as I go back to dancing for the first time since April. Nothing really arranged, as Aya the troupe leader is coming back from Turkey tomorrow, and is scheduled to dance. We fill in around her. So it’s a casual -without- costume, except zils and coin scarves. But I’ve been rather slothful for the past months, sustained a shoulder injury recently, which has just cleared in the past few days, and I am wondering if I am getting too old for all of this.
Perhaps like an old racehorse, I hear the sounds of battle or in this case, music, the strains of a fast beladi or a broken beat saudi, and everything in my body starts up in motion. Including those parts (butt) that are supposed to be relatively still.
My heart leaps to the challenge and I am constantly grinning as I put myself through my paces, trying to arrange levels of movement in pleasing patterns.
These past months actually had a benefit. My bodies muscle memory kicked in, and I found that my arms were more graceful and my motions ’sweeter’. The range of motion was not as great, but that will come back.
I think the greatest benefit of NOT dancing was that I realized I missed it so much. I loved dancing more than I hated the conditions I left. I missed my friends, but I missed the audience, too.
I love performing, weaving the magic of dance and the seduction of strangers.
Lady Nyo
Ali Baba and his 4 Thieves
While Ali Baba and his 4 thieves were drumming last night to wild North African rhythms, I ran to them, giggling, hot and sweaty, fresh from the dance.
Grabbing my dumbek, I wiggled in between two drummers, propped my right foot on a chair and tucked the drum beneath my breast. I tried to catch their rhythms already swirling like looming, stomping ghosts.
They are tolerant, my Berber friends, of the silly belly dancer who would rather drum than dance. They are like my brothers, but that fades when the dumbeks gets serious. Then the primal rhythms heat our blood and strong, dusky hands gallop over the skins.
I am transported to a desert of their making, where they are no longer just waiters in a restaurant, but blue skinned, veiled dangerous men on Arabian steeds and fast camels.
I am thrown over a saddle in front of one.
I see Ali’s eyes narrow and Hassim’s close, and my nipples harden. The Berbers before me are fierce men, and I am a woman. The drums draw us together in this ancient dance of lust.
I feel sand in my shoes.
Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2008
