10.10.2003

Tomorrow morning I don’t get to sleep in like I usually do on Saturdays. Instead, I get to teach a beginning bellydancing class. My girl R is attending a dance camp this weekend, and asked me to substitute for her class. It sounds fun, and it’s a relatively small class. I’m just wondering how to fill two long hours with stretches and beginning movements.

I’m also wondering how I’ll handle the situation when only half the students can execute the movement I teach and repeat and break down into specific, incremental motions, and the other half are wiggling something funky for all they’re worth, nowhere close to the motion I hope them to mimic. R said it was the hardest thing she had to learn about teaching, that you have to keep moving, you have to move on regardless of whether the students “get it” or not.

I’ve been trying to think of my first beginning classes, and the memory has become clouded by hours of practice. I don’t recall having trouble with the basics, like the hip tuck, one of the most essential movements, or the hip lift, another necessary foundation move. Upon the hips rests the entirety of the dance. To be able to move the hips independently of the rest of the body is a matter of muscle isolation and control. But how to teach that?

R asked me to teach the travel step commonly called the camel, which can be done a number of ways and directions but generally isolates the still upper body from the undulating lower body, and the legs move one leg constantly in front of the other, crossing only to turn or to arabesque (or to kick out one’s skirt in a big dramatic flare but that comes later). The effect is one of a floating upper torso and a snake-like travel step. It looks fantastic on thin women, which is not something I can say for all bellydancing moves. Most moves look best with some flesh to shimmy but I’ve gone off on a tangent now and I’m mostly afraid that’s what I’ll find myself doing tomorrow, babbling away and confusing the women in class who are just taking their second class ever of Bellydancing 101. There is a fine line between explaining and overwhelming.

And while I can’t recall my beginning classes in terms of when did I actually learn how to do it, I can recall wanting to know everything, from the music to the culture to the dress to the proper positions for arms, hands, feet. The more I learn, the more I want to learn, and I realize I know very little. Maybe that’s what I’ll tell the students; there is always more to learn. For me, I have measured the fire in my heart, and found it hot enough to fuel my desire for knowledge about all things bellydance.

I want to know how to teach it to others. Even if that means getting up early on Saturday.