Continuing Belly Dance

Oh man, this new belly dance class is going to kick my ass. I had completed beginning belly dance, and felt like I should probably move on to the next class, “Continuing belly dance.” But I remembered ladies repeating beginning belly dance, which I thought odd at the time. Why not just move up and learn new things?

Walking in to the Continuing class, it was a whole different feel than that first day of Beginning. With Beginning, there were a huge number of ladies, the majority older than I was. Everyone had looked nervous, awkward. When I walked into Continuing, each girl was my age or younger. Lithe and put-together. I got more smiles this time, though, so that was good. However, I overheard two girls talking about their upcoming performances, and I started to feel over my head. Considering I still have trouble getting the left side to do what the right does. . . performance quality I ain’t.

Warmups started the same, and I felt better. Same stretches and head movements. We were doing normal hip isolations when suddenly Mona called “inside outside!” and everyone began flipping their hips forward and backward. . . while my hips were, well, registering a dial tone. I recovered OK, and the ratio of new to old stuff was admittedly small. But now, instead of being in the top half of the class. . . I’m maybe only 2nd to last. The hardest part is not having a mirror in the studio. I can’t see how my movements “look” to correct them. And I still have walking problems—at one point Mona grabbed the back of my head and stretched my neck forward, which at the time left me panicked and confused. More leaning forward, arms more forward, smaller steps. .

It’s kind of why I love this class already. I am a perfectionist, especially in the sense that if I can’t do it perfectly the first time I’m too afraid to even try. And with this form of dance, doing it perfectly the first time is nearly impossible. My body was trained on ballet and musical theatre, and these movements are completely different. My muscle memory is in the wrong language, you dig?

I think I’ve made a breakthrough though. I think this whole time I’ve been putting my weight too far back. Hence the walking problems. You have to unhook your torso from your hips, but you also have to separate that torso from the hips by lifting it slightly up and forward. Doing that made everything *look* more authentic, and now that I think about it I remember the instructors having this “lifted chest” look that I didn’t notice before. Holy crap, I may have figured *something* out!

Regardless, undoubtedly something else will throw me off next week. I hope that I don’t slow the class down too much, and that I made the right decision by moving up instead of staying in the beginning class. We’ll see. . .