By Dorothy Ragosine

I always said that I would write an article that began with the sure fire, eye catching sentence: “It all started with Bellydancing…..” so here it is.

It all started for me with Bellydancing except that it did not begin with Bellydancing at all. It all started when I was born, and born a woman, forty years ago in these United States of America into what could be called a good, white, middle class family. It also happened to be a family which was dominated by large, competent women who all have large breasts. I was one of those women as it later developed – if you forgive the pun.

Ever since the Pope or somebody reasonable said that brevity was the soul of wit, we have been editing marvelously heart rending dramas down into neat, cleaver magazine articles, but to be brief:

It all started with Bellydancing and that was three years ago. At forty, overweight and at a loss for dreams, I would probably have described myself publicly then as a regular middle class housewife and mother of three kids with a “good” marriage. While privately, in a clandestine journal, I wrote, “Although I am a clown, a comic person, overlarge, ridiculously trying to hold my bulk in balance, I cry too much.I wail inside.I cry ultimately, for no reason or reasons that I can piece together……”

And yet I had no reason to be unhappy, did I? I had it all: the good home, the good marriage. We had a few problems but that was true of everyone, wasn’t it?There was nothing more serious between us than the fact that I always left the cap off the toothpaste and the cost of the phone bills but nothing more serious than that.

As for my independence, my life of my own, I had a good job, playing “all the female roles” as one colleague put it, to a bunch of kooky, disturbed kids. I was called a teacher. Very heroic, that. A bloody Statue of Liberty in blue jeans and Earth Shoes, Monday through Sundays. Sometimes at business meetings to gain a point, I would aim my large breasts at men and be coy which is quite a trick when you’re 5’10” and weigh 180 pounds. Sort of a brunette Marilyn Monroe. At evening parties, wearing a dress with super cleavage, I’m the kind of woman worries the ladies of the station wagon set. They still don’t take me seriously because they know that tomorrow I’ll be the good ol’ buddy who’ll drive the kids to the basketball game. Besides, I wrote poetry sometimes. It is absolutely inconceivable that any truly serious, professional, full-time femme fatale could ever drive a station wagon, with or without sticky kids, or write poetry, even bad poetry.

There was of course always gin, large quantities of it, consumed, usually alone in the kitchen at night, nearly every night. Sometimes it had the desired effect of anesthetizing me, leaving me nodding or weeping gently in front of the tv to the compassionate counterpoint of Marcus Welby, M. D. Often, however, there was the paradoxical reverse effect when the rage the gin was suppose to douse licked up the walls of my body like wind fed fires and I barely suppressed the recurrent desire to take the kitchen chairs and heave them through the plate glass windows that looked out into the sea.

Morning always came and with it, the hangover and the voice of Reason. It had been the gin talking, not me. There was no rage there, only alcohol. I had no reason for this rage and so, of course, I did not feel it, did I? So I would drive to work and call myself a shit, promise tonight I’d made a lemon meringue pie for the kids and I’d never be a shit again. Once at school, I’d get quickly to the women’s faculty lounge and clutch a cup of hot tea.

Our school had in those days, as did most places, a token “Women’s Libber” on the faculty. She had a glossy mass of dark hair and a pretty face that still looked young despite the anxious wrinkles around the mouth and eyes. Her voice was strident. She often got angry at staff meetings, correcting every male remark that was not politically correct. We laughed with her in the women’s faculty lounge but avoided her in the cafeteria where the men were. She was angry and humorless.

One morning in the women’s lounge when I was hung over and in need of companionship, the token libber and I had a guarded conversation. I threw out my usual cocktail party line on Women’s Liberation, “I can’t get too involve with women’s liberation because I grew up in a family of strong, competent Swedish broads who castrated their men”. She let the word “broads” pass and said, “Did it ever occur to you that if those women had chosen an outlet or profession to use up all the suppressed energy that they might not have turned to destructive rage to……..”

Rage? What the hell was that all about? The women in my family were really good women, castrators maybe….but hey, that wasn’t suppose to be a serious line anyway – they were all good women, good women like me, not angry at all. The only thing that makes me angry is all this damned weight I’m suppose to be losing and never can. Non sequitur, I asked the Libber, “Say, do you know of any good diets?” She poured another cup of coffee and nodded a silent, “No”.

At Christmas, the women’s lounge buzzes with one of the favorite topics of all times: diets. Groans of mock despair can be heard from the pretty blond French teacher, “All of those parties and good Christmas goodies and I’m up to a size 9!”

At home, I unzip my size 18 slacks with difficulty. Reading the “Half Moon Bay Review”, the small newspaper that covers 25 miles of rural California coast towns and usually confines itself to dreary tales of highway fatalities, ocean drownings, and who was recently elected Miss Half Moon Bay, I spotted a rarity even for the San Francisco Chronicle. A picture of a beautifully exotic, dark haired lady, arrayed in coins and veils headed cryptically enough, “Half Moon Bay Adult Education.” I hooted aloud and read on. “Among the offerings at Cunha Junior High Adult Education classes this winter will be classes in Middle Eastern Dance, sometimes known as Bellydancing taught by……” I went out into the kitchen.

“Hey honey, isn’t this a kick? They’re teaching Bellydancing in Half Moon Bay. I think I ought to go.”

Him quietly, by now used to my endless enthusiasms: “That would be nice, dear.”

Me angrily, sure that he is thinking that it would be ridiculous for anyone my age and size to bellydance. “What do you mean “nice”? It would be terrific – ah, terrific exercise. Good way to lose weight.” (You need reasons to do things, remember?)

Him: “Yes, terrific.” The kids laughed and that did it. I poured myself another gin.

The only way I could get myself to the first class was to make it all a joke. I have since noticed from reading other women’s private journals that one way of telling when something profoundly important is touching a woman inwardly is when outwardly she’s not taking it seriously. That would imply taking her inner self seriously, a very difficult task in what is often, for a woman, an essentially schizophrenic world. What conversational mileage I milked from it.

“Guess what? I’m going to be taking bellydance lessons!”

“You’re kidding!” Much laughter and form the men my own age, sexy little lines like, “Where are you gonna get enough beads to make a costume?” (Ha, ha. You see – I am still so sexually viable.) Yes, I was always and endlessly a character in a melodrama, reading from a script someone else wrote.

By the night of the first class, I had talked so much about it that I had to go. As I drove the darkened, rain slick highway that December night, my head reassured me that it was just a class, nothing to be afraid of, while my body went right ahead feeling what I really felt: scared. My palms would not be talked out of sweating now would my gut be reasoned out of knots.

Through the front door of the Cunha Junior High School I strode, breasts forward, head high, looking like a whaler out of New Bedford. It was one of my better facades. I was directed to the gym by an obviously snickering custodian.

The gym was huge, over heated, still smelling of sweat with a highly varnished floor. There stood hugging the walls, about 15 women, mostly young, it seemed to me. There was a high proportion of the so called hippie population that live in the hills in and around Half Moon Bay. They were in their twenties, dressed in floor length skirts or jeans, bulky Mexican sweaters that looked like Indian blankets, Earth shoes, kerchiefs tied around long, probably dirty, hair. They had gold hoops hanging from their pierced ears. My god, only gypsies pierced their ears! I had them safely described and distanced them from me. They were “the hippies” or “gypsies” which is roughly, the same thing.

I looked around for someone I could relate to. There were two women my age, a plump housewife who giggled nervously, and one I later learned was a divorced school nurse. She will wore her dyed red hair in the ponytail of our youth and looked determinedly cheerful. They were obviously trying to regain their lost charms. I thought them not very interesting nor did I bother to turn the mirror I flashed on them around.

Then I spotted what I thought was to be the teacher or what was roughly my idea of what a bellydancer was suppose to look like, she was an auburn haired creature with a sequin gold bra, a bare belly of the overly white skin of people who never get in the sun, a chain belt riding just over her pubic hair and a skirt of gauze so bright it could have made a peacock fade. She was jiggling her hips about in a way that proclaimed her to be an experienced dancer, I thought, and as I looked at her face still pimpled with adolescence, I realized to my horror that she had been a student of mine just three years prior! I contemplated running, but heroine to the end, I walked over to her, reintroduced myself and asked if she were to be our teacher.

“Oh no, Rossah will be here soon.” She pronounced the strange name with a short o and the distinct tone of a courtier announcing the imminent arrival of the Queen Mother. Her name was Annie and she was pleased to tell me that she was now living with two really nice guys on a ranch in Pescadero. I congratulated her warmly on her good fortune and went back to watching.

The atmosphere was like that of the women’s restroom. I have waited in many long lines, listening to the tinkle of other women’s biological functions, waiting for the roar of the flush so that it will gratefully be my turn. It has always struck me as strange that women in such lines seldom talk to each other, even if they are together. They stand with fixed expressions on their faces as if they were waiting to have their teacups filled at a silver urn. In fact, they are waiting to pull off their pants and pee, a fact too indelicate to be noticed or mentioned. It was that way in the gym. We all stood apart, as if no one else were there. Perhaps why we were there was too personal to be talked of.

I have since attended a beginning class after having danced a long time and I could see how we must have looked that first night with a clearer, less defensive vision. We were all scared to death, frightened that our childbirths and our aging and our spreading fat, would condemn us to the meaningless scrap heap of unattractive women. I am quite sure that we were all there at whatever age in a desperate attempt to reclaim our bodies in order to please one man or another in our lives. We did it for them! Not for ourselves. We were going to be exotic bellydancers!

The class was scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. At 7:30, as we shuffled our feet and complained a bit, the doors to the gym were loudly flung open and through them came a fantastic caravan of three people. It was lead by a tall thin scarecrow of a man who looked like Ichibod Crane from Sausalito. He looked about 7 feet tall and wore embroidered purple caftan, gold earrings, eye makeup that was set off nicely by long flowing hair and a beard that was faintly tinted purple on the ends. With one hand, he struggled with a large tape recording machine. With the other, he carried a sheepskin headed silver drum that was shaped like a footed ice cream cone. Behind him came a small dark haired girl with a brocaded carpet bag slung over her shoulder. She had on a headscarf, a Mexican sweater, stripped harem pants, stripped socks, Earth shoes and pierced ears. They were all swathed in layers of old robes and blankets and clothes, giving them the appearance of Bedouin peddlers. Last through the door, carrying another sack and drum, was yet another small dark haired girl in head scarf, Mexican sweater, striped harem pants, Earth shoes and pierced ears. It was a freaking uniform!

There was something different about the head. Peering out from under a mass of shiny black hair, was an almost childlike face and dark eyes lined in black to give them a look of a fragile doe. There were little black flowers painted on her brows and on the cleft of her chin and a gold hoop in her nose. She was beautiful. I was terrified!

In a small nervous voice she said, “I’m sorry I’m late ladies,” and she began to disrobe. I expected what ex-student Annie had displayed, a direct copy of Broadway in San Francisco, large boobs fetchingly lifted skyward by a sequined bra, a bare plump belly, a see though gauze skirt or pants; the sexy image of what I aspired to be in order to drive men wild.

She undressed and redressed and adjusted necklaces and jewelry in a modest downcast look. No bold flashing of eyes. When she was complete, she stood there in the middle of the gym of Cunha Junior High in Half Moon Bay, California. She looked not like a bellydancer but like an illustration out of an old fairy tale of Charlemagne’s boy knight, Roland, standing bright in a suit of silver chain maille, worn with infinite grace.

Festooned with dull antique silver coins around her neck and across her forehead, she wore a long dress of gray metallic cloth, cut softly down to her small breasts, buttoned down the front in fantastically wrought gold buttons. Under her floor length skirt peered silver Turkish pants and hanging from her hips below a small round and covered belly, rested a massive belt of more gold and silver coins. In her hand, not a see through veil not even the characteristic cymbals we would later play, but a sword! It was a real, honest to goodness, sharp edged sword!

She said, “I am Rossah and I would like to dance a sword dance for you.” The drums played by her two companions, began a slow sinuous beat while Annie lazily and faintly clinked her cymbals. Very slowly, with a great presence, she put the sword balanced on her head and began to dance.

I had never seen anything like it. She undulated with the boneless movement of a snake, her arms slid through the air as if they were in water and they were serpents. She spun with the sword on her head and slipped to the floor with her body rolling back and forward in huge cresting waves while the sword was still on her head. She was up again and the beat went faster and faster as she spun and swooped to her finale. The drums stopped. Face framed with the sword, coins and her upheld hands, she smiled a faint smile, eyes shining but distant and inward. She began head movements like an ancient Shiva, around and around, side to side, soundless, ending with an almost imperceptible thrusting forward motion of her chin. She repeated it twice. IT was the most sensual gesture I had ever seen in my life. The primordial invitation of a doe, nudging the soft flanks of her chosen one, an invitation made, not out of approval or for any grasping need for possession, but made with an openness that said that if so chosen, they could run free beside each other in the forest.

There was a long silence, finally broken by Rossah beginning instruction with matter of fact chatter. We struggled for two hours to point our big western feet inward and to take small steps. We groaned as we tried to move our hips into pivotal circular motions. We kept struggling because of some enormous power that was driving within that fragile girl.

At the end of the evening, standing dazed and drenched, but somehow lightened. Someone asked, “Will you be teaching us to strip for our husbands?” We watch her tilt her head humorously with that marvelous presence and say, “Ladies, we are not for sale. This is not burlesque. This is an art form.” At that very moment, I was transformed from a middle class housewife to an emboldened lady-in-waiting to a queen.

The weeks of classes and practice at home that followed were not all a fairly tale come true. A dozen or so of the original class had dropped out under Rossah’s strenuous regime. She was a perfectionist and a slave driver. Annie, with her sad body and exotic costume, left to seek her sexual fulfillment elsewhere. The ladies of my age bracket disappeared soon after Christmas leaving a core group of regulars. They were all under 30, slim, and then there was me. We talked very little but they were kind. They all looked marvelously supple to me while I reddened and sweated. I was very sure I looked like a penguin having convulsions. I practiced harder and longer. My first conquest was the finger cymbals. After practicing until my forearms were numb, the intricate pattern began to come smoothly. Finally, I was able to put cymbals and dance together, following the Eastern rhythms that to a Western ear sounded slant and off beat.

Gradually, blue jeans were replaced by the Turkish pants. They rode low on the butt and pubic bone, and felt at first as if they would fall off. The growing familiarity afforded no restraints to the rounded belly. Then came the coin necklaces and the turbans, little embroidered vests, fringed scarves, jeweled caftans and bright Afghani dresses, an infinitely rich army of colors and textures and styles: Moroccan, Egyptian, Afghani and Arabic. I replaced my expensive perfumes with musk oil. After months of argument with my husband about “only gypsies piercing their ears”, I pierced my ears.

I began to walk differently, swaying my hips saying in rhythm in my head, “Ladies, we are not for sale.” All the parts of my body learned to work together and in isolation. The head moved silently separate, while the body was as still as a cobra. The hips were swiveling quickly driven by the solid pistons, the legs. Hardest of all for me was moving the ribcage and shoulders loosely, and independently.

It was so gradual; I didn’t see it all at once. I was slimming noticeably. I was also beginning to find support and delight in other women and in reading feminist literature. Other things happened as I danced. I felt strong, often arrogant and frequently very, very angry. Powerful emotions of aggressiveness, hostility, and rage – emotions that I had thought nice women weren’t suppose to feel – began churning up from some ancient well. I felt a sense of kinship with generations of my Middle East dance sisters. What a relief dancing must have been after being hidden and swathed in yards of veils and their unquestioned subjugation to their men.

Finally one night after dance class, when I hadn’t had a drink in two days, I had an overpowering urge to ram my car through our fence. Was that the gin talking or were all those nights when I wanted to heave those chairs though the plate glass windows not real? It was time I took myself seriously. As I had begun to take charge of my body, it was clear that I would have to take charge of my mind, my spirit, and my life. I had abdicated my power to my parents or my husband all of my life, always looking for a champion, someone who would carry my spear into battle for me. But it was time I fought my own battle and carried my own spear.

After a year or more had passed, it was clear that the small band that remained was far more than a class. Each one of us had developed a style that suited us. I could not copy Rossah’s fragile, doe like motions or Val’s exuberant bouncy folk dances. I had to be myself but was still not sure what that emergent self was.

They had begun to dance as a troupe at parties and festivals but I held back. It came time for my large annual Russian Easter party we traditionally gave for about 60 of our friends. I asked Rossah if she and the troupe would dance at my party. She agreed nodding, “Of course, you’ll dance with us.”

I flew into a panic of self depreciation. I wasn’t good enough. I was too old. She wouldn’t listen. “Your dancing is dignified and elegant. You have something to say and it’s time you said it.” I knew she was right.

My husband was uneasy. He said it was because his European background taught him it was wrong to express your feelings in public, especially with your body, but I was sure she was more afraid I’d make a bloody fool of myself. I wasn’t at all sure that I wouldn’t.

My fourteen year old daughter was more direct. “I know you Mom. At Russian Easter you’ll apologize for your dancing.” And she could have easily have added “and for yourself.” A voice that had begun to talk inside my head said, “Not this time baby. Please, if you can, have the eyes to see your mother erect and proud to be a woman. Not devious, not cure or charming, or drunk. No more exuberant boobs and pouting mouths. Your favorite singer Elton John said that Norma Jean is dead and honey, he’s right.” In her place there comes a woman compounded of what I tentatively have called masculine and feminine qualities. To name this woman still eluded me but I knew that I had to proclaim her in a ritualistic and sacramental way in my dance in order to finally turn and meet her face to face.

There went on for about a month of the agonizing swing between determination and self doubt. Practice and practice, count steps, choose music, count it out, buy fabric, and costume fittings at Rossah’s house in the middle of the night. Rehearse and dance and do it all over again and dance and ache and know finally that you know nothing at all about dancing – or anything else.

Was all this prosaic machinery necessary for what was supposed to be in the end product a graceful ritual? Yes, finally the uncertainty, the chaos, the clutter, the groping, the fire in which all but what is essential, burns off. Without it there is no creation of anything, a party, a dance, a poem, or a soul. It is always forgotten and every time that primordial chaos required before change is faced, it is faced with a fresh horror that all but destroys you.

The day before the party we were to have a dress rehearsal at my house. Only one dancer showed, most were still sewing on their costumes. It was going badly. Rossah brought my costume, still unfinished, and we had a trial run of makeup with turban and costume. I danced uneasily as if this were all a made up disguise, not yet integrated within myself. Yet an enormous excitement was building in me, a fire which showed sparks in my eyes. Sometimes when you put on makeup and a costume – show business trappings – a peculiar, frightening transformation can take place and by some alchemy, you become the mask that you have put on. Like the Eskimos who choose their totems to become the personification of their souls, wolf, wind, water, bird, become them after death, I was assuming a new identity that I had once had and would become once again.

That night, long after rehearsal ended, I kept the makeup on – the black lined eyes, tribal marks on my forehead and chin. I kept watching that other face in the mirror. She was enchanting, quite literally. She was a mystery to me but I was her captive. With a mixture of fear and delight, my husband kept watching me all night, as respectful and shy as a new lover.

The day came foggy and cold, and with it I was cold, icy, with no awareness of time or space or even fear, preserved as if dead before Spring or warmth has come. Rehearse once, without thinking, then automatically, I clean, cook, arrange flowers, dress, greet people, cordial yes, hello, good to see you, oh yes thank you, dancing? Yes.

I was held myself restrained. Then began the woman body warmth of the troupe in a small bedroom dressing, and costuming. Within the scents of musk and frankincense and the clink of coins, smoothing silks and golden cloths, they seated me on a high raised chair and a cloud of hands prepared me, ointments on my face, painted marks, the turban wrapped, coins and costumes adorned me. I was combed, robed, and ministered to while I sat motionless and passive, allowing them to lead and mold me. There flickered in my memory the sense that I once, long ages ago, had been a Druidic priestess.

It was time to begin. With a fire mounting from my loins in a column straight up the middle of me, I looked in the mirror and gasped in recognition – the priestess of old in the robes of an Egyptian Queen. She with a black turban and silver coins across my forehead, a long dress of black silk with gold and silver stripes molding over a body that is admittedly heavy, large bellied, nurturing, sensual, and yes, female. But past that, something lurked and shined just beyond the parameters of the eyes and face, a look that had eluded me before, a masculine look that I had feared. It is a look of a strong force that can destroy before it builds and births. It is the face of a wolf but it is a woman’s face. It was my own wild woman self, long denied as not part of my everyday nature. Now released from the terror of the night, my wild woman spirit was completely integrated within my gentle, woman self.

The drums began and the fires that flash up inside my body are no longer rage or self betrayal, or even wails of loss. They are the flames of birth and the cries of creation, an exquisite joy that can flow outward without fear. I dance slow and steady, stately and quiet, centered and commanding, totally alone. I am able to feed them now because I have no need of them.

The music moved quickly to the final spins, around and around, black robes and sleeves as wings swooping, gold and silver flashing, and it stopped abruptly. The ritual was complete. The birth was accomplished. I heard the high tribal yells, the zaghareet of the dancers behind me.

Without planning it, I dropped softly to one knee in front of the chair in which my husband sat, head bent, one hand softly on his knee. I looked up, eyes clear. There was no need of rings or priests this time. This time, no bartering nor dowries. I had freely chosen. If he so chose, we would run together, separate but side by side, through all the forests here forward.

NOTE TO THE READER: My wonderful student Dorothy Ragosine wrote this back in 1976. She had a major mastectomy shortly after having written this article and died of breast cancer in 1978. I find her article empowering and felt the dance world should hear her story. Any bellydancer who remembers their first class can probably relate to it. It is an incredible testimonial to the power and mystery of the dance. I have walked for the “Race for the Cure” with an “In Memory of Dorothy Ragosine” banner on my back. It fills me with pride to remember this strong woman and to be surrounded by others who are survivors or who run “In Memory” of other women they have known. If this story touched you, give for the cause or race for the cure. Bright blessings! ~Rossah

“The marvelous article about your “student”, the dancer no longer with us -wonderful!    I will be 59 in January and started classes at 54.  There are so many things in her “journey” that are simply me!   It gave me goose bumps to read it.  Thanks for knowing that it needed to be on your site.   -Layla