Rossah’s recommends:

READING

The Alchemist by Paulo Coeho  A fable about following your dreams.

The Danse Orientale by Jamila Salimpour

This is the complete workbook for all of my dancers.  Google Jamila Salimpour and find a way to purchase it online.  It has all of the Jamila technique broken down and categorized for you.  Cymbals and veil work included,  A MUST!

Grandmothers Secrets – The Ancient Rituals and Healing Power of Bellydance by Rosina Fawzia Al-Rawi

Serpent of the Nile by Wendy Buonaventura

My Life by Isadora Duncan

When God was a Woman by Merlin Stone

The Compleat Belly Dancer by Julie Russo Mishkin and Marta Schill.  Out of print but worth a trip to the Used Book Store or Library to find.

Harem, the World Beneath the Veil by Alev Lytle Croutier

The Voice of Egypt – Umm Kulthum by Virginia Danielson

Bellydance: A Guide to Middle Eastern Dance, It’s Music, It’s Culture and Costume by Keti Sharif  Beautiful photography, well written.

When Drummers were Women – a spiritual history of rhythm by Layne Redmond

Looking for Little Egypt by Donna Carlton

Bellydancing for Fitness:  The Ultimate Dance Workout that Unleashes your Creative Spirit by Tamalyn Dallal

For fun:

Skinny Hips and All – Tom Robbins

Snake Hips:  Belly Dancing and How I Found True Love by Anne Thomas Soffee

NOTE:   There’s so much more out there, but I believe this will get you started.

MUSIC

New dancers always ask what music they should buy to practice to.  There is so much great music out there, it is hard to begin.  My first recommendation is a CD that has many of the classics all in one place.  You should know these songs by heart.

Dancing for Fortune and Fame by the The Mogador Band with Spiro Cardamis

Music of the Ghawazee, Araf #DA 700

Music of the Ouled Nail, Araf # DA 701

Music of the Fellahin, Araf # DA 702

Music for Oriental Dance, Araf # DA 703

Jalilah’s Raks Sharki – Buy the entire set.

Sirocco, Vol. 1, 2, 3

Uncle Mafufo:  25 Essential Rhythms for Bellydance

DrumSongs for Dancers

Thrilling, Chilling, Zills

Buy anything from this man-drums or music.  You won’t be disappointed.

If I’m driving in my car, I listen to:

Metkaal Kenawe

Khaled

Hakim

Amine

Sunday morning I roll out of bed at 6:45 a.m. to start my day.  The Intensive has a new location, The Palace Station Casino, and I don’t have a clue what room I am booked in or what type of sound equipment I will be supplied with.  I fly down the highway to get there, find parking easily right in front (probably because no one is awake at this hour), had to be escorted to the convention area after getting lost amongst the slot machines, and made it to my room just in time.  The sound guys were there (Amira’s husband and new daddy, Dennis) and showed me a very easy boombox to use.  With so many popular dancers teaching at the same time, I was pleasantly surprised to find my class sold out and the room almost full.  Had a handful of faces I knew and a very receptive group anxious to learn.  I really enjoyed myself and felt the participants did too.

The Khaliji Class

Khaliji dance is the dance of the Persian Gulf States and Saudi Arabia using the Khaliji rhythm. The women’s costume is called a thobe nashal – an oversized overdress – which is a very full, often highly embroidered caftan. The thobe nashal is used as both costume and prop. It is a wide dress in a brilliant color elaborately adorned, especially around the neckline. No hip scarf or belt is worn. Since the dress is free-flowing due to the lack of a belt, the dancer’s movement is focused on the upper body and footwork, and includes a lovely way to toss long hair from one shoulder to the other. The dance also features lots of spins, chest drops and tossing of unbound hair from side-to-side. The huge sleeves are at times held up like a hood to frame head slides or used coquettishly like a veil.

The Girls from Calgary

Later on that afternoon, I had a really special private class with a group of women on a Girl’s Weekend Getaway/Retreat to Las Vegas from Calgary, Canada.  They wrote asking for suggestions for a restaurant with good food and a bellydancer.  I sent them my suggestions which sparked much discussion back and forth.  I told them that the LV Bellydance Intensive was all weekend and they should include it if they were coming to town, there were many activities for them to take in.  Instead they wanted me to come to Mandalay Bay Casino, to The Hotel and give them a private class in their hotel room.  I went up and found that my bellydance class was a surprise activity to most of the group.  The initial reaction was met with a little intimidation which immediately melted away.  One girl had a bad headache.  I set up my boom box, poured a heap of belts onto the floor.  They each found one to wear and away we went.  Something really wonderful happened in that room.  Maybe it was just the great intimate connection women have when they are all having fun.  I have taught so many memorable classes this year but these two will stick out in my mind for months to come.  I have to shout out with a huge THANK YOU to all of the students who make my work meaningful. 

Yours in Dance,  ~Rossah

If you want to learn more about this annual event and their other Las Vegas offerings, visit:  www.bellydanceintensive.com

We learn by ‘doing’.  And, boy, have I been learning a lot recently!  I’m learning a lot because I’m DOING a lot.  In the past few weeks I’ve finished new music, I’ve learned to write, edit and format eBooks and I’ve learned to make videos and movies – and make it all available for instant download…for everyone’s convenience.  Now, with this first issue of ‘Tales from the Reed Patch!’, I’m learning how create, develop and maintain newsletters.  Most importantly, however, I’m getting very, very clear about my intention with all of this activity.

What I am doing is bringing all of my talents and faculties together to create a life of purpose, value and meaning… to myself and others.  I have gone way out on the ‘artist’s limb’, constantly pursuing new knowledge and skill, and the means to bring it to people.  I have continually paid the price for this quest.  It has cost me dearly in terms of relationships: relationships to people, money, ’status’ and even myself.  I finally realized that I am ‘half-way across the ocean’; it would take just as much time and resources to ‘go back’.  Thus, my only choice is to persevere.  Relentlessly and without wavering.  My success will be determined by how effectively I can serve others in any way that I can… by how useful I can be…

So, let’s explore that: How useful can I be to others?  What do I have to offer and would anybody really be interested? A quick glance at my history and ’skill set’ might be in order!  

I was apparently born kicking and screaming… surely indicative of a resistance to be back here (We’ll save that topic for another issue!).  I cannot clearly recall that event, but I do know that my earliest memory was of drawing on a pink piece of paper with a red marker.  I think I was drawing my sister in her ballerina tutu.  My entire childhood was centered around me being ‘the artist’ and I so often heard that I ‘had it made’ that I believe it created some very strong assumptions in me.  

As I began to shift into music as my main creative outlet, many people were less-than-happy.  I clearly remember my high school art teacher being appalled when I declined a very nice art scholarship for college.  She was not the only one.  My Muse had shifted and I faithfully followed.  At the time I had absolutely no clue how that decision would shape the decades to come. 

My musical pursuits began on the bass guitar and led me from rock and blues to jazz and fusion, and from electric to upright acoustic.  About the time I was getting into the flute I was also beginning to study religion, philosophy and mysticism.  That eventually led to yoga, Tai-chi, Sufism and the musics associated with them.  When I first heard the Ney flute of the Eastern mystics, I heard it as a call and a path – a sanction.  Ten years ago to the day as I write this, I sold everything I had and purchased a one-way ticket to Turkey to study with ‘the Masters’…

That fateful trip altered many, many things for me.  A ‘decision of irreversible consequence’, traveling overseas opened my eyes to intentions, assumptions and expectations that I had not realized before.  The utter self-reliance I had to muster up just to wander through five countries on my quest was one thing.  The sheer terror of realizing my complete vulnerability was another.  I remember making a $300 collect call to my mother from Ankara around 3:00 AM as several men appeared on the street from nowhere and, according to all of my hyper-alert instincts and observations, had positioned themselves in a tight triangle around me… not even two feet away.  

That is when a certain ’surrender’ began to settle over me.  A ’surrender’ that I still feel very close to… in my ‘inner world’.  That ’surrender’ is only offset by the commitments and obligations that I have made to others, mainly my wife, Missy.  These are the commitments that keep me from floating off into my own rarified Never-Neverland.  It is this connection to the everyday world that I decided was my ‘work’ in this life.  It’s very easy to be holy on the mountain.  It is easy to be the ascetic and hide from the demands, lessons and growth that only ordinary life can provide.  It is very easy to hide and call it any number of lofty names.  It’s still just hiding from Life.

After that… and a long tale of coming out from under my rock, getting into percussion and dance music, then even more ‘extroverted’ music… I emerge now with a very unique bag o’ tricks!  I am one of few people in the West who makes specialty reed flutes, I am very proficient on a variety of percussion, I am a teacher(and a damn good one) of these same instruments and I play music the majority of you have never heard of.  I am plugged into online marketing, have access to information, products and techniques that very few people outside of this industry are remotely aware of (creating unbelievable leverage in areas where it is ‘new’).  I still have all my original art talent (but I’ve learned my lesson – you won’t see it until it’s IP protected and ready to go) and I have more craft skills ranging from wood to leather work, knot-work to metal work .  And I’m a damn good cook.

So, here I am.  Turning 40 in less than a week.  Decades spent chasing the Muse.  I was asked awhile back when I would stop chasing ‘empty dreams’.  The answer is simple: they are not empty dreams.  For every time someone, even some of you reading this, has told me,”Go for it,” someone else, often the same person(s), has later said,”That’s stupid…”  Well, guys, I’m delighted to have ignored all of that, held my ground and currently be movingly rapidly forward….

Thus, I am going to reintroduce myself to you now and make myself painfully clear on a few points:

My name is Jay Kruse.  You undoubtedly know me as a musician, an artist, a craftsman, a teacher… and more recently an author, a recording artist and a business owner / budding entrepreneur.  Since moving to Las Vegas a little over three years ago, many things have shifted in me and I am not only launching everything that so many of you may have been waiting and hoping for, but I am also forging ahead into, for me, very new and unknown territories.  

All of this is of course terrifying.     

I turn 40 in just a few days.  For decades I have made choices that have been based on honoring my talents, passions and skills, and pursuing a lifestyle and livelihood built upon these gifts.  I made choices in my late teens and early 20’s that I am increasingly experiencing the consequences of each and every day.  I accept that – I have little choice in the matter…

But now there is a turning point and a shift.  After years of being in a new place, being exposed to new ideas and people, I am more determined than ever to see how deep this rabbit hole goes and take the necessary steps to create the life I want for myself.

Without apology, without remorse.  

In the past three years I have shared with you many of the things I have been exposed to since moving to Vegas.   This includes music, people, food… and other things that I have found to be very useful, beneficial and even prosperous.  

I have shared with you, via other personal e-mail addresses, new ventures and products that I have come to strongly believe in and even go into to business with.  And I have been met with a lot of resistance… 

I have been laughed at…

I have been told I am wasting my time

I have been called stupid….  by some of you reading this now.

I have been called an Amway Fag by one of you reading this now…

I have had a friends, who are reading this now, vehemently chastise me for bringing to their attention something I truly believe could help them… after moaning to me about how they are feeling less well as they age….

I have had people ridicule me for trying to kick my game up a notch – as if they needed me to remain who I was from a former time and circumstance or because my growing success might somehow force them to review their own choices.

I have had, and still have, people call me to complain about their careers and livelihood… yet mock me if I even begin to offer ideas that may be able to assist them…

I just launched my greatest undertaking yet: my business of ‘me’.  

 I finally have found the pieces I have been searching for: the tools, the techniques, the strategies, the tactics.. the knowledge, wisdom and support of a variety of mentors in several areas… and my balls.  

I am using everything at my disposal to build a business that includes everything I’m gifted with and believe in to give back to the world and offer my unique talents, goods and services.   From making, selling and performing with flutes and drums to keeping people informed about the latest developments with the stem cell enhancer you have all heard me talk about.   I will share info I think is valuable.  I will give stuff away. I will sprinkle secrets where I can…

So, if you are at the least curious, or want to keep tabs on me for any reason… if you’re into trippy music and instruments… if you’re remotely intrigued by the topic of stem cell research… if you’re interested in the possibilities of marketing online.. if you’re interested in yoga and how lost I think much of it has become… if you want to know what I REALLY think about religion, UFO’s and transsexuality … if you want information on entirely different ways of looking at your relationship to money and valuing yourself… then stay tuned.  Join me and let’s explore this freak-show we call Life.  The clock is ticking..!   

I hope this finds you well and I look forward to hearing from you!

Peace,

J

**********************************

Jay Kruse

“You get what you settle for.”

www.jaykruse.com

**********************************

Author with Rossah

In the lead up to this years conference there was one refrain that kept being circulated amongst the participants- “Rossah is coming… If you do nothing else, you have to take a class with her.” So I pre-registered for her sold out classes, and I was so glad I did.

It almost feels redundant to think of these words as a testimonial, because under Rossah’s tutelage the room where she introduced us to guedra literally became a testimony. She took her time to explain to us the weight of the rituals we were participating in, and by the time my first class with her was over some students had been moved to tears!  It was truly a beautiful experience- the perfect mix of a physical workout and spiritual expression.

I also took Tunisian jug dance with her, another class I would highly recommend. Rossah has a sincere love for this dance that radiates from her core. Her energy set the tone for the session in a way that was wonderfully encouraging for all of us.

Bellydance is such a deeply layered discipline… instructors are not merely teachers, but rather conveyors of sacred traditions. Rossah handles this trust that has been placed in her with the greatest of care. Please do yourself the favor of learning from this woman- it’s inspiring, instructive and a blast for all ages and all levels!

-Shani

NOTE FROM ROSSAH:  The photo of Shani with me at the top of the page was taken during the Tunisian Gourd class.  In all of my 35 years of attending bellydance events, this was one of THEE BEST I have ever attended.  I felt such a profound respect and supportive atmosphere resounding from the participants throughout the Festival which I have never seen so abundantly before.  It was well conducted and I can’t sing their praises loud enough.  For more about the amazing Dr. Sunyatta Amen and BOCA Soul-Yoga Fest, please visit:  http://www.gomamasita.com/

“I was very impressed with your style of teaching and the guedra itself. I would like to learn more extensively from you.  What you taught us that day was artistically profound because of the simplicity and tenderness of the movements. I have conducted guedra’s for my family since meeting you and am proud to say, they are empowering.  Peace and Love!”      Shahidah Bey

“Rossah, I really loved your class during the Bellydance Festival in Maryland. It’s so wonderful to learn from teachers such as yourself who have so much knowledge and patience! I had a lot of fun and you created a wonderful atmosphere that brought in the full essence of the festival. “       -Melissa

Class Locations

If you are visiting, new to town, or are looking to find a local class, send an email to subscribe_LVBellydancers@yahoogroups.com.  A moderator will approve you and you can locate classes in the calendar or in the database of teacher’s folders on the site. (Don’t forget the underscore between subscribe and LV)

Performance Locations:

 If you are looking for somewhere to enjoy BELLYDANCE in town:

Ali Baba’s-8826 S. Eastern Ave. Las Vegas, NV 89123, (702) 688-4182

Almaza-9890 S. Maryland Pkwy, Las Vegas, NV 89123, (702) 450-1030

Greek Village Café- 9500 S Eastern Ave, Henderson, NV 89052 (702)405-0065

Chandelier’s- 2980 St. Rose Parkway, Henderson, NV 89052 (702)456-8643

Khoury’s- 6115 S Fort Apache Rd, Las Vegas, NV 89148, (702) 671-0005

Layalina’s-6870 Spring Mtn. Rd. 702/227-6776

Hedary’s Mediterrean Grill-7365 W. Sahara 702/873-9041 

Habib’s- 4750 W. Sahara 702/870-0860

Olive-3850 E Sunset 702/451-8805 

Opa Greek Restaurant-2550 S. Rainbow 702/876-3737

The Marrakech Restaurant, 3900 Paradise Road, 702/737-5611
Dinner Reservations recommended.

If I’ve missed a location or have posted incorrect info, please let me know!

by Gill Eardley

A dancer’s response can be easily stifled by choreography, limited movement vocabulary, poor posture, lack of confidence – the dance becoming merely outer technique and form.

In addition to teaching Arabic dance movements, a variety of innovative techniques outside the Arabic form are used which aim towards the discovery of a balance between outer technique and a deep inner response. This then can be taken back into Arabic dance with a heightened quality of confidence, expression and delight.

Move to Relax

Allowing body and breath to work in harmony brings a deep sense of peace and clarity, aiding the emergence of intuitive and creative living. A tapestry of breathwork, gentle exercise and imagework offering simple ways of relaxation for daily use.

“Dance is the Soul in ecstasy” (Isadora Duncan), and “Dance is the hidden language of the Soul” (Martha Graham). Quotes given to us by these two great heroines of dance hint at the “otherness” of dance, of a dimension beyond us brought about by bodily movement and rhythm.

How might these two quotations connect with this…. “Censor the body and you censor breath and speech at the same time. Write yourself. Your body must be heard. Only then will the immense resources of the unconscious spring forth” (Helene Cixous – quoted in “The Whole Woman” by Germaine Greer

Humankind has always danced, earliest dance being rhythmical movements echoing or imitating those seen in the natural world. Traditional peoples understood the connection between Soul, the human body, and the cosmos in which they find themselves.

They have (and do) acknowledged the vital importance of continually “re-membering” and honoring that connection for their very survival. We in the West tend to view this honoring either as pagan superstition or a romanticized idea not applicable to us.

We have only to look at such basics as our food and water, poisoned as they are with antibiotics and chemicals, our land and trees devastated by economic greed, and how we treat other cultures, other people and our own bodies to realize that something very fundamental is amiss, missing.

So what has all this got to do with the Dance? Dance has its way with us on several levels. I choose my words carefully there for dancing is different to being danced which, I believe, is the true aim in dance.

Dance, dances, can be thought of as Beings, each having intention with us. Through the constant repetition of rhythmical movement we are infused with it’s meaning for us as humans and we are changed as a result. This process deepens when made as a conscious act.

At community level it brings strong cohesive bonding of the group, community or village regularly dancing together. This is at its most powerful when the dances are in lines or circles, the participants touching each others bodies in some way such as holding hands or laying arms on shoulders as seen in folk dances around the world. (ZORBA) A strong sense of one’s community evokes a sense of loyalty and self-confidence to each of its members, invaluable in times of threat to the group.

At the “world around us” level, dance brings us into contact with a sense of being part of the world we find ourselves in. Dance is an echo, a metaphor of the Universe. Native American dancers dress in costume of Bear, Eagle, Deer, Butterfly and the other creatures they see in the natural world around them. The Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert “become” the animal they track, only then they know that they are allowed to take its life to feed their families. They equate tracking with dancing – their word for dance also means “to revere”.

The natural world is deeply embodied in the movements of Arabic Dance. In this most ancient of all dances a wave of the sea, or the wind in a field of wheat can be seen in the undulations and pulsing movements; the rivers and streams spiral down to the sea and the smoke of a fire spirals to heaven; in sacred geometry the figure eight is the figure symbolizing Infinity – no beginning and no end; the Moon and Stars and all the planets circle on their path in space; the whole Universe vibrates as the Creation constantly shimmies into being; and the pulsing and jerking of the pelvis during those most holy acts of sexual pleasure and childbirth. All are celebrated, honored, in Arabic Dance.

(I AM…..THE LORD OF THE DANCE, SAID HE.)

[No beginning, there can be no ending]

When we are in contact with the Earth and cosmos on such a deep level as this, it is a small step to allow the Dance to take us to an awareness of that which is greater than us, that which is variously called Divine Spirit, Goddess, God, The Creation, Mother God. Father God, Shiva, Kali – the names are multitudinous.

Relating to this level through the Dance may be celebratory, placatory, or devotional and brings us sharply aware of the personal in relation to the Divine.

Dance as a Soul (some refer to this as spiritual) path invites us into a place where rhythmic bodily movement breaks us open (physical), cleans us (emotional) and loves us (Soul or Spirit – the Divine). In other words, our consciousness may be moved to a greater sophistication on many levels where we are able to act in the world, on a daily level, with greater awareness and love for ourselves, those around us, the planet and the Divine. We then become aware of the significance of things, the sacredness and meaning imbued in the things around us, in the activities we engage in. Allowing the Dance to have its way with us deepens our way in the Dance, deepens us as individuals.

I am not talking necessarily about dance therapy; dance therapy uses dance to effect emotional healing. I am talking about allowing the Dance to use us – allowing the dance into our soul, an inner dance. Exploring not solely outer techniques and forms but delving into the movement of the body in a wider sense, breaking open the inner senses, finding a balance of the inner and outer dance.

The Guedra dancer allows herself to be used by the Dance, using very specific movements, for psychic cleansing in order to maintain her connection to the Divine. The repetitive step patterns of Eastern European folk dance and Balkan Rom (Gypsy) cocek dances are danced for long periods of time, until the dancers move, are moved, into a place beyond time and space.

The seven stages of the Sema ceremony (Whirling Dervish) represents a mystical journey of the ascent through mind (the physical) and love (emotional) to the Perfect (spiritual) – turning towards Truth, growing through love, deserting the ego, finding the Truth and arriving at the Perfect. He then returns from this journey with a greater maturity and perfection, “able to love and be of service to the whole of Creation, to all creatures without discriminating in regard to belief, class or race” (from “Sema the Universal Movement by The Grandson of Hz. Mevlana, Dr Celaleddin B. Celebi).

A Soul or spiritual path in the Dance then can be seen as the connection of body, soul and cosmos. How do we allow the Dance to deepen into us? Many women speak of a deep longing in their desire to dance, often bringing them to tears as they speak of it. Our longing IS the Dance and it takes us with it. There are infinite ways of following the longing, of deepening our dance, of discovering the sacred union of the inner Dance with the outer.

In order to dance we position ourselves in space. In doing so we become aware of our Centre, easily identified in Arabic Dance through the basic posture. This vertical line runs through the centre of our body, extending from the soles of the feet into the Earth, out of the top of the head into space (Heaven). All movements come from and return to this centre and are always carried with one as one dances. This is the “axis mundi”, represented in mythology by the tree, the metaphor in the body being the spine. To be able to dance one has to be “centered”, “grounded”, “earthed” – it is interesting to note that in electrics one has to be earthed to avoid being blown up!

Dance is a place of contrast – of inner and outer, of hard and soft, of movement and stillness. The interaction of outer and inner, for instance, can be experienced in different ways. Even in the midst of intense or rapid outer movement there lies a deep inner stillness, our “earth” and connection to that which is greater than ourselves. And, when during the dance the outer movement is arrested to stillness, it is not simply a case of being still, but feeling still, embodying stillness, or, maybe, allowing stillness to embody us. Stillness then becomes a cathartic experience both for the dancer and anyone observing. This is part of the flamenco dancer’s “duende”.

Working with Steiner’s inner senses (he found seven inner senses in addition to the outer five) in the dance can push the boundaries of the body’s movement into a wider sphere of physical, emotional and spiritual freedom which can then be brought back into a deepened form of the outer dance of technique. Arabic Dance is the perfect place to work in this way, often as it does bring us face to face with our personal inheritance of a 3000 year long legacy of the denial of the female bodily functions and sexuality. Arabic Dance comes from a time and culture where sexuality and the female body were inextricably linked, being the exquisite metaphor of Life itself. “Censor the body and you censor breath and speech at the same time…”.

Following our longing, dancing the longing until we are danced by it, leads us to a place where, as the Sufis say, “The sole purpose of Love is Beauty” – the dance becomes the sense-uous experience it truly is. We are then graced with The Breath, The Body, The Earth and The Love…”Write yourself. Your body must be heard. Only then will the immense resources of the unconscious spring forth….”

(Used my website as a reference at the bottom of the article)

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