In a post quite awhile ago I mentioned that I would make a post discussing why I don't/can't choose between styles of belly dance and forgive me for this post is belated! In this post you'll also get to know me more and my own progression and journey through exploring different forms of movement.
This post will also lead into another one about how an experience at a dance class with Princess Farhana's cards triggered all of this writing and therefore how great and revolutionary I think they are!
Over the years I have gotten into different styles of dance as well as styles of movements that I miss when I haven't done them. There are so many out there it's impossible to do them all! So it's only the limits of time, energy and other passions which choose for me. Before I ever did any style of Belly Dance I found a VHS on Latin Dancing. I loved it! And later when I took Belly Dance classes I found there was a parallel to some of the hip movements. It's practice also gave me well coordinated feet and the ability to layer simple hip movements over steps. This is why I believe that all disciplines no matter what they are serve to expand and inform your ability in other traditions. I also around the same time found a VHS for Kickboxing which I also loved. This style also taught me to move my hips in a twisting motion with the leg pivoting on the toe.
When I started belly dancing it was different but it still helped me to understand better what was going on in the Egyptian Step( also called "Step and Point") in AmCab and the Egyptian Basic in ATS. I recently did Kickboxing last week for the first time in months and was happy to find that even after an hour of weights that my energy was good and I had no arrhythmia! So win/win! But every time I do kickboxing after a time where I hadn't in awhile I realize just how great it is for improving lightness and speed in your feet, leg strength, endurance, hip flexibility and releasing tension in the legs. You also get a great twisting action in the shoulders and spine which also relieves tension. It's also a very different exercise than belly dance and found that I wasn't used to that particular flavor of intensity anymore. But because belly dance is my thing and takes a lot of hours to practice and energy Kickboxing will only be an every now and then practice for me unless I can travel in time like Hermione from Harry Potter!
When I found a VHS of Veena and Neena's Basic Belly Dance movements at Zellers in Fredericton NB in the winter of 2002 I was over-joyed! I had wanted to for a few years and never knew where I could learn! I still don't remember how I found out about what it was called. All I know is that when I was a teen-ager I saw a Janet Jackson video where they were doing amazing hip movements! I had never seen anything like that before and was like "That can't be possible! But they are!" They were dressed more in a style of Indian Dance Fusion so at the time I thought it's origins was India. Somehow I came across the name Belly Dance, years before I found the Veena and Neena in 1999 I was mentioning to a person from my home town how I wanted to learn "Belly Dance". I remember their reaction! lol At the time I was oblivious to how risque and baaaad it was perceived to be! The way I grew up, I was very separate from the way that everyone else lived and the ways that others thought. It was a very bad thing but in this way it was good. Because I was so isolated and spent a lot of time alone I had lots of time to think and to hear my own voice. Only years later did I find out how rare it is for others to have this and that if they did it was only after years of being very very busy with no time or space to think, to know themselves.
For me it was different. I grew up with a mentally ill parent where her condition was not properly controlled by medication. And so I was isolated from other people a lot. When I should have been at school but wasn't because my mother didn't make sure I did, I was exploring ideas in psychology and spirituality, yoga, lifting weights, playing guitar, drawing, reading, and writing poetry. Art and being in my body was my own culture that I created. There was no fussy ideas surrounding it about one thing being better than the other or why. There was no judgement, only exploration, growth and setting my own goals. I created my own self discipline and made sure to keep learning and growing even if I wasn't in the school system. And this way of life also had me expressing my own voice in a safe place even if the only person to listen was me. That is why no matter how strongly and fiercely I have been silenced by my mother, this culture or any one else that I speak up. I am still surprised when I speak up because I think, shouldn't I keep silent? But even when I have been silent, just by me being who I am I ask for trouble. And anyone who thinks freely and feels freely will attract abuse from people who have cut themselves off from their heart in some way. I sometimes wish that I could create the kind of wall, veneer, image that others seem to do so easily. But whenever I have tried it has hurt me too much.
Over the years I have felt like all of these creative forms that I loved and developed a relationship with was demanding of me to turn to stone. To create a false facade rather than to become more real. I even felt this when I was focused on developing my success as a yoga teacher years ago after I completed the teacher training. To those of you who have read my previous posts you know how I came to stop teaching yoga and how I became afraid of teaching for years. I have often thought that even though I hated what happened, and that all of it was so very wrong and still hurts me to this day, that it forced me to keep up with a facade that I felt I had to create as a yoga teacher. With everything that happened with being assaulted and people who I thought were my friends not understanding or caring it was too much for me to put on a front that none of these things hurt me while putting on the amazing yoga teacher facade that I felt was going on all through the yoga world at the time. I thought this was the only way for a teacher to get success all the while I thought it was bull. I grew up doing yoga so again it was a shock to learn that there were so many embedded projections, expectations, politics and ego involved in the simple practice of "stretching" and " breathing". This is why I don't adapt to the way that the rest of the world works. Though I was brought up in an extremely unhealthy and insane home I was not cultured and forged by the surrounding culture at all. So as I forcefully left the nest and explored the world desperately trying to outrun the fate of my ancestors I have found I can't adapt. And that I have to try very hard to hold on to myself while nearly, mostly everyone around me is trying very very hard to hate and reject themselves or to only love the show that they can put on for others.
I don't love the show. I love the humanity that which most people are rejecting and holding at a distance. As a result I feel like I am always immersed in a new culture and experiencing culture shock. And I always feel like I am doing something wrong. Did I say too much? Was my communication or my dance or my writing, my singing too personal? Is the image I just drew or painted too close to the truth? And then I feel and worry that honest expression doesn't belong anywhere. That art is only accepted if it's in a very tidy box and only if it expresses strength, entertainment, absurdity to entertain, perfection. I have had many real things get in the way of all of my creativity but one of them has always been "Where does it belong? This culture seems to not want this." And so would progress to money being equated with acceptance and belonging by the greater culture and that therefore meaning "success" All of that rather than a human being defining for themselves what success really is and that it isn't really success if your warping your vision and creative expression to get more students, sell more paintings, get more followers, likes etc.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of My Journey: Evolution in Creative Expression and Sense of Self !
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