Except for in summer because I love my Saturday mornings, I teach beginning bellydance for the little community college. I have folks calling me to dance or to teach often but I still wasn't prepared for the call from a woman who is trying to organize a Hawaiian-theme dinner at a senior center because she needs a volunteer to teach any brave elderly ladies how to sway the skirt.

I know nothing of hula dancing. In fact when I hear the word hula I always imagine our local Cowgirl with her boots & hat & dred locks & she dances with two hula hoops like nobody's business, one on the arm, one around her waist, then switching so one's around her neck & the other's on her wrist-- she's awesome with those big plastic hoops. But that's not grass skirt and tropical skin and graceful hands telling a story.

Once I had the fortune to entice my girl friend from Borneo to show me the traditional dances she learned as a girl. She told stories with her hands and feet, drew patterns in the air. I have studied some Persian dance and it seems remarkably similar to what Vey showed me, river reeds swaying underwater, birds in the trees, stars in the sky, the boats on the water, the love returned from voyage; showing emotion through refined motions. I know hula dancing also presents stories, and prayers, and blessings, but I don't know what they are, and it's not as though I could fake it, or take a crash course. I wouldn't pick up a ukelele and expect to be able to play it, either.