! Hmmm…
Our teacher was dressed in full belly dancing regalia complete with long black hair. On went the Middle Eastern music and first up was the shoulder shimmy isolation. Piece of cake I thought. Except apparently it is called an isolation exercise for a reason…nothing else should move…hmmm tell my hips that! No matter how hard I tried my hips wanted a piece of the action too. I was mortified when the teacher tapped me on the shoulder to say, ' hold on to the pole dear to do your shoulder shimmy so just your shoulders move'. How embarrassing! Maybe that was why Brittany wasn't there this week…she was working on her shimmy?
I couldn't stop laughing...especially when I caught my reflection in the mirror. My attempts to recreate the moves our teacher showed us were far from the elegant sensual moves she performed. I looked like I was doing another class! Maybe breakdance.
All my years of dance
in Ballet, Modern Jazz and Tap weren't helping me to get my hips and shoulders
to shimmy independently! Don't underestimate the skill of the belly dancer's
at Bodrum is the moral for me! Despite making a complete fool of myself
I would go again just for the laugh! That's one thing I love about New
York, it's a dancing city. Everyone dances and no-one cares if you have
two left feet or are a Broadway dancer!
(You can also read about what I am up to on www.nzoom.co.nz under entertainment - rant.)
Regards,
romiley
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