Belly Dancing: Beautiful, not burlesque
by Brooklyn Shearer, posted April 24, 2009
The dimly lit room inside Elm Street Yoga sets the mood for the 6 o’clock belly dancing class taught by Asha Diana. The women put their jackets on the coat rack, listening intently to one woman talk about her great find of a coin belt in Denver. Diana nods as she understands the thrill of finding a one-of-a-kind coin belt.
Asha Diana rents Elm Street Yoga to teach her students the art of belly dancing. While the class size may vary (between six and eight), the connection with the music does not.
Diana started belly dancing in 1980, and has taught since 1984. Although she'll be the first to admit she has not made a fortune from teaching, she is content to focus on “keeping the dance alive.”
To practice, she and her students wear comfortable clothes that they can move in easily. Their clothing may consist of a flowing floor length skirt, hip scarf, or coin belt, a camisole and no socks. The skirts are sometimes very pleated and the hip scarves wrap around the waist and have fake coins sewn on them so when their hips move, the coins can be heard.
In class Wednesday, March 4, the class worked on finding their “notches.”
“I have heard notches explained a couple different ways,” said Erin Ryan, a 22-year-old MU student. “I've also heard it called ticking. Basically, if you imagine a clock, it has all sorts of dashes where the pointer has to stop at to go around the clock. You are doing the same motion with a part of your body. So we were working with our hips. Normally, we would make them move in smooth circular motions, but by adding notches or ticks, you make little stops along the way. It takes a lot of muscle control to articulate the motion.”
“[Belly dancing] is really accepting of all different body types,” said Ryan, who has been dancing for 16 months. Ryan has never danced before and likes that she doesn’t have to be professional to belly dance.
The age of the students range from 13-year-old junior high students to mothers in their upper 30s. There are many different reasons the females belly dance. From New Year’s resolutions to picking it up from a friend, the women in the class like the way the music reaches their soul.
“[When the students] work as a group, something magical happens,” said Diana.
While her pupils realize the importance of the dance, the general public often does not.
“Most people are uneducated,” she said. “Burlesque is not part of it.”
In her classes, Diana tries to “present it in the purest form [she] can drum up.”
At the end of class Diana will ask the students what they have learned over the class period. One student said she thought she would get better if they had mirrors.
“Since we don’t have mirrors, we have to use internal eyes,” said Diana.
To the belly dancers, internal eyes are the way they see their body move and the motions they are doing without using mirrors.
