Why (s)?

Life is full of questions and not many answers.

If you've lived quite a while (quality wise, not necessarily quantity), you may know, by now, that non-sense seems to be everywhere and there is not one single logic but many.

Looking at the picture of this tree I cannot stop but wonder WHY Dance - in particular, Oriental Dance - is still seen as a minor form of cheap entertainment or a sin against God (and notice that Muslims are not the only ones making this assumption). If Nature and the Universe themselves are nothing but an eternal cycle of DANCE/MOVEMENT, if Dance comes from that sacred place where Human Beings try to re-connect with their DIVINE essence, then WHY (oh, the WHY(s)!!!) ignorance, prejudice, repression and stupidty still prevail over ART and the recognition of Dance's DIVINE root???

As I live, experience and learn, my questions multiply. Not only about DANCE but about everything. Yeah, it is a cliché but a right on the spot one: the more you KNOW, the less you know.

When I look at some of my old dance performance videos I have to blush. Some of these videos are bad. Oh, man...I mean: BAD. I thought I KNEW, while I was still struggling to KNOW. I was still so fresh and eager to do things, to challenge a system that told me I COULD NOT do it unless I surrendered and left my dignity in the garbadge can.

I can even see all the stages of my performing short, yet intense career as faithful mirrors of who I was and who I became. My LIFE is illustrated in each phase of my DANCE and it is clear to me the times when I was dancing over joyed, over pained, performing on a daily basis with men chasing me and harassing me in every possible way, the times when I was performing under hard stress due to personal dramas (including ex boyfriend trying to kill me under the aproving eye of police men after he discovered I had fell in love with another man after we separated). Going to work with security on my lap in order not to be bothered by him or other men who thought they had the right to own me, also the times when I was so happy that my heart wouldn t fit inside my chest...All that and more is documented in my dance videos, from different phases.

Now I have to cut myself some slack! In 5 years of lonely struggle and success that came exclusively from my talent and efforts, managing my orchestra and work by myself with egyptian dance "stars" trying to cut my legs so that I wouldn t be able to be in the market, competing with them, I GREW so MUCH. As a person, as a dancer. As an ARTIST. As a SOUL.

I do KNOW my territory now. I DO KNOW my DANCE, Oriental Dance. Cause I learnt it with my blood, my sweat, my understanding, my realities, my experiences. No one really explained it to me, I had to RE-DISCOVER it and damn, I did!

My DANCE, today, reflects all I know but, most of all, all I don't know and who I became.

I would not change a single thing. Not the HAPPY moments, not the TRAGIC moments. Yet another cliché but they made me who I am TODAY and, for that, I am grateful and deeply proud.