Speaking The Language

Six or so weeks ago my friend Traysi, who has opened a very cool new dance studio/vending space over her shop on Cuba Street, asked if I wanted to perform at the first hafla—an informal performance-slash-dance-party—to be held there. I sort of hemmed and hawed and finally politely declined, saying, with a rueful shake of my head, “Girl, it is the saddest thing in the world. I am a tribal dancer without my tribe, you know?” She very sweetly tried to convince me but I remained firm in my refusal, though I did secretly plan to shake my booty extra hard in open dance to make up for it.

The hafla was last Sunday, and it was so fun. I tried to take some pictures but they didn’t come out very well and also I was too busy eating cheese and stuffed grape leaves and zaghareeting for the first time in months. Several people I knew performed and just blew me away, and I spent a lot of time looking jealously at costumes and being grateful that I at least have a couple of hip scarves now so that I can look as though I am at least familiar with the concept of bellydance when I get up to open dance in just yoga pants and a “singlet top”, aka cami to all y’all North American dancers.

I hooted and hollered and clapped for all I was worth, and then got up to dance to some live drumming with a bunch of girls I knew, some from the Intro To Tribal sharing sessions I’ve intermittently done and some from a troupe of tribal dancers with whom I have finally hooked up.

They meet for two hours on Sunday mornings and today was my second time dancing with them. There isn’t a huge bellydance community in New Zealand and the tribal faction within that is even smaller; they’ve mostly taught themselves from videos and the odd workshop and have added new awesome elements to their dance—I hear that Kiwi Iwi, for example, does some kirituhi-inspired makeup on their chins and also some poi fusion, which must look extremely cool. It’s been a real challenge for me to keep up with these women after almost a year of not dancing very much or to my ability, but so extremely fun that I don’t mind getting my belly on the bus at ten on a Sunday morning. It felt like a relief, actually, that I finally have found some dancers that speak my language.

They do mostly Fat Chance style moves, which are—non-bellydancers, you can skip this part if you want—just different enough from the Gypsy Caravan inspired style that I’ve been doing for the last however many years, to make me pretty much lose my mind over small details. This was me, last week and this morning:

“I feel so closed off when I have to face the corner!”

“Wait, so you open the armpit instead of pulling the taffy?”

“Oh, so it’s more like a washing machine and less like a twist.”

“The six? The eight? The six?”

It has the potential to be very frustrating,, to be speaking a different dialect of the same language—or, more precisely, the same language (bellydance) and even the same dialect (tribal) but with a different accent (Gypsy Caravan/InFusion)—with these women, but somehow, so far, it’s worked nicely. I managed to keep my arms up and my palms out this morning and not to subside into a gibbering heap of despair at having to turn to the corners. I showed everyone my version of basic Egyptian and marked turns and fortunately could follow their torso rotations and freaky single-wrist floreo sloooooow taqsim. Sylvia (the lovely leader) and I have a date to listen to music together and figure out a performance for the next hafla, and all of us are going to get together for a video night at Traysi’s studio sometime soon. I have been in a good mood all day since the class this morning and can’t wait until next week.

I am still laughing a little at how simply, stupidly good it feels to put on my hip belt and to watch my elbows and to contract my abdominals and clench my glutes with people who are better than me, who can teach and correct me, but who have also made it clear that they want to learn from me too, that I have something to offer them. “It’s all grist to the mill,” someone said the other day as we were noticing how a small change in wrist position can convey such a different feel to a move. Each wrist, each hip, each heart: it all feeds into this dance, this body, saying the words, speaking the language.