IS THERE LIFE AFTER CLASS???
Between the live class
and the various videos, I had a real BASIC grasp of bellydancing. My 23 year old
daughter came to visit that Christmas of 2000 and the very FIRST thing she
DEMANDED upon coming in the door was,
"Mom!!!!! You have to teach me
EVERYTHING you know about Bellydancing!!!"
So, although
with a failing business I didn't much FEEL like dancing, she shamed me into
it. And so we danced. Already I could see that certain 'moves' were more
natural to her, whereas others were more effortless for me.
Hate to grab the cliche, but most Mother/Daughter
PROJECTS really DO wind up culminating in some kind of shopping trip and before
too long, we found ourselves in a very cool little shoppe in Cold Spring pawing
through silk scarves. We both wound up buying dancer's belts. Mine is brass,
hers is silver. My scarves and accoutrements lean towards gold and brown and
green, hers are all black and red and silver. And it has always been thus.
Although I grew to feel that my belt of a zillion tiny brass bells was a bit
EXTRAVAGANT for the way my life was going at the moment, it was a very valuable
purchase. Unfortunately I forgot it when I went to visit said daughter in North
Carolina for her wedding.
While there, we both attended a
Music Festival to which I arrived a bit late, as Phoenix and her intended,
Daniel were already there. I walked in DURING the first Bellydancing workshop
and was delighted to see Phoenix right up there, the picture of undulating
confidence.....we both danced as the entire group moved out to a large open
field. Though I wasn't at ALL dressed for the part, wearing a long-sleeved dress
beneath a very LONG brown skirt, it felt good to be able to imitate pretty much
every MOVE the Bellydance Troupe leading the workshop came up with. They all
spotted Phoenix and pretty much all of them, including their musicians, pursued
her to come and JOIN the troupe in the future.
Later that
same afternoon, we both attended another workshop taught by "Asha" a tiny woman
from Atlanta, Georgia. It was very different, she has studied all over the
world, and parts were very hard to keep up with, as all of us were simply trying
to dance WITH her as she went through some pretty elaborate routines.
At one point, Asha suggested we pair up. Often, if there
is a large group of women dancing, one dancer will dance over and 'invite' one
to join her. They then dance together, either just taking cues from each other,
or dancing as mirror images of each other, or, as Asha instructed us, to dance
in each other's 'negative spaces'. I simply CANNOT think of a finer thing for a
mother and daughter to be doing a mere two days before the daughter's wedding.
It felt like the perfect ritual before what turned out to be one of the
STRANGEST and yet the most utterly PERFECT weddings I have ever witnessed.
By simply moving, if her arm went up, mine went UNDER. If she made a space, I
filled it...It was quite incredible.
The last thing Asha
did with us that day she did not pre-announce, or I believe I wouldn't have
attempted it. Ultimately, she took us into a Sufi Spin, but THIS time, with
instructions to FEEL your bare feet in contact with the grass as we spun quite
slowly. She explained, just after I looked over to see she was NOT looking at
her outstretched hand, but rather at the ground, that our eyes should be SOFTLY
focused on the grass twirling below us, I GOT there. Just like the way you focus
on those 3-D pictures. It's hard to explain, but I BECAME the spinning, I was
just part of the grass twirling below me and I wasn't dizzy AT ALL. I completely
understood how someone could do this for a LONG time as meditation. It was truly
magical. Asha slowed us down VERY gradually, VERY slowly and most importantly,
had us eventually wrap our arms around our own shoulders before we stopped. It
was quite amazing, I was NOT dizzy. We bought Asha's video which is quite
intense, attempting to teach a 3 month beginner's course in an hour-long video.
It's not just a WORKOUT like the Bidasha video, it's one you have to stop and
WORK on.
But she gives a very different perspective from
the other two videos I have and she helped make a few moves make sense in a way
they hadn't before. (and she's very funny, there's one Hip-Lifting move where
she says, yes, get those Love Handles to just KISS and make up, that's it.......
{and she makes little kissy noises} But she's right, that's EXACTLY what's going
on!) I'll give you her web site when it's back up, she's re-doing it.
But one other thing happened during this trip to North
Carolina, along with my daughter getting married and my gaining a
Son-In-Law.....it turns out that I LOST a bit of weight. No, I mean LOST it like
people lose their car keys. Like "Oh my, where did it go?" lost.....It has to
have been said Son-in-Law's parents with whom I stayed for the entire time,
being on a modified Atkins diet which suited my carnivorous self VERY nicely.
Dinners just focused on the meat and veggies and left out the ever-present
Sources Of Carbs.....works for me. What I lost was that "I've been sitting
around expiring from Lyme" inactive weight.
One
bellydancing site waxed nauseatingly poetic about how we HAVE bellies, we elder
wimmen, because we have to have SOMEplace to put our uteri....well, that's all
lovely, but I no longer OWN one of those (sprung some MAJOR leaks and tried to
kill me a bunch of years ago) and another went on and on and on about honoring
our BELLIES: we HAVE them BECAUSE we had CHILDREN! Well now excuse me, but THAT
one just left out every woman who did NOT have children and I was having a hard
time HONORING a belly that represented nothing more to me than inactivity. But
that's just me. I've been a professional gardener all my adult life swingin' a
shovel, bendin' over and pullin' weeds and THAT was my workout. Lyme took that
from me and it was beginning to SHOW. Never once during Zohar's entire class did
I have any inclination to bare my belly.....I covered it every night with a
leotard, with a tank top, but oh no, I wasn't going to unleash the vanilla
pudding.....no way.
But now, I'd unloaded some of the
ComfortFood Flab so things were looking better, but not yet STRONG.......
next chapter: Takin' It
On The Road......
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