Only If It’s Not Fun

Between getting new flatmates and getting sick and having a birthday and all sorts of other things, I haven’t been to my tribal bellydance class for almost a month. I was determined to make it this week, the fact that I got home at 3:00 on Sunday morning, the very same Sunday morning that would see dance class start at 10:30 notwithstanding. I managed to claw my way out of bed and onto the bus and into the studio and was feeling quietly impressed with myself—behold my dedication to The Dance, my friends!

That feeling was quickly replaced by a whole host of others, within just a few minutes of warming up and regretting the previous night’s inadequate hydration and unwise footwear choices. I mean the rule with bellydance, I find, is that you have to go to class. You have to go to class every week, preferably more than once. You have to go to class—you have to get each move into your brain and into your body, and you have to know not only each step and the cue for each step, but also how your individual dance mates interpret each cue. You have to listen to the music and dance with it and not on top of it. You have to stay on your posture. You have to make sure your transitions make sense, and you have to remember to breathe and sometimes even to smile. Going to class just every once in a while doesn’t—for me, at least—work, not at all.

But that’s what I’ve been doing, for what’s actually a couple of years now. The last time I was dancing with any dedication was back when I was doing my sharing sessions—it’s hilarious and sad how, in that entry from 2006, I’m all “it’s been three months since I danced!” when three months dance-free is nothing to me now. Since the end of that little baby tribal class—which I wasn’t remotely qualified to teach, but which I enjoyed so so so much—it’s been spotty, to say the least. I was traveling for a while, of course, and then when I was in the States in 2008 I only got to go to a couple of classes during the months I was in Seattle, but enough had changed with my beloved dance sisters there that I found myself very timid and shy and uncertain with them. Same thing when I got back to Wellington over a year ago—the group I’d been more loosely affiliated to had also gone through a lot of changes and I found myself in the same situation: having to sort of re-learn the basics—or in some cases, un-learn the basics—and doubt myself every step of the way. There are so many things I’m supposed to know that I have never really learned, and there doesn’t seem to be a good way to learn them. Since I haven’t been getting a lot of joy out of class, as I spend most of the time worrying about what I’m doing wrong, it’s hard to get motivated to get better, too.

Sunday I made so many mistakes. I got the formation wrong, and one of my finger cymbals fell off and my elbows wouldn’t stay up and I couldn’t rotate my shoulder and my feet were too far apart. I forgot lots of steps and lots of cues. I panicked when it was my turn to lead and fell back to old fusion moves that are still embedded in my brain from back when I went to class three times a week, instead of straight ATS. I made everyone else actually scream aloud when I turned the wheel in the wrong direction. My whole body hurt from running in heels the night before.

I felt pretty bad during all this, as you’d imagine–like not only was I messing up my own work but everyone else’s as well, because with this sort of dance everyone needs to be very tuned into each other and, crucially, everyone needs to be doing the same thing at the same time. It’s improvised, yes, but in a very controlled way, and it just doesn’t work if someone is out of control. That was me: out of control, unsure, unconfident, afraid everyone was hating me and that I was wasting the group’s time as I stumbled over myself again and again.

It doesn’t make sense to talk here about ATS vs. Gypsy Caravan or performance angles or fusion styles or anything like that because it will only make sense to maybe three people who read this. It’s enough to say that going to class is way harder now for me than it’s ever been—Monday nights used to be sacred to me—and that the combination of changes in my dance community and also the sheer loss of skill has made me doubt myself severely, and to wonder if I’m just…done. Maybe a bellydancer, even a casual and just-for-fun one, is just one more thing I used to be.

My dear friend and teacher Sylvia wanted to video us for training purposes yesterday and she sent me the link to it after class. I was wary to click on the link because I have never actually seen myself dance, other than in the mirror during practice. A long time ago when I had first started intermediate classes my other dear friend and teacher Sharon, in Seattle, wanted to video us as well when we were doing solo work, and I refused to let her tape me—I was that scared of watching myself . This time, though, I was already feeling pretty rough about my abilities and I figured I couldn’t feel much worse, right, so what the hell.

It was…illuminating. Of course it was, that’s the whole point. As I watched I kept thinking things like “Wow, that is a BIG BUTT I got over there” and “DROP YOUR SHOULDERS CHIARA I MEAN REALLY” and “Hey, maybe I should look into actually cueing moves that other people know, I bet that would cut down on the looks of terror on their faces when it’s my turn to lead!” I saw a couple of good things—if nothing else I can keep a 4/4 beat!—but most of what I saw were insufficiencies, uglinesses, severe lacks of grace and style.

Mostly I noticed the expression on my face as I was struggling through the song. It’s not that the other dancers were perfect or anything but they all were managing to look like they were enjoying themselves, like they were doing this on their Sunday morning instead of sleeping in because they actually wanted to be there, because it’s actually fun. I looked, in the video, as if I had been convicted of a heinous crime and that my sentence was hard labour, tribal-style. I looked like I was being forced to be there. I looked like I was being punished.

Contrast that with the sense I used to get, dancing with various people in various contexts: that I could be both in and out of my body at the same time, that this was one of the best things I did with my life. How does it happen, the switch from one to the other? What did I do to get to where I am now?

After Sunday’s class—which, on top of everything else, I had to leave early because I was so sore and so tired—I texted Sylvia to basically apologize for my lack of awesomeness in the studio. “I think dance may be over for me,” I thumbed, sad and frustrated and exhausted.

She was very encouraging to me and replied “It’s only over if it’s not fun,” and I did not—and do not–have a response to that one.