If Ruth St. Clair could convey only one idea about belly dancing, it would be this: belly dancing is not erotica.
“It’s not a sexual thing,” St. Clair emphasizes. “It’s about women spending time with other women, having fun together.”
St. Clair, who has studied the dance form since 2005, has learned something of the dance’s history.
“Men were not allowed to see belly dancing,” St. Clair said. “The only time a man would see belly dancing was on his wedding night.”
Instead, St. Clair said, the dance was done by women, for women.
“When a woman would give birth, all the women would dance with her, and the movements would help bring the baby down,” she said. “Little girls would see their mothers and grandmothers dance, and when they reached puberty they would be welcomed into the circle.
“As Americans, we were the ones who changed it from being a historical dance to the ‘sex thing,’ people now think of it as.”
St. Clair, who recently returned to Iola after living in Alaska, had been teaching belly dance there as a way for women to get together, especially in the dark months of winter when outdoor activities eluded them.
“We had a good time,” she said of her Alaskan troupe. “You don’t have to be a size 2. It was a fun way to show them how to do something for themselves.”
In Alaska, St. Clair worked for the Office of Children’s Services.
“I investigated child abuse up and down the Aleutian coast,” she said.
One island community, Adak, had only about 100 year-round residents. Yet “Adak has these amazing facilities because it’s an old navy base,” St. Clair said.
Beside the gym and a fish processing plant, though, St. Clair said “It’s a pretty miserable place to be.
“It was a drinking community. The parent got drunk and abused their children.”
St. Clair asked herself, “What’s something I can show them to do besides drink?”
The women on Adak “found out I danced,” and the answer was obvious.
St. Clair began to teach them belly dancing “during my time off,” she said.
All 15 to 20 women of Adak, from teenagers to the elderly, took her class, she said. They began to focus on their health and community rather than on drinking.
St. Clair plans now to teach belly dancing in Iola.
“It’s low impact,” she said of the sinuous movements. “This a great thing to do, especially for a gal that might not try a hard aerobic activity. We can take it slow,” she said.
It also helps with back pain and “helps as you get older to keep the joints loose,” she noted. And, St. Clair said, because the movements replicate the rhythms of birth, “you exercise wen you have cramps and it helps.”
BELLY dancing originated about 6,000 years ago. It spread with gypsy dancers and was especially popular in the middle east.
In Turkey, “the women who were approaching marriageable age would come down from the mountains to the bigger cities and dance in the street,” St. Clair said. “People would throw coins at them and they would sew them into their veils.
“When the women went back to the mountains, the women who had collected the most coins were the most desired. They were the best dancers,” she said.
Belly dancing is distinctive in that “you dance barefoot,” St. Clair said. Dancers wear hip scarves tasseled with golden discs, representing the coins itinerant dancers collected. Flowing gossamer veils are sashayed about the head and body.
“Everything you do behind the veil is pretty because it adds an element of illusion,” St. Clair said.
There are various forms of belly dancing, she said, including tribal, which sports heavy belts and multi-layered costumes, to cabaret, with lighter fabrics and faster steps. A tribal belly belt might weigh about five pounds, whereas one for cabaret, which St. Clair teaches, weighs about 6 ounces.
In addition, St. Clair said, “There’s a a lot of shimmies in cabaret. To me, there’s a lot more movement.”
Belly dancing requires control. Legs and back and belly muscles are all involved. Arms are strengthened through swirling the veil. And posture is improved as dancers learn to stand with their pelvis tucked, St. Clair said.
Anyone, of any size, can learn, St. Clair said.
Some of the best dancers worldwide, she said, are, in fact, large women.
“We put too much value on women who are size 2,” she said of modem American culture. “Traditionally, those are not the women who were beautiful at all.”
ST. CLAIR’S belly dance class is being taught through the Iola Recreation Department. It begins Jan. 5 and runs six Tuesdays, from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. Cost is $35; veils and hip scarves will be provided. Interested women can register by calling the Iola Recreation Department at 365-4990. “If six or more women want a different time slot, I’m open” to teaching an additional class, St. Clair said.
And every woman is welcome, regardless of size, St. Clair noted. “As we said in Alaska, ‘Every belly is beautiful.’”
No comments:
Post a Comment