Baby Belly Dancer

Shiny-sparkly version: My first belly dance class

For those of you who do not want to have to delve into the deep, dark waters of my NSFW memoir publication, Bella & the Beast, I give you the shiniest excerpts from the post BABY BELLA DANCER from my series on how belly dancing literally saved my life when I was nineteen.

The lure of belly dance

October 1992
19 years old

She is so amazing! She is the most stunning woman I have ever met in person. Her name is Hala, and the way she dances? I mean, just the way she walks and gestures and smiles is so...

Well, I don't know what it is.

But I want to learn that even more than I want to learn belly dancing—and I want to learn that super badly! I don't know how to describe her because, where I come from, women like her only exist in movies. She's like Wonder Woman, Paula Abdul, and Cleopatra, all rolled into one.

Thick waves of coffee-hued hair pour down to the middle of her back. Blonde streaks outline the waves like whitecaps on dark, crashing surf. These are no subtle highlights. They're not even frosting. They are bold and brilliant—the kind of highlights I've only seen onscreen or on wild-child rockers in the record store downtown. I for sure never saw that kind of hair on anybody from my teensy hometown.

Hala's eyes are the same deep brown as her hair, luminous and almond-shaped, lined with long lashes and more bold lines—black eyeliner that sweeps across the curves of her eyelids into pin-sharp points.

My eyes are brown and almond-shaped, too. The few people who have ever shown me how to do makeup all have big, round blue eyes.

If I did my eyeliner like Hala’s, could my eyes ever look that amazing?

The rest of her makeup is as dramatic as any music video star's, yet they are all garish clowns compared to her. She’s painted her face in tones that match her natural coloring, calling more attention to her intrinsic beauty, rather than to the face-paint itself.

Her body is another masterpiece, this time painted in the highlights and shadows of musculature. Beneath the harsh work lights of the high school stage where she teaches this belly dance class, her skin still glows like it's been kissed by the sun, even though we’re heading into winter. Miles of it show beyond her black sports bra and her black spandex shorts.

Hala is a workout queen. Not only did she say so (she teaches fitness through the community college, in addition to this class), but her strength and athleticism shout it at first glance.

Yet it's so much more than the power and tone of her muscles that I want to emulate. Her glow has little to do with makeup or skin. Something radiates from within her, and it is this quality that captivates me even more than her physical beauty or the luscious moves she's showing us.

She calls instructions over the music emanating from the boombox behind her, and over the sneaker-squeaks or whistle-laden sounds of high schoolers practicing basketball in the gym on the other side of the velvet stage curtain. Her voice is rich and deep, but it is not just her heavy accent that is so foreign, so captivating to me.

It's the way she speaks, as though holding nothing back. There's no aggression or force to it. She simply...speaks what's on her mind. And she asks what she wants to know. Directly. With no hidden inflection.

She speaks the way I would if I wasn’t so afraid of getting called “mean” or “rude” or “harsh” or “conceited.” Can’t do that if you want to remain Minnesota Nice, don’tcha know.

Standing in this belly dance class, listening to Arab music and the instructions of a commanding, vibrant Lebanese woman, I wonder just how much patience I have to continue squashing myself into this iron maiden that is Minnesota Nice.

There is certainly no high-pitched "feminine" affectation in Hala’s voice—all the “tee-hee” and fake smiles I can’t stand. All the circuitous verbal dances that baffle me, or the beating-around-bushes, as if we’re expected to apologize for breathing the air somebody else might have wanted to breathe.

I hate that crap.

Hala does none of it.

She laughs robustly from her belly, up through her throat, and out through her whole being. It sparkles her eyes. It tosses her hair, but not in that artificial “are they watching me?” way. Her daring locks sway naturally when she throws her head back — in a laugh, in a gushy move inspired by the orchestral strings of the music, or when she glances at us to check our progress.

We eighteen-to-thirty-somes follow her in a circle, stepping and twisting one hip forward, then the other. There are six of us in the class. As the new arrival today, I have been given the spot directly behind our teacher.

Over her bike shorts, Hala wears a turquoise scarf thick with gold coins. They shiver and pop with her every movement—some of the moves Renee was showing off in the mirror that day when she came to pick up the Halloween costume my roommate had sewn for her. Renee is the one who told me about this class after taking it over the summer.

Now seeing the moves done by the one who taught her, I’m blown away. Hala’s range of motion and precision has been acquired over a lifetime of dancing this way, inherited from countless other lifetimes in her heritage.

Upon our introduction, my new teacher told me that she had never performed onstage until moving to the United States. She said it simply isn’t something a respectable woman does in her homeland. "This is the way the women of my country dance. In the kitchen, at a party. This is just the way we move."

Now that I'm following behind her, eyes riveted on that chinking, tinkling scarf, I know instinctually: my body was born to the wrong kitchen-dances. My personality may not have been—I've never reacted well to the sort of restrictions and stigma she described—but this was how I was born to move!

Hadn't Laurie assured me of that as we sat on the theater steps together, awaiting our turn to rehearse that Polynesian dance for Twelfth Night?

“You have wonderful hips,” she said. “It’s like they were made for it.”

Well, it turns out Laurie was right.

I've missed more than half the classes in this three-month session already, but it doesn't seem to matter. I follow our teacher around and around like a puppy’s tail at last set free to wag without hindrance.

I spent my entire freshman year in Ballet last year, tormented over my inadequate angles of flexibility and my ox-clod harrumphing. Even this semester in Modern Dance, I never feel like I truly…get it. Then again, I’m learning Modern from my Ballet teacher, so there’s way more of that influence than there is from some of the earliest pioneers that I find so fascinating. We only watched a few clips of them rather than exploring their movement styles. I still feel like a bulldozing ox in Modern class.

Not here. Learning Hala's way of expressing music is like surfacing after being too long underwater.

The music itself is enchanting. I have never heard this kind of music, except maybe in those couple James Bond belly dancer clips I can't fully remember. But I've never been exposed to percussion like this. It's so intricate and clear. Like a fountain or waterfall, occasionally raindrops, rather than the relentless, heavy pound of rock music. Even when the strings and strange, high-pitched horns drop out, leaving only the percussion, these drums practically sing.

That's when Hala's coins really get going!

She lifts and drops her hips — BOOM! And oh, her shimmy — whrrrrrrr! And the intricate pops and twists of those coins — boom-boom, chickka-chickka-swish-pop-pop!

It's not only the coins that vibrate. It's the weighty musculature of her thighs and butt. She is very toned, but she is also very curvy. She is all woman, with zero shame about it.

She is so glorious I can't take my eyes off her. All I can do is follow her commands and try to mimic her every move.

Crack-crack!

I blink hard at the loud clap of Hala's hands. She shoos us off for a water break.

As I take a much needed swig from my water bottle and wipe my sweaty forehead with the back of my forearm, my new teacher tells me, "You're doing very well.”

Her smile echoes her words, inciting a flush from my cheeks. "Thanks," I say, thrilled that she noticed what I had felt while dancing, but couldn't be sure if it was all in my imagining. "I love it already."

"Good. You are a natural. I can see this already."

My pulse thrums. My heart swells. Hearing her reiterate what Laurie had seen in me when we did the Polynesian moves, I can see it already in this first class: Yes. I want this. I will be coming back next week, and the week after that and the week after that…

I also know what I'll be doing whenever I have no homework or other classes. It'll be me in elementary school all over again, stealing those fifteen minutes in the living room of an empty house every morning before school. It'll be me in the backyard all through junior high and high school, teaching myself back-walkovers and making choreographies.

But this time, I won't be wearing a shorty-short cheerleading skirt. I'll be wearing coins on my hips!

UP NEXT: A TOMBOY’S FIRST TENTATIVE SPARKLE - my first belly dance costume.

© 2021 Hartebeast

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RELATED POSTS:

DanceStory: the section where you’ll find all the tales of how I became a dancer, and some of my greatest inspirational Muses.

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Or if you dare…if you want the full tale of how I got into belly dance, how a fringe bra and a coin belt literally saved my life when I was nineteen, you can read that on my other publication.

Being a belly dancer is not always an easy path. Slut-shame. Body-shame. Misunderstandings. Abuse. Ours is not always a pretty tale. That’s why we have the other publication, so you can choose your adventure. If you want to hop aboard the other ship…

Just beware.

HERE THERE BE BEASTIES.

Dye Job 1: Pink, Gold, Berry Blush