"Dancing" can't describe what transpired this weekend.

The word "dancing" carries connotations of joy and exuberance and fun and loud music and laughter. Yes, it is all of those, but it holds more water than that.

I feel like I swam ten miles in pounding surf.


Saturday morning the beginning Middle Eastern dance class I teach through the community college started up again, four quick young girls and four older stronger ladies, all ready to absorb everything I give to them. We stretched and listened to music and looked at each individual section of our bodies-- the head and neck, the rib cage and chest, the waist and hips, the arms, the legs. Beginning classes always focus on isolation exercises-- how to flex and move and shift only one part of the body at a time. It is a labor of love and repetition. Practice perfects the motion.

For two hours I try my best to demonstrate and repeat the base motions found throughout every part of the dance, the muscle control, the core of motion, the center of balance.

After class ended I rushed home, ate lunch, and headed back downtown for a workshop on dancing to drum solos.

In Middle Eastern dance, especially in Egyptian-style cabaret, drum solos are often considered the height of training. Each intricate beat or tap or roll or boom on the dumbec drum is indicated by tiny isolated motion of the dancer's body. It requires utmost control of muscle isolation, an awareness and interpretation of the music, and unbelievable timing to catch the sounds. Most drum solos include a constant shimmy, with moves layered on top of the shimmy.

For a cabaret shimmy stand comfortably and balanced. Move the knees back and forth, slowly at first, don't lock the knee as it moves to the back, and then increase in speed so fast that your upper body stops bouncing. The flesh on the belly and buttocks shimmies rhythmically-- let it loose, don't tighten up, don't be tense. Kind of like running in place, but don't lift the heels, and let the motion terminate in the hips. Once that shimmy is acheived (and don't be faint of heart-- it takes years to learn), slide the right hip out to the side as if carrying a sack of groceries, or a child. Now slide it back underneath your center of gravity, and then slide the left hip out the same way.

Don't stop shimmying.

It goes like a lawnmower, like an outboard motor, vroooooooom. Our drum solo instructor joked, "Ladies, start your engines!" We shimmied for two of the three hours during the workshop. The last hour we learned a drum solo choreography, which combined all the intricacies of shimmying with layered moves and memorization of a dance routine. My body and my brain were buzzing as I climbed the five flights of stairs to my car in the parking garage.

I went to bed at eight on Saturday, having danced for five hours. Sunday I met with four other ladies for our weekly two-hour session. We've been working on a choreography, and I am amazed how fast we're progressing and how simple we're keeping it. It will look great and be easy to teach to any other dancer. We stretched and danced and laughed, although I thought someone had exchanged my legs for two chunks of waterlogged wood.

But today I feel as though I were hit by a bus. A big smiling pretty shimmying spangly bus with kohl makeup around the eyes, but a bus nonetheless.