You’re Taking WHAT Lessons???

Last time it was Dee’s fault — she arranged for the fusing/​flameworking work­shop that made me real­ize I could play with fire in a care­fully arranged home stu­dio. This time it’s Andrea’s fault. She found that Nazeem Allayl Stu­dio offered a Sat­ur­day morn­ing walk-​in work­out class at their Perime­ter stu­dio, halfway between her place and mine, and con­vinced me to go with her so nei­ther of us would feel too old or too fat by ourselves.

We were both relieved that first morn­ing to find that she was not the largest, nor was I the old­est, woman there. So we went back the next week. And the next. By then I had found that this was actu­ally do-​able, damn good exer­cise plus a whole lot of fun!

When the next six-​week class ses­sion came around, I decided what the hell, let’s try a chore­og­ra­phy class as well and learn an actual dance — an actual BELLYDANCE. Yep. BELLYDANCE. Tra­di­tional Raqs Sharki, Mid­dle East­ern folk­dance, is done by women of all ages, shapes, and sizes as part of their own cul­ture, and Nazeem Allayl Stu­dio encour­ages that in their pro­gram, so why not?

So I took one chore­og­ra­phy class, then another, then another. Last week I started a fourth chore­og­ra­phy com­bi­na­tions class on Turk­ish style; tomor­row my basic tech­nique drill class starts so I can learn to do the moves pre­cisely and properly.

I started doing bel­ly­dance for exer­cise, but as I told Scha­dia after class last week, “I want to dance, not just sweat.” For me, most forms of exer­cise are B-​O-​R-​I-​N-​G and tedious and I won’t stick with them. Bel­ly­dance accom­mo­dates where I am now and gives me lots of room to grow as a fit and healthy per­son — exer­cise I can and hope­fully will stay with as long as I can move.