Oriental vibe

when i was recently arrived in Hungary, i tried to enroll myself also in activities other than Erasmus traditional ones: attending lessons, parties, travels.

i was not alone in this survey, since one of my dearest friends here in Hungary joined me. Olivia, a funny, clever and cheerful Belgian girl whom i met at a ESN speed dating in February suggested me to go together to try a belly dance lesson for free.

when we went the first time to attend, we went to an advanced class, and the teacher Maya adviced us to just be present but not participate actively at the lesson since we'd better start with the beginners course.
i remember we were just sit on a futon oriental couch on the wooden floor of  the dance classroom, petting the surprisingly friendly Yorkshire Terriers of our teacher, staring those girls and women's naked feet flying on the lucid dancefloor.
they resembled all queens to me.
glorious, graceful, wonderfully feminine.

i have never seen a man in my belly dance school so far, since the art of belly dance is an exclusively women dominion when it is a performance, while as a social dance it can be occasionally performed also by men in some cultures such as Egyptian one. it is believed to have a long story in Middle East cultures, originally it was a kind of "fertility dance", celebrating the womanhood.
it is primarily a torso-driven dance, with an emphasis on articulation of the hips.
it is also a solo kind of dance, when you don't have any men "directing" you.
yes. i have to admitt it. i am awful at being directed by somebody. i saw it when i learnt to dance Salsa in Central America. you have to trust your partner, and let him "drive the dance". i was full of ideas about what to do, but i had to follow my partner. uff...
despite of this, i think that couple dancing would be a good excersise for me to learn to trust people more, which is not easy at all for someone betrayed by the first human being she knew. i think that it is something i will do in my future. maybe Latin American couple dance or even Valzer, or Rock couple dance.

but let's come back to belly dance. as a belly dancer you are the queen of the dancefloor. your movements enchant your audience, your customs are gorgeous and shiny.
let's just say that belly dance got both me and Olivia that day.
we started to go to belly dance classes on a weekly basis. we even bought shiny, noisy belly dance scarfs with a kind of pocket money charms on them, long colorful skirts and bras.
we involved other female friends to try a lesson, just to have fun with them.

i loved to see Maya dancing. she has this content smile on her face when she dances. we let ourselves succumb on her smile, and we start feeling blessed and relaxed as well.  it's passion.
i also love to move every abdominal muscle, and see the belly moving as a wave.
the first lesson i was an odd duck wandering on the dancefloor, but as weeks passed i started to feel that i was getting it. i have to say that the belly dance dress helped. never underestimate the power of personification.
seeing myself on the mirror wall dressed like a belly dancer convinced me that i am one, and it improved my confidence.

at the beginning of May, our teacher proposed to me and Olivia to perform on a true stage a belly dance choreography on June 7th.
wao.
when we started we didn't expect to be involved in a show!!

we were amazed by this opportunity. we almost immediately said yes, then we went out the building talking excited like teenagers on how amazing this circumstance was after just 2 months of classes, and thinking about the track for our choreography.
we chose the Sahara Mix of  Shakira "Whenever Wherever". we worked on it with Maya for two lessons. now we  are practicing the choreography one or two hours a day together, depending also by Olivia availability, since she recently started an internship here in Budapest.

i think that being on stage always helped me in my life.
as almost everyone, i am afraid by the public, but for me it's some kind of adrenaline positive-stress-excitement, like before diving from a high trampoline, or doing a university exam. i know that at some point in my life i'll get to be talking to the public often. i don't know exactly why, but i know it.