Ten Years of Bellydance: Orchestrating Emotion

This summer marks my tenth year since I started belly dance. The most common question I get (besides "How do you balance that sword on your head?") is, "Why did you decide to learn belly dance?" It's a valid question, but I also know this question comes with an a certain amount of curiosity about how a Chinese girl picked up a Middle Eastern folkloric dance as a passion.

The story: in 2000, I graduated from my second Master's degree program at nearly the same time a very important relationship with a troubled man was put on hold. My own personal suffering translated into physical illness. I ate and slept so poorly, my doctor recommended that I find something more gentle to do than running and aerobics for exercise (I had lost approximately 25 pounds in two months).

Picking up a Discover U catalog for Seattle-area classes, I flipped through it, looking for "something" that seemed interesting. I didn't know I was looking for belly dance, though I had been exposed to Lebanese belly dancing while on a tour of Israel a few years earlier. One of the Discover U class offerings was belly dance with Yasmine, who I would later find out was not only a dancer but a musician as well. With a few group classes, Yasmine encouraged me to consider belly dance as "your dance"; that is, she felt that I took naturally to it. I must admit, being a musician has its advantages: zill playing was a bit easier for me than the average beginner.


Imei, celebrating 10 years of belly dance, and different styles of dance

People ask me where I get my ideas for choreography. Certainly, all of us learn from someone, and we borrow their moves as it suits us. Later, we learn to listen to the music, playing with variations of how those shapes and emotions might look when in motion and facial expressions. Finally, we create, film, observe, perform, and elicit feedback, constantly working to refine the feelings and messages we wish to send to the audience with each piece.

Sabura once wrote an email with a piece of advice I have taken to heart over the years. She reminded me that it didn't matter so much what movement I did in a choreography, as long as it perfectly expressed the emotion of the music in which it occurred. If I can get an audience feeling what I feel -- longing, joy, tension, release, breath, misery, anger, confidence, comedy -- I have accomplished no small feat.

In essence, we dancers give our viewers the unique opportunity to feel what is is to embody the music itself, yet without having to move from one's chair, nor ooze a single drop of sweat. If you find yourself holding your breath, smiling, laughing, or emitting a flirty confidence from every pore in your body, you have just understood perfectly what it is to be a belly dancer: orchestrating emotions in a waterfall of pleasure