As part of our belly dance story contest, we’ve received two entries that we would like to highlight.  You can now submit your poll for your favorite inspirational belly dance story (see on our sidebar). Polls close July 17th!

Azraa’s Story:

This is a story about how I went from a belly dance student to a belly dancer.

In high school I took a 6 week belly dance class through the public program at my local community college. The instructor was an out of town guest and there were no classes available after the session ended. For years, I kept the memory of that class in the back of my mind as something I really enjoyed doing. Figure eight’s also crept into my casual dance repertoire.

In 2004, almost 10 years later, I was a bridesmaid in the wedding of a Persian friend. Her cousin performed a classical piece during the reception. What is funny is that now I can’t tell you anything about what she did except she wore and beaded head piece because I helped her pin it in place. I drove the 3 hours home to Knoxville that night and can guarantee that my car hadn’t cooled in the time it took me to get online a
Google “belly dance Knoxville.” I started classes the next week.

In 2007, I had been taking beginner/intermediate classes for three years and was becoming very discouraged. I had yet to perform at anything other than community functions and felt like no amount of practice and learning would ever get me to the level I wanted to be at. One of my two current instructors came out of retirement and began teaching again. The class flyers said advanced students only. I didn’t feel advanced but a
friend said that we had to go to her class. She had heard too many good things and we couldn’t miss the opportunity. Her first session was teaching an original Ghawazhee choreography. Every student had learned the whole dance even though it was meant to be divided among groups. Our instructor was invited to teach a workshop in Memphis and for us, her newly formed troupe, to perform. Of the 7 person class, only 3 of use could go. There was no one with any experience at dancing with a sword which was one of the main sections of the dance. She looked at me and said, “You’re young, you do it.” I was terrified having never performed at a show of this caliber. She told me I was great and would do an excellent job. I borrowed a sword and practiced the piece. We had a pretty good performance for having a small group. The troupe in its entirety performed the same number later that month in Knoxville. I think several of the students who had taken classes with me previously were surprised to see me out on the floor. I came alive like I never had before when I danced. It was at that moment I realized what my
dancing had been lacking for so long, self confidence. I just needed someone to tell me I was a good dancer and I knew that I was. To this day after a performance my friend who talked me into the advance class smiles at me and says, “Jen, we’re belly dancers.” And I say back, “We are belly dancers.”

- Azraa

Tanja’s Story:

Getting Started With Belly Dancing

The last thing I wanted was to be pregnant – again!

However, for the last four years, everyone had been asking me when I was due. Probably, I was the woman the Maltese community in New South Wales referred to as “bajd u beċċun” – literally, “egg and pigeon”, but colloquially ‘a woman who has a baby and yet is pregnant again’.

There was a reason for this, however.

I had always reverted to my skinny self, post-partum. Nobody would believe I had eleven children, because I used to be thin enough to take off my jeans with the zipper still up, within three months of giving birth.

Yet this time it was totally different. Could it be because I had developed gestational diabetes when I was expecting the twins? I don’t know the answer to that one – and neither does my doctor.

However, this time, I failed to shed the layers of fat… and that was such an odd feeling to me. I went swimming. I bought an expensive pair of gym shoes and went jogging – in as much as I could since I was getting short of breath in no time at all. I cut out carbohydrates. I switched to raw food. Nothing worked.

And then, it happened.

My twins were three years old, as I recall, and we were playing with play-dough and paints on the kitchen table. I had laid out newspapers on the tablecloth to save on cleaning up later.

In that strange way twins have, they could communicate without letting the rest of us know what they were saying – but this, I understood. Marija was pointing at a picture and saying “fat”, and Michael was saying “mamamama”.

Curiosity got the better of me – and I realized that they had “agreed” that the belly dancer in the picture was my clone.

Now I know that there most belly dancers have perfectly flat abdomens, and they have so much control over their stomach muscles that they can place a row of dimes and turn them over one by one.

But this one was one of the more well-endowed ones. If this were fiction I would have seen a light bulb go on over my head, with the filament spelling out the word “idea”.

Slapping my forehead, I remembered what my friend Sandra always told me when I used to be thin – if you’ve got it, flaunt it. And I did… ironically, in a way I had never had the self-confidence to do before.

I had washed my hands and taken out the telephone directory, looked up the local schools, and booked my sessions at the nearest one before I could change my mind. Then I’d cleared the table, settled the twins for their nap before the rest of the children came home from school or work, and plunked myself down in front of my pc to research choli patterns, 10-yard skirts, coin headdresses, tassel belts, hip shawls… the works.

These days, I no longer sigh when I come across myself, looking wan and scrawny, in my old photographs.