Belly Dancing With More Belly

Reported by: Lauren Gress
Published: March 2, 2008

COLUMBIA - The ancient art of belly dancing is making a comeback in Mid-Missouri and perhaps via an unlikely group with more belly than some would expect.

Women practice belly dancing in dance studios all across the country, not just in Columbia. However, the participants in belly dance classes here are expectant or new mothers.

"I like the fact that I am getting back into shape after my pregnancy," dancer Jaime Farris said.

After having her first child, Dee Dee Farris-Folkerts began taking belly dancing lessons.

"I saw a tremendous difference in what birth was like after taking belly dance classes and building that mind-body connection," Farris-Folkerts said. "And thats where a real light bulb went off for me."

So a few years ago she began to teach belly dancing classes to pregnant women and the classes grew to include new mothers as well. Motherhip Belly dance was born and Farris-Folkerts had combined her love of belly dance and midwifery to help new moms and moms-to-be stay strong.

But Farris-Folkerts is not the first to use belly dance to help ease labor pains. Some historians say belly dance originated not as the sensual dance it has become in modern culture, but as a way for women to connect with other women and prepare their bodies for childbirth.

"As I became more involved in belly dance, parallels began to grow and grow," Farris-Folkerts said.

But learning how to move their bodies isn't the only reason women enjoy the Motherhip classes. It is practical for pregnant women to get a little bit of exercise and the dancing helps with balance.

"I'm excited to be able to take the class so that I can help my body be able to turn and move," dancer Anita Lee said.

Despite all the physical benefits of the class, the best part for women may just be getting time to prepare for their babies or spending time with their newborns.

The Motherhip classes take place every Friday evening and new women are always welcome.

Source: KOMU

The Science of Dance Choreography: Cognitive scientists seek to quantify body movement

By Anne Marie Welsh
March 8, 2009


WATCH MEN: Students at UC San Diego using laptops take notes on dancers’ movements as Random Dance Company’s Wayne McGregor observes, far right.

Reporting from San Diego -- With a dozen high-def cameras and a couple of camcorders, plus pens, notebooks, sketch pads and laptops, more than 40 people spent three recent weeks in a black-box theater on the campus of UC San Diego documenting what was occurring there.

The object of their study was notoriously elusive: dance and the process of choreographic creation.

What happens, they wondered, when choreographer Wayne McGregor creates movement on (through? with?) the protean, hyper-articulated bodies of his Random Dance Company? How do the dancers visualize his cues? How do they respond to one another in the group dynamic? How do they remember? And how does he?

By the end of every day during those three weeks, each person in the theater had interviewed or been interviewed by others participating in a meticulously crafted experiment exploring the nature -- and role -- of cognition in creating dance.

Three years in the making, the experiment was initiated by Martin Wollesen, director of UCSD's ArtPower! presenting organization; carried forward by professor David Kirsh, director of the university's interactive cognition lab; and heartily supported by McGregor, Britain's leading contemporary choreographer.

"I feel like I'm in therapy 2 1/2 hours a day," the choreographer said before one early evening debriefing with Kirsh. "David's questions make you define terms, help you not to be woolly about the words you use. We're talking intimately about what I'm doing, about the body as a thinking body, about how it processes information and visualizes movement."

McGregor, also the Royal Ballet's resident choreographer and a much-sought-after opera director, created portions of his next piece, "Dyad 1909," while in San Diego with his company and support staff as ArtPower!'s first innovator-in-residence.

The residency kicked off with a performance by Random Dance of "Entity," a startling, virtuosic 2008 work, itself part of McGregor's ongoing inquiry into the relationship between the thinking mind and the moving body. The weeks of intensive investigation and creation were also part of a course taught by Kirsh, centered on creative and "distributed" -- meaning "group" -- cognition.

The investigation was designed to result, said Kirsh, "in a singular document of the process that will be available to others and analyzed for years to come."

Make a note of it

Like American dance innovator Merce Cunningham, McGregor has long been interested in what jump-starts his creative process. His company name, Random Dance, implies Cunningham's belief that random numbers can be as useful as logic, that chance and indeterminacy are core artistic tools.

McGregor said he'd "been fascinated with disruptions, diversions, randomness, incompleteness, the different set of intelligences involved in dance and the different ways of extracting information with the body."

At UCSD, he said, he became more aware of "what I'm giving attention to." He wanted to "understand how we're thinking about ideas, to extend and develop my cognitive capacity about the body" in hopes of developing new methods that would cut against any "formula motifs" or habitual ways of making.

One way to improve or change his choreographic techniques, he said, might "involve building images acoustically rather than visually." A week into the experiment, he had discovered that "the things we're taught to talk about in dance don't actually describe what's happening in the mind. I want to blast that vocabulary open."

The dancers, his "best group by far," were eager participants -- not passive guinea pigs but note-taking thinkers. Citing "their extraordinary techniques and capacity to do so much mentally," McGregor said he'd chosen the international troupe of seven men and four women for "their serpentine physicality" and "mental aptitude. They're all curious and open-minded."

Their daily activities created a continuous feedback loop. First thing in the morning, Kirsh interviewed the choreographer in general terms while the dancers warmed up during company class. (Dancers rotated teaching duties, but the class was always ballet, followed for some by rigorous sets of abdominal crunches.)

At 10:30, Kirsh's students, each assigned a dancer, filed in with their laptops and notebooks. Cameras were activated, a documentary filmmaker and the Random Dance research coordinator took their places, and McGregor set his dancers to work on a task, a riff, an idea, a rhythmic challenge.

Students' fingers flew across keyboards as they described gestures, moves, attitudes, dancer responses and adaptations that provoked questions they would ask later in the day about why and how. Some used a coding system developed by a graduate assistant. Others sketched.

During the afternoon creative session, McGregor and the dancers generated more movement, more phenomena to watch, record, analyze. Then the dancers, led by associate director Odette Hughes, recapped the day's new movement phrases. Last came the debriefings -- McGregor interviewed again by Kirsh, the dancers queried specifically and persistently by the students. All those interviews were videotaped too.

Creative cognition

When ArtPower!'s Wollesen first spread the word on campus that he was seeking neuroscientists, cognitive researchers and computer scientists for a possible collaboration, Kirsh showed sustained interest. When they met, Kirsh and McGregor had an almost immediate "mind meld," Wollesen recalled, and continued their dialogue over many meetings, delays and setbacks.

"I wondered whether such a project had electricity," Kirsh said during a lunch break. "Dance seemed such a fertile ground for exploration as disciplines are exploding. Many of us in the 21st century are exploring the same theme -- the different avenues by which humans rationally engage the world. In dance, it's not the apparent meaning of the artistic product that's of interest but the huge amount of rationality that goes into its creation."

Despite the loss of a large grant, Wollesen, Kirsh and McGregor persisted. In London, Kirsh watched McGregor and a group of Cambridge University scientists investigate the possibility of building computer software that could "think" in movement terms and intervene in the creative process.

In this country, postmodern dance pioneer Cunningham has been experimenting for nearly 20 years with the software program Life Forms and the cinematic (and video game) technique of motion capture. More recently, Cunningham has combined software-generated ideas for shapes and movement with his usual chance operations to create new choreography.

But McGregor and his research coordinator, Scott deLahunta, were after something different -- a new software program that could alter, break or reverse choreographic patterns and create new ones. During the London workshop, Kirsh said, "Wayne made a three-minute piece in under three hours. The scales fell from my eyes. It was such a magnificent instance of distributed creative cognition where the phenomena were dripping on the surface."

Translation: Dancers and choreographer together solve problems, generate movement and coordinate ideas before the choreographer chooses what to integrate into a completed structure.

That computer program is still in the works. But once McGregor, Kirsh and deLahunta had determined how they might do "an ethnographic study" of creative cognition, the UCSD performance, residency and course were scheduled. And now, having worked with Kirsh, the choreographer is exploring representations of movement in human minds and memories.

In a typical afternoon session, McGregor asked his company to improvise an arm combination involving sliding, folding and rotating one arm or both, the dancers working either singly or in pairs. As they invented, he soaked in ideas, sometimes moving among the dancers, sometimes trying out a sequence inspired by what he saw.

Within an hour, he had created an intricate gestural series performed at speeds seemingly impossible to execute, let alone duplicate; the dancers copied, learned, practiced, mastered the sequence.

McGregor next asked them to add the arm work to complex rhythms they had developed that morning for the legs. He superimposed detail (leg circles, foot beats, torso tilts). Then -- almost miraculously, it appeared -- McGregor structured the swift, counterintuitive motions with against-gravity torques, twists and undulations of the dancers' super-supple torsos, melding all that into a choreographic structure by calling the rhythmic cues for two dancers, then two more, then a larger group to enter with their parallel or counterpointed or echoing responses.

"It was a good day," he said later when interviewed by Kirsh, whose professional vocabulary does not include the word dancer Paolo Mangiola used when he was interviewed by a student team. Finding neither scientific language nor recalled movement to express what he had experienced in the rehearsal room with McGregor, the dancer called it "magic."

Participants were pleased, many exhilarated. Students interviewed said they were developing a methodology for real-time data collection replicable in other ethnographic fields -- including gymnastics training, human-computer interaction and primate communication.

Wollesen is looking toward teaming on another innovator-in-residence project with UCSD's Sixth College, devoted to performing arts and technology. And aside from McGregor's potential additions to an already mind-boggling choreographic tool kit, Kirsh sees practical applications emerging from their mutual investigation.

"I've made delightful and rich observations about giving and taking instruction that may help us learn how to improve the cognitive efficiency of instruction in other fields by making it multi-modal," he said. "We are learning how distributed memory has to be turned on to be retrieved. We are seeing that choreography is a form of sustained brainstorming with a leader being the constraint on the outcome.

"There are applications in a broad range of disciplines," Kirsh added. He cited psychology and the treatment of people, such as anorexics, with body image problems.

Source: LA Times

Sad goodbye to 'cosmopolitan' Cairo

By Christian Fraser
BBC News, Cairo
Tuesday, 17 March 2009

These days the centre of Cairo is a dusty, polluted, overcrowded metropolis. But in the 1940s it was a city full of style and culture, the beating heart of an Arab renaissance.

Downtown the bars and nightclubs flourished along the sweeping boulevards attracting all sorts of adventurers from around the world.

Since then many of the bars and cabaret clubs have fallen into disrepair and disrepute, as the Egyptians grow more observant of conservative Islam.

Some do survive; the Windsor Hotel is one of them. Built at the turn of the last century as the baths of the Egyptian royal family, it later served as a colonial club for the British officers.

Today the hotel's Barrel Bar is still popular with Europeans, even though it is now a picture of faded grandeur.

The old telephone exchange has survived in the reception. The cage elevator is still there, as are the Lufthansa posters which have adorned the hallways since the 1960s.

The hotel is run by the Doss family - largely by two brothers, Wasfi and Wafiq, and their sister Marileez.

"I remember these very chic cafes," said Marileez. "Downtown Cairo was the place to be seen. Everyone dressed up - I was still a young girl, but I remember that I felt so proud in my little dress and white socks.

"My parents would sit in the open-air cafes drinking a glass of wine or a glass of Ricard. It was all so very sophisticated."

"This area was full of clubs and cabarets," said Wafiq. "The Opera was just around the corner. This was very much the place to be seen.

"But most of these places have since disappeared, particularly those that faced out on to the street - people didn't want to see that any more."

City reinvented

The Sharezad club has survived the cull, but this belly-dancing venue is a far cry from its glorious heyday.

Inside there are heavy red velvet curtains and on the walls the photos of the some of the world's best belly-dancers, who once came here to shake their stuff.

Max Rodenbeck, journalist and author of Cairo, the City Victorious, says belly-dancing has faded out in the last 10 years.

"It has really suffered from the wave of conservatism that has passed over this place," Mr Rodenbeck says.

"You no longer go out to a nightclub and sit with your friends, put a bottle of whisky on the table and smoke lots of cigarettes. That's not what people do any more.

"In a way downtown Cairo has degentrified... but then if you look back at the long, long history of Cairo, you see that it is always reinventing itself.

"It's a cyclical pattern, where the rich have always moved to new places, somewhere fancier, abandoning whatever is old. If you unpack the city you will find one district after another that used to be fashionable."

Another writer who looks back with fondness on the Cairo of old is the author of the best-selling novel The Yacoubian Building.

Dr Alaa al-Aswany blames the slow death of downtown Cairo on the encroachment of conservative Islam.

"From the beginning of the 1980s it became very hard, sometimes impossible, for the owner to pass on the liquor licence to a son or a new owner," he said.

"I think it is all part of the government's attempts to counteract the fanatics - but they are doing in the wrong way. The government's trying to make the point they are as religious as the fanatics. It is silly really."

Unstylish, free, but sad

The one-time cosmopolitan flair of downtown Cairo has largely disappeared. The adventurers moved on and the middle and upper classes moved to the suburbs.

The bars and nightclubs of the 1940s and 1950s are consigned to history, as Egypt turns its face from the pleasures - some might say the vices - of the West.

You have to work hard to find the bars that survive.

There are no shimmering lights. Most are tucked away from the street in nondescript buildings without any windows.

One such club is the Hawaii, where each night people sneak down a darkly lit alley to drink beer and listen to the local pub singer.

One of those who drops in from time to time is journalist Sameer Atrash.

"People here really like to let off steam and have fun," he said.

"It is not very stylish. But remember these people live with so many restrictions in their lives - in here there are no restrictions. Anything goes."

In truth, the Hawaii experience all felt rather seedy - and sad.

Source: BBC

Confronting Disability With Modern Dance

By Corey Kilgannon
Published: March 17, 2009

Not everyone is ready for this dance company that calls itself Gimp and its members with undeveloped or amputated limbs, and bodies beset with physical challenges.

Not everyone is ready for the way the muscular dancer throws around the tall, skinny guy with cerebral palsy like it’s pro wrestling, and not modern dance.

Not everyone is ready for the production’s spoken portion, which opens with that skinny guy, Lawrence Carter-Long, 42, telling the audience a joke that starts, “So, three cripples walk into a bar.” And there may be strange looks when he goes on to mimic what some audience members tell the dancers after they perform.

“I thought that you were going to be weird, but it’s really an opportunity, you know?” Mr. Carter-Long intones onstage. “Who would have expected this in a modern dance performance. I have to rethink this whole thing.”

There is a reason the Gimp dancers present the unexpected, onstage. Even the name Gimp is a meant to be an in-your-face confrontation of common notions of disability and dance. The troupe is performing Thursday through Saturday at the Abrons Arts Center, at the Henry Street Settlement in Manhattan.

“The goal is to honor each person’s really specific ways of moving, really specific, unique personalities,” said Heidi Latsky, the dancer and choreographer who founded Gimp.

Rather than work around these dancers’ particular limitations, she tries to find distinct abilities in their bodies and explore the artistic possibilities that can be had from these differences.

So the jaunty rhythm of Mr. Carter-Long’s offbeat stride is featured. So is the vertical linearity of Catherine Long — who was born without a left arm — when she stretches to the sky with her right arm, Statue of Liberty-style. And so is the intriguing asymmetry of Lezlie Frye 29, who has one arm shorter than the other and windmills both arms while bending at the waist, up and down.

Jeremy Alliger, a producer for Gimp, says that, far from being limited by these dancers, Ms. Latsky “is like an artist who has just had new colors added to the palette.”

After rehearsing the other day at a rehearsal studio in the Actors Temple on West 47th Street in Manhattan, Mr. Carter-Long sat with Ms. Latsky and her associate director, Jeffrey Freeze (the muscular dancer who tosses him around).

“This is no safe prearranged marriage of dance and disability,” Mr. Carter-Long said. “This is a collision. This is two worlds coming together that ain’t supposed to co-exist.”

Gimp members say that dance helps them with both physical control and expression, with their bodies. But also, performing in public helps them — and the audience — address issues dealing with staring or averting the eyes when encountering physically challenged people. Onstage, they are inviting the public to stare.

The first evening of Gimp is dedicated to “Wounded Warrior Project,” a nonprofit organization dedicated to raising awareness and enlisting the public’s aid for the needs of severely injured service men and women.

Ms. Latsky, who was with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane dance company, said she hopes to next work with veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Source: NYTimes

Nice Plié, Now Drop and Give Me 10

By GIA KOURLAS
Published: March 13, 2009

ETHAN STIEFEL is revered for his electrifying presence at American Ballet Theater, where he has been a principal dancer since 1997. In less ballet-centric circles around the country he may be better known as Cooper Nielson, the choreographer-dancer character from Nicholas Hytner’s 2000 film “Center Stage.” But in Winston-Salem, where he presides over the school of dance at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, he is known simply as the dean.

As such Mr. Stiefel may be glamorous, but he is no mere figurehead.

“He expects a lot out of us, and he holds us to very high standards, which makes us all do better,” Mac Hopper, a 17-year-old student at the school, said in a telephone interview. “It’s a lot stricter than it used to be, but it’s a good strict. If we forget a combination, we have to do 20 push-ups. It’s like tough love. It’s not that bad. You get used to it. And push-ups definitely help you remember.”

In “Ethan Stiefel and His Students,” presented on Sunday and Monday as part of the Works & Process series at the Guggenheim Museum, the results of that tough love will be on display in a selection of classical variations and contemporary work. The North Carolina school, a public conservatory, grants high school diplomas and undergraduate and graduate degrees. Its dance division has produced many accomplished figures, including Gillian Murphy, who is also a principal at American Ballet Theater and Mr. Stiefel’s companion.

For Mr. Stiefel training is about more than perfecting steps or even transcending the limits of the human body. At the school he has formulated a set of eight initiatives. Inspired by the principles of many martial arts, the list concludes, “We will work toward becoming great dancers, while understanding that being a good person is the true goal.”

But Mr. Stiefel is by no means sappy. In keeping with corrective push-ups and a strictly enforced dress code, he has, in his own words, stressed “the sense of perspective and privilege to participate in this art form.”

Now 36, having had four knee operations in the last two and a half years, he sees the initiatives as a way to reinforce a sense of grit and honor in the consciousness of young dancers. “Pushing my students is not without reason,” he said in a telephone interview last month. “I’m trying to wake up their intellect and intuition as much as the body.”

Throughout his career Mr. Stiefel has worked tirelessly to promote classical ballet to a younger generation, as with his participation in “Center Stage.” (He is also in the sequel, “Center Stage: Turn It Up,” which was released on DVD in January by Sony Pictures.) “Whenever you have a chance to represent your art form in a way that may be seen by more people,” he said, “I see it as an opportunity.”



In 2006 Mr. Stiefel abandoned his efforts to develop Ballet Pacifica, a Southern California company, for financial reasons. His summer training and performance program, Stiefel and Students, held at Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, is on hiatus. But in many ways all his side projects have led to his position at the School of the Arts, where, despite his title, he fancies himself more an artistic director.

Mr. Stiefel is the third dean of dance at the school, where his predecessors, dating to 1965, were Robert Lindgren and Susan McCullough. But unlike traditional artistic directors Mr. Stiefel is not aligned to a company aesthetic or repertory.

“I’m looking to create the total and complete dancer,” he said. To do so he has instituted formal acting training, mime and music instruction and a men’s training camp, as well as hired teachers like Diego Schoch in the contemporary division and Nigel Burley in ballet.

“I’m personally invested in the male technique,” he said. “How do we offer something different, not to be different but to be progressive? Since we have a campus and outdoor space, sometimes that means running hills or doing obstacle courses and agility drills for cardio and stamina work.”

He has also introduced workshops in musical theater and karate. “A fifth-level black belt came in for two weeks and showed the students a different way of approaching movement,” he said. The experience prompted one student, Cody Hayman, 17, to initiate a Facebook group called “My Dean Can Break Wooden Boards With His Bare Fists, Can Yours?” Along with his students Mr. Stiefel took part in the workshop.

“We thought it was kind of fun that not only is he Ethan Stiefel, but he’s out there doing karate with everyone,” Mr. Hayman said. “We appreciated it. It was a great time, not necessarily a get-to-know-Ethan type of thing, but it was a good bonding experience.”

Asked about the Facebook page Mr. Stiefel reacted with surprise but confessed his prowess.

“Well, I broke a couple of boards in a demonstration,” he said. “It’s about obstacles. You have to keep challenging yourself, and I’m about leading by example. I don’t advocate anyone doing something that will unnecessarily injure them or is unhealthy, but if you just have a hangnail that’s bothering you? This is about letting people know what’s possible. And never giving up.”

Mr. Stiefel admitted that balancing his positions as dancer and dean has been a strain. After he interviewed for the job, he said, he withdrew his name from consideration because he wanted to focus on performing.

“The committee had unanimously decided that I was indeed the right person for the job despite my letter,” he said. “I kid you not, I think I said no seven or eight times.”

John Mauceri, the school’s chancellor, eventually wore him down. “I still had my doubts and reservations,” Mr. Stiefel said, “but I had to go for it.” Since he started at the school in August he has been away from the campus for three weeks, he estimates.

“You catch me at a time where I’m struggling, not just physically but mentally and emotionally,” he said. “But when I see the performances and what the students and faculty have been able to accomplish, it inspires me to keep it going. There wouldn’t be anything else, honestly, that I would be willing to sacrifice something as meaningful as my performing career for than this. So it’s not to say that there aren’t some costs, but I do it willingly.”

He works 12 to 14 hours a day, he said, teaching two classes and continuing his own training, among other things.

“I’m looking at some performances coming up, and I do have great concern,” he added. “People have spoken with me about this, and I suppose the original reason why I withdrew my name from consideration was because I knew this would be inevitable. I don’t know if it’s possible, truly. I really have to make myself do what my students are doing.”

In Mr. Stiefel’s world that adds up to more than long days. “I have to keep that individual discipline going to take class at 8:30 in the morning,” he said. “And everyone would probably agree that at this point in my career that’s a rough hour to get it on.”

Source: NYTimes

Gyrate Expectations

Moms-to-be give belly dancing a whirl for fitness and fun
By Lori Price of the Journal Sentinel
Posted: Sep. 9, 2008

In many ways, the belly-dancing class was exactly what you'd expect.

A professional belly dancer guided nine women in coin-fringed hip scarves through snaky, seductive motions: hip lifts, pelvic circles, a few shimmies.

Then Stefanie Masters, the instructor, made a suggestion that hinted at why this class was so different.

"If anyone is feeling (confident), you can lift your shirt up to see your belly," Masters said.

Silence. Only one woman tucked the hem of her shirt into its neckline to expose her pregnant belly.

The free class, held at Destination Maternity in Brookfield, is part of a national wave of women taking up belly dancing as a fun way to stay fit.

Hip-popping singer Shakira and increased access to world music have helped push belly dancing, which has roots in various ancient cultures, into mainstream circles. The home fitness market includes DVDs on belly dancing for pregnancy, and YouTube.com carries instructional videos on prenatal belly dancing.

Safe exercise

Belly-dance experts at area studios say some pregnant women are joining their non-prenatal classes. And they've noticed that women already in class are continuing after they become pregnant - something that once caused women to take a break from belly dancing.

Anywhere from five to 10 pregnant or postpartum women attend Masters' class each week. As a result, she and several other local teachers offer modified belly dance instruction for pregnant women: letting them dance in a chair, keeping activity at low-impact levels and eliminating spins and whirls.

Crystal Ruffin, an obstetrician / gynecologist with Froedtert and the Medical College of Wisconsin, said as long as a woman who is experiencing a normal pregnancy doesn't do any of the jerky movements or sudden motions in belly dance, it's a safe option.

Fitness in general is important for pregnant women, several doctors said.

"Exercise during pregnancy . . . does give a woman a better sense of self and helps them not gain so much weight or body fat," said Michelle Douglas, a doctor of osteopathic medicine with Wheaton Franciscan Medical Group.

"(It) can help with a lot of musculoskeletal pains women experience when they're pregnant, such as low back pain. And it can possibly give you an easier, shorter labor and less depression.

"If your body is more fit, your body will endure more and be able to bounce back."

Pregnant women who are looking for fun fitness options - as well as ways to make pregnancy, labor, delivery and recovery easier - are finding that belly dancing's sultry tools, well, deliver.

"It just sounded like an interesting way to exercise and move your body," said Marie Ponder, who's a little more than seven months pregnant with her first child. She attended Masters' class for the first time last week.

"There is walking and going to the gym and doing elliptical work, but that doesn't sound appealing at all when you're pregnant," said Ponder, 26. "I was curious to know what this would be like."

So, how was it?

"I loved it," she said. "It's funny, because you think of being pregnant as being swollen and big and you gain weight. But it actually makes you feel in touch with your body and makes you feel sexy."

Certainly, belly dancing's sensuous side can improve the moods of pregnant women, who often feel awkward in their growing, changing bodies. But it's the dance's key components - posture, breathing and focus - that make it a natural fit for pregnancy.

Traditional moves such as pelvic circles and figure eights strengthen abdominal muscles that are used in labor and delivery. Shimmies, another well-recognized move, have even been said to induce labor, Masters said.

"It tones all of your core muscles, and you actually use a lot of those muscles and the undulations we do in belly dance during labor and delivery," said Shaia Fahrid of Shaia Fahrid Egyptian Dance Studio and Productions.

Lidia Brown, 36, who attends Masters' class and gave birth to a daughter two months ago, said belly dancing made a difference in her nine-month term, labor and delivery.

Brown, who also has a son, said she experienced extreme back pain during both pregnancies. But after she started belly dancing in the seventh month of her last pregnancy, she noticed that the stretching and posture alignment tips she picked up in the classes helped to relieve the pain.

"My back would still hurt, but when I went to class, I wouldn't have the pain anymore, even if it was just for a couple of days after the class," she said.

And all she thought about during the birth of her daughter was breathing.

"Even the nurses were saying, 'Wow, you're breathing really well,' " recalled Brown, who used no pain medication during the birth. She believes all of it - breathing, stronger core muscles, increased energy level - led to a faster delivery. She pushed for 40 minutes to deliver her daughter, she said; it took three hours of pushing to deliver her son two years ago.

A shared experience

But belly dancing classes are not all about the physical, said Masters. The classes also help women connect with their unborn child, establish relationships with each other and reduce the self-conscious feelings some pregnant women say they experience.

"We're giving them a chance to come to the class and build a community," Masters said. "When we build a community, we're allowing them to be connected, and when they feel connected, they don't feel the negativity because they're joined by others who are experiencing what they are going through."

Source: Journal Sentinel Online

Around the world in 80 sways

Written by: Lina Das
Last updated at 8:00 PM on 27th September 2008

They've performed for crown princes and rock stars in a 'celebration of femininity and sensuality' that attracts dancers from 17 to 70. Meet the Bellydance Superstars who are back to shake up the UK.

A disused missile launch base overlooking Los Angeles is not the first place one would expect to find a troupe of exotically dressed beauties, but the Bellydance Superstars, currently pulling elegant shapes in front of a bemused mix of joggers, dogs and passers-by, have played to stranger audiences than this.


Petite Jamilla, a pretty 25-year-old, has done her time dancing in Turkish restaurants ('at times it was horrible – luckily my parents insisted on chaperoning me to every job'), while Bozenka, the dancer credited with honing the belly-dancing skills of hip-swivelling singer Shakira ('Every girl comes to me saying they want to dance like Shakira!'), performed for Hugh Hefner ('he was surrounded by beautiful women and I felt like I was part of some bizarre scene; I did my half hour and left').

Audiences, like family members, can't often be chosen. But in the case of the Bellydance Superstars, they are certainly expanding. The world's most famous belly-dancing troupe, they have performed to more than a million people since their inception six years ago.

Formed by Miles Copeland (the man who guided Sting's career for a quarter of a century), the group has taken a niche dance form and turned it into a worldwide business.

They have performed for luminaries as diverse as Prince Albert of Monaco and rock star Alice Cooper, and in a move akin to taking ice to the Eskimos, the troupe, consisting almost entirely of Americans, has even performed to rapturous applause in the Middle East.

This October sees them touring Britain – a country proving itself to be a surprising hotbed of belly-dance activity.

Recently, Cambridge graduate Emma Chapman made headlines when she decided to forgo her job as a research scientist to become a full-time belly dancer, and who can forget the look of rapture on Simon Cowell's face when contestant Sophie Mei got to last season's semi-final of Britain's Got Talent with her mesmerising belly-dance routine?


There are now more than 1,000 belly-dance classes dotted around the UK and what was once seen solely as a dance performed by largish ladies in restaurants of dubious repute is now viewed as a legitimate career.

None of this would have been possible without the canny guidance of 64-year-old Copeland, the troupe's manager.

'Initially, I got a lot of flak from the belly-dance community who were worried that it was all going to be about pretty young girls in revealing costumes. The way I see it, it's a celebration of femininity and sensuality; our audiences are roughly 70 per cent women to 30 per cent men.'

The girls themselves are at pains to stress that their performance is sensual rather than sexual.

Yes, the girls are young and pretty; yes, their costumes are cut to emphasise their feminine curves (low-cut bras and waist-revealing, floor-length skirts) and yes, the chaps around us are having trouble pulling themselves together, but it's hard to imagine any of these women allowing anyone to shovel notes into their bra straps (though, apparently, the correct etiquette for showing appreciation of a belly dancer is to sprinkle notes over her head).

RACHEL BRICE, MID-30S (left)
FORMER JOB Worked in a café
SHE SAYS 'I cried when I first saw belly-dancing 20 years ago because it was so moving. I learned the moves by buying all the tapes I could find and copying the movements frame by frame'

KAMI LIDDLE, 27 (right)
FORMER JOB Manager in charge of loading aircraft
SHE SAYS 'We'd just got back from Taiwan and there were queues around the block for our autographs. It was like Beatlemania!'

MORIA CHAPPELL, 29 (centre)
FORMER JOB Make-up artist
SHE SAYS 'For my costume I wear about 34 medallions, seven bangles, five rings and four necklaces. It takes me about two hours to get ready for every show and about 100 hours to create my costume.

Samantha Hasthorpe, 28, from Devon – the only Brit in the troupe – scoffs at the idea that the dance is a sexual one. 'It's not the kind of dance where you see us going up to guys and sitting on their knees, which is the image I'd had previously of belly dancing,' she says. 'We dance as a group, not solo, and we couldn't care less if anyone's watching us. I feel completely empowered when I'm performing and I'm definitely not pandering to anyone but myself.'

The girl power message is one articulated by all of the dancers. Bozenka, a half-Czech, half-Cuban dancer, holds workshops around the world.

'Lots of my students get into belly-dancing as a way of getting back their self-esteem,' she says.

'One had been abused as a young girl. She was painfully shy, and her aunt brought her to my classes to try to bring her out of herself. It took some time, but the process of rehearsing, putting on make-up and feeling comfortable with her body during the classes helped to bring her out of her shell.' Samantha tells a similar story.

'The reason my mum took me to my first belly-dancing class was because I had low self-esteem. I was 16 years old, moody and had no confidence in my looks. Belly-dancing helped change that. I still have moments of self-doubt, but I'm more comfortable with myself and at my happiest when up on stage.'

Another key to belly-dance's appeal is its accessibility. 'I have a 70-year-old grandmother in my class,' says Bozenka.

'She doesn't feel comfortable going to nightclubs any more, but in my class she is welcomed and respected by everybody. That's the great thing about belly-dance – you can be any age or any size. It doesn't matter what you look like.'

BOZENKA, 32 (pictured left)
FORMER JOB Preschool teacher
SHE SAYS 'A friend and I once danced at a party in the Bahamas where Sean Connery was a guest. My friend dragged him and his wife up on stage to dance with us and he was so cute. He kept laughing at the fact that he had two left feet'

SAMANTHA HASTHORPE, 28
FORMER JOB Hod carrier
SHE SAYS 'The guys I used to work with are pretty surprised I've gone from hod carrying to belly dancing, but they're going to come and see me on this tour. The money's not quite as good yet, but I still wouldn't give up dancing for anything'

PETITE JAMILLA, 25 (real name: Jessica Parrish)
FORMER JOB Belly dancing in restaurants
SHE SAYS 'I started belly dancing when I was three and my mum was doing it till she was 67. It's one of the few dances where a woman can celebrate her body at any age'

It is a message echoed by Copeland, who insists: 'If I found a 60-year-old woman who was as big as a house, but could walk on stage and be alluring and captivating, I'd have her on the show in a second.'

Sadly, that has yet to transpire. The troupe members range in age from 21 to 39, but although they are slim, they are far from skinny.

As the girls undulate and ripple to drummer Issam Houshan's hypnotic beats, I glimpse some reassuring folds of belly among the sequins. And therein lies the success not only of the troupe but also of the dance form.

'As a teenager, I needed a dance that appreciated my curves,' says Petite Jamilla. 'With belly-dancing, it doesn't matter what body shape you are – but I think it helps to have curves.'

However, belly-dancing can also help you lose weight (you can work off anything up to 300 calories with a vigorous shimmy). It also relieves stress and even premenstrual tension.

More importantly though, it enables like-minded women to get together for a bit of a laugh.

'I get letters from women all over America who have formed their own troupes,' says Copeland. 'It's exciting, a bit of risqué fun, and like rock'n'roll in the sense that you feel as if you can get up there and try it yourself.'

And that is precisely the charm of the Bellydance Superstars – a group of normal girls getting the chance to live out their dreams and earn good money (a top-notch Bellydance Superstar can make anything up to £65,000 a year through workshops and DVDs).

Copeland thinks of his dancers as a kind of healing balm, showing America that Middle Eastern culture is nothing to fear and showing the Middle East that women can and should be a force to be reckoned with.

With instructional DVDs, a perfume line and even a Middle East reality TV show in the pipeline, he is not a man with limited ambitions.

'The days when a belly dancer would wobble into a restaurant, do a ten-minute set, then sit around till the following weekend have long gone. I want my dancers to become world famous.'


The Bellydance Superstars will tour the UK from 19-30 October. See bellydancesuperstars.com.

Source: MailOnline

Hip Hop Grannies

A quirky look at the wonderful sporting habits of real Beijingers, in this case, some 70-year-old hip-hop dancing grannies.

American television correspondent and producer Adam Yamaguchi tries to pick up some hip hop dance moves from these ladies.

It's sport, not sex say Europe champion pole dancers

Published on Sat Sep 13, 2008 11:47am EDT
By Alexandra Hudson


AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - It was a busy time for pole dancers in Amsterdam at the weekend.

While the red light district's troupe were gyrating as usual on Friday night, a host of girls from Albania to Spain flew in to compete for the European pole dance championship title.

Wearing sportswear reminiscent of Olympic gymnasts rather than skimpy leotards, girls performed gravity-defying dance routines based around two 6-metre poles -- one rotating, one fixed.

"Everything which we do requires so much strength. You train your legs and your muscles. It has nothing to do with eroticism. You have no time to think of that!" said Jeannine Wikering, the 26-year-old competitor for Germany who came third.

"I think one day it should be an Olympic sport -- but that will take time. You would have to agree which moves on which to judge competitors, at the moment we all have such different routines," she added.

Galina Troschenko, a 36-year-old representing Spain, won the event judged by a panel of five with a virtuoso performance full of acrobatic feats.

"I've only been doing this for three years, but I suppose I have a background as a dancer," she said.

Enthusiasts say pole dancing has taken off in recent years, with a rising number of classes set up to show women how to pole dance safely -- without pulling muscles or falling from the top of the pole.

The 10 girls of different nationalities taking part had competed for the contest in their home countries and most donned tracksuits at the end, reinforcing the sporting image.

Kenneth Tao was in an audience of several hundred watching the event in a central Amsterdam night-club.

"I didn't see anything which I thought was erotic. It was gymnastic," he said.

"I was watching their choreography in particular."

Amsterdam is among many cities across Europe and the United States offering fitness classes incorporating pole dance inspired moves.

Women attending such classes are often advised to wear full makeup to boost their self-confidence, and businesses selling poles say they are frequently installed in bedrooms, showing pole dancing has not quite shed its image of sex and seduction.

(Additional reporting by Amsterdam bureau; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

© Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved

Source: Reuters

Science graduate gives up lab work for belly-dancing

By Neil Sears
Last updated at 7:14 PM on 18th August 2008

Armed with a degree from Cambridge University, Emma Chapman swiftly won a job as a scientist.

For four years she has been carrying out ground-breaking research into the structure of molecules in a bid to create new medicines.

But now she has decided to swap her lab coat for a sequined skirt and a new career as a belly-dancer.

And although she has taken a pay cut, Miss Chapman says she had no regrets about deserting her test tubes so she can wiggle her middle six nights a week.

Miss Chapman, who earned a 2:1 degree in Natural Sciences at Christ's College, Cambridge, said: 'Belly-dancing gives me the freedom to be who I want.

'It's just so much more enjoyable than being in the lab. I can't imagine going back to a nine-to-five job.'

Miss Chapman, 28, who lives in Cambridge, started belly-dancing in 1998 when she saw a class advertised and decided to give it a go.

The hobby soon became a passion, and after years of perfecting her technique she started teaching classes, which she found much more fun than her day job.

'A friend of mine who lived locally and taught classes was moving away and asked me to take over her teaching,' she said.

'I though I couldn't do both my lab job and the classes, so I ditched my full-time job. It was slightly scary because I had no idea if it would work, but it's been totally exhilarating.'

And although leaving her job in medicinal chemistry at leading pharmaceutical research company Cambridge Biotechnology has led to a fall in income, she says the personal benefits are huge.

Emma now teaches other aspiring dancers six nights a week and says she could not imagine returning to chemistry

Miss Chapman added: 'I love being able to run my own business and make my own decisions. I've got much more independence.

'I'm not the kind of person who likes being told what to do.'

Miss Chapman has been fully supported in her career change by her fiance, Dr Patrick Driscoll, 28, an auditor studying to become an accountant, and her father Malcolm Chapman, 60, a retired purchaser in the petrochemicals industry.

And no-one at her laboratory expressed any surprise about her decision to give it all up either.

'If they thought anything was funny about it they didn't say anything to my face,' said Miss Chapman.

'My dad is really proud that he has a daughter with her own business - he always shows my website to all his friends,' she said.

'And I'm sure some people thought I was mad doing this, but now my friends think it's really cool.'

Miss Chapman, who has more than 100 students, said belly-dancing has become hugely popular, and all her classes for September are already booked up.

She teaches private lessons at weekends in addition to her weeknight classes, and has to practise for at least one hour every day to keep her standards up.

But she does not miss science despite devoting eight years of her life to it.

'I am so much happier now,' she said. 'I did enjoy studying science at university but this is just so much more fun.'

And Miss Chapman said that while belly-dancing is not a difficult hobby to pick-up, perfecting the art can take time.

'All the movements are based on our bodies natural range of motion, so most people take to belly-dancing pretty quickly,' she said.

'But getting really good needs lots of effort and practice - which is why I have to practise every day.

'I really hope I can inspire more people to get involved with belly-dancing - it's such a brilliant skill to have.'

Emma spent four years studying at Christ's College and four years as a research scientist before setting up her own belly-dancing business. Here she is at her degree ceremony:

Miss Chapman spends most of her time as a belly dancer teaching - with ten lesson courses starting at £55 - but is a member of actors' union Equity and performs professionally too.

She is mainly influenced by the modern Egyptian style of belly-dance, but also enjoys creating dramatic dances that draw on Flamenco, Oriental and Gothic styles.

Next month she is due to appear at the Arts Depot in north London in a one-off show entitled Arabian Dance Theatre.

Miss Chapman earned between £20,000 and £30,000 as a scientist - and now earns less as a belly dancer.

'Scientists are not very well paid considering the amount of training they do,' she said. 'Belly dancers are even less well paid - but this career change wasn't about money.'

She added that although when she was working as a scientist she spent her evenings belly-dancing, now that she is a belly-dancer she does not conduct experiments in her spare time.

And she is not the first scientist to leave the laboratory for a profession requiring very different skills.

Four years ago molecular biologist Dr Karl Gensberg abandoned his post at Birmingham University to retrain as a plumber in a bid to double his annual salary of £23,000.

He said: 'I just thought "what am I doing?" My work is a combination of zero career structure, contractual abuse and pathetic pay, which is a pretty poor package.'

Source: Mail Online