Two and a Half Years of Belly Dance (So Far)

Nearly every girl my age growing up was into some kind of graceful display of athleticism. For some — and it seemed most — it was gymnastics. I think I might have been the only girl in my little world who had no interest in gymnastics whatsoever, no matter how much my friends gushed about how awesome it was or how great they were at it. For other girls it was ballet, and those girls seemed born to wear a cute little pink leotard. I had two things going against me when it came to this stuff — the first was that I was ungraceful, ungainly, and clumsy. Looking back at pictures of me as a kid I wasn’t particularly big, but I was always taller than other girls my age and always felt like a giant compared to them. I was forever tripping over my own two feet.

The second was that I was a raging tomboy. My grandmother tried in vain to get me to wear dresses as a kid but I’d have nothing to do with them. I have a distinct memory of telling my dad once, when I was around five years old, that I wished I was a boy because boys got to do way more fun things and had cooler toys. Looking back, I remember the pained expression on his face as I think he wondered exactly what kind of daughter he was going to be dealing with as she grew up.

So it’s a little weird that decades later in my late thirties I’d have any interest at all in dance, something that not only didn’t interest me for most of my life but actually bored me. But when I moved out here in 2007 I needed something physical to do and literally on a whim I thought, “belly dance. Sure, that sounds fun.” I figured I’d take the eleven-week class I saw advertised at the local fitness place, probably hate it, and never go back again. I’d never been exposed to belly dance. I’d never seen a belly dance show. I had no cultural or ethnic ties to any regions in which belly dance is prevalent. My knowledge of it was limited to exotic costumes and crazy shimmy moves, but I figured that if there was one thing I had in abundance it was hips and that I may as well put them to some good use.
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see the belly…in person

Not too long after diving into American Tribal Style belly dance, I’d decided that I liked it so much that it was going to be my new goal to be good enough, by the end of the year, to join a troupe.
It looks like I made that goal — earlier that I thought, even — because my belly dance instructor has asked me to join her troupe, Skin Deep. I guess this means I’m a real belly dancer now.
It seemed that as soon as I joined the troupe we started getting a slew of performance dates alongside Skin Deep’s student troupe, and since I’ve got a lot of family and friends local to the area, I thought it would be useful to point out where we’re performing.

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all in the belly

I always thought dancing was, well…kind of stupid, to be perfectly honest with you. I probably thought this because, when the Great Dice in the Sky were rolled for me, all of the points for “rhythm” were put into playing instruments and there were none left over for the body. Watching me dance has probably always been less enjoyable than a trip to the dentist without novocaine.
But all of that has changed, my friend! On a complete whim last year I decided I was going to try belly dancing. I figured if there was any kind of dance I might have a remote chance of being decent at it would be something that utilized my more than ample junk in the trunk. Sure, they call it belly dancing, but that turns out to be a bit of a misnomer.

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