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The Joy of Bellydance

During my final year of university, the athletic center offered a 10-week class called "Introduction to Bellydance," and I signed up on a whim. Little did I know that four years and hundreds of classes later, this decision would transform my body and my life.

Bellydance goes by many other names, including Middle Eastern dance, Egyptian raks sharqi, and oriental dance. Possibly the oldest dance form in the world, bellydance derives from the traditional and folk dances of the Middle East, and is popular in Egypt, the Gulf region, and Turkey. More recently, it has gained increasing popularity in Canada and the United States, and North American dancers have contributed to the evolution of this art form by adding styles such as cabaret, tribal, and tribal fusion bellydance.

During my first class, the instructor gave a brief overview of the history of bellydance, then introduced three basic moves: the hip shimmy, the hip circle, the undulation, and the bodywave or reverse undulation. After a few tries, I hit upon one of my first and most lasting dance insights: Every move is 10 times harder than it looks! For example, the bodywave is a movement that starts by rolling the pelves forward, then travels into the lower abs, upper abs and chest, sequentially engaging and then releasing all the muscles along the way. When it's done properly, the bodywave is a fluid movement that's likely to elicit comments like, "Wow, how did she do that?" However, my first few dozen bodywaves were more likely to make people wonder, "Whoa, is she about to lose her lunch?"

The incredible amount of muscle control required is what makes the undulation, and belly dancing in general, so beautiful yet difficult. Dancers must be able to isolate and move each part of the body independently. For example, a dancer might be lifting and dropping her hips in quick succession or fluttering her belly like a sand dune, while the rest of her body stays perfectly still. Such precise muscle control permits amazing feats like dancing with a sword balanced on top of one's head. Naturally, it also requires a lot of practice.

The ability to isolate different parts of the body also allows several movements to be performed at the same time, or "layered" on top of each other. The feeling is rather like rubbing your belly and patting your head at the same time, only with more demanding moves like hip figure eights and snake arms. I honestly thought that my head would explode the first time my instructor told me to shimmy, walk forward, and do a chest circle all at the same time. But once again, practice and patience worked their magic, and nowadays that particular combination is something I often do as a warm-up exercise.

Mata Hari once said that "The dance is a poem of which each movement is a word." Just as a single word has no relevance until it's part of a sentence, a movement has no meaning until it's matched to music. Dance happens when the movements become a visual representation of the music, and engages the dancer's mind, body, and soul.

The hip shimmy is one of the most basic and popular moves in the bellydancer's repertoire. It's done by rhythmically bending and straightening your knees, which causes your thighs, butt, and belly to shake. The technique behind it is relatively simple. The bigger challenge was overcoming my self-consciousness and allowing everything to shake as it's meant to.

That was the first time belly dancing helped me build a better body image, but certainly not the last. One of the things I love best about Middle Eastern dance is its celebration of all body shapes and sizes. Unlike ballet and other dance forms which require a standard physique, a beautiful bellydancer is simply someone who can dance well, regardless her or his body type. My classes are full of women of all ages, shapes, and sizes, and belly dancing has given us a new way of looking at our bodies. When we scrutinize our hips in the studio mirror, we're concentrating on lifting and dropping them with perfect control instead of trying to see if we've gained an extra inch. And instead of examining our stomachs for flab, we're laughingly sticking them out as far as they'll go in preparation for belly rolls and pops.

Once I arrived early for class while our studio was being used to audition runway models. After 20 minutes of watching identically thin women traipse down the stairs in their high heels, it was an enormous relief to get into my bellydance class, and see women who didn't look like they were cut out of the same mold. Outside of class, we're still bombarded with the message that thinness is the only standard of female beauty. But inside the studio and the bellydance community, there is an oasis where we can learn to love the bodies we have.

Although a skilled performer makes everything look effortless, belly dancing is actually an intense full-body workout. Grace requires a heck of a lot of muscle, and much of our class-time is devoted to drilling the same movement over and over in order to develop strength and muscle memory. Five minutes of drilling hip drops would leave me covered in a sheen of sweat – all without moving from one spot!

I once walked out of class thinking "dance is the art of being sore in interesting places," since bellydance often works muscles that I didn't even know I had. Sharp hip drops exercise the glutes and inner thighs, veil work gives great upper arm definition, and a level change works just about every muscle between your neck and your toes. With its focus on hip and abdominal movements, bellydance is great for building core strength and working muscles that are deep inside the body. It's also a lot more fun than conventional strengthening exercises, since I'd take a set of undulations over sit-ups any day!

Bellydance also has more wide-ranging health benefits. One of my classmates, who's in her 50s, told me that she used to have high blood pressure and many other health problems, but they all disappeared a few months after she began dance classes. Another classmate works as a psychotherapist, and plans to use bellydance as a therapeutic tool for healing women's emotional and psychological wounds.

Since its movements are natural to the body, bellydance is one of the few dance forms where artists can dance into their 60s and beyond, and I fully intend to do just that.

Every class begins with getting into the correct posture. Following my teacher's instructions, I focus on aligning my knees directly over my ankles, my hips over my knees, and my shoulder joints on top of my hips. "Imagine that you're filled with white light," my instructor continues, "and it's shooting out from your feet, your hands, and the top of your head." I stand up just a little straighter as this picture forms in my mind, awareness radiating from the center of my body out to my toes and fingertips.

After that would come the shimmy drills and new combinations, along with some fascinating mini-anatomy lessons. For example, squeezing the right glute makes your left hip go down and palpitating your diaphragm while holding your breath makes your belly flutter. Bellydance has given me a deeper appreciation of how each part of my body is connected to the next, and how to make them work together in harmony.

Similarly, I've also learned a lot about the connection between mind and body. Before I started dance classes, I'd always assumed that learning to do something was mostly a case of mind over body. Sometimes that was indeed the case, and the best way to learn a move was to concentrate so fiercely that I could practically feel new synapses forming in my brain. However, at other times it was better to simply stop thinking and let my hips set their own rhythm. During one rehearsal, I had to do a dance that I hadn't practice for months and thought I had utterly forgotten. To my surprise, my body seemed to take over as soon as the music came on, and I danced through the whole choreography with only a few stumbles. I'd heard of muscle memory before, but never appreciated how useful it could be before that moment! Beautiful dancing cannot be created by just the mind or the body, but only through a seamless integration of the two.

Over the years, this body awareness has spilled out of the classroom and into my daily life, and I'd often find unexpected uses for the skills I've learned through bellydance. During salsa class, knowing how to spot while turning helped me master the tricky spins. In a jiu-jitsu self-defense workshop, knowing how to lift my hips made it easy to throw off an opponent. Dance training has even come in handy while riding the subway, since knowing how to engage my abdominal muscles has helped me keep my balance during bumpy rides!

Bellydance has helped me become stronger, more flexible, and more graceful than I had ever imagined possible. It's also made me realize that athleticism is not a birthright, but something that can be achieved with practice and determination. Having spent the first 20 years of my life avoiding dance and most types of sports, the realization that I could become good at something simply through dedicated practice has opened up a whole new world of possibilities. In additional to bellydance, I regularly take classes in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, yoga and ballet; and I have plans to take up Chinese martial arts, contact improv, modern dance, classical Indian dance, and hip hop...as soon as I manage to make the time!

Now that I am a teacher, I hope my students will learn to reap the same rewards from bellydance that I have. In addition to all of its health benefits, bellydance has given me a gateway to Middle Eastern music and culture, a creative outlet, performance opportunities, lasting friendships, and even personal and spiritual discovery. But the top reason I continue to dance is to capture those transcendent moments when my mind and body meld into a living conduit for the music - when I become a blur of movement and joy.