dance, dance & revolt.
Jun. 10th, 2004 08:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
keryxLast week I went to the recital-ish thing for all my teacher's belly dance classes.
It wasn't like a dance school recital, for those of you who are conjuring up images of "now, the fourth grade class will perform an interpretive dance based on 'swan lake' accompanied by miss smith on ukulele" (although, wouldn't that have been fund?). It was like most belly dance parties, where a bunch of dancers and their friends hang out at a restaurant, Elks lodge, etc. with a semi-MC and a boom box.
I have never danced in public. But the level of the performances was really interesting and strangely encouraging; it made me want to join up next time. Some of the best were from the students with the least "technique", people who'd been through beginner level classes (comme moi!) and knew five or ten moves that they just danced with passion for the rest of the women (and a few men) in the audience.
And the range of sizes! There were tiny women without the supposedly requisite curves, towering bruhnhilda types, women who spilled and jiggled. And no one seemed afraid to be too fat, or not well-enough endowed, or whatever. Raqs Sharqi (bellydance) pretty much looks hot on any shape. It's also hard, athletic, so you don't have time to worry about your body's supposed failings.
It's sad that it's revolutionary for women not to worry about that stuff for a couple of hours at a dance party. But it is revolutionary, that this folkloric dance form (which, despite its sexification in this culture, is more a representation of the Feminine than a cooch dance) can pull you out of some of the stupid boundaries of our culture.
It wasn't like a dance school recital, for those of you who are conjuring up images of "now, the fourth grade class will perform an interpretive dance based on 'swan lake' accompanied by miss smith on ukulele" (although, wouldn't that have been fund?). It was like most belly dance parties, where a bunch of dancers and their friends hang out at a restaurant, Elks lodge, etc. with a semi-MC and a boom box.
I have never danced in public. But the level of the performances was really interesting and strangely encouraging; it made me want to join up next time. Some of the best were from the students with the least "technique", people who'd been through beginner level classes (comme moi!) and knew five or ten moves that they just danced with passion for the rest of the women (and a few men) in the audience.
And the range of sizes! There were tiny women without the supposedly requisite curves, towering bruhnhilda types, women who spilled and jiggled. And no one seemed afraid to be too fat, or not well-enough endowed, or whatever. Raqs Sharqi (bellydance) pretty much looks hot on any shape. It's also hard, athletic, so you don't have time to worry about your body's supposed failings.
It's sad that it's revolutionary for women not to worry about that stuff for a couple of hours at a dance party. But it is revolutionary, that this folkloric dance form (which, despite its sexification in this culture, is more a representation of the Feminine than a cooch dance) can pull you out of some of the stupid boundaries of our culture.