"Les demoiselles d´Avignon"

Pablo Picasso

MIRACLES.

One of the most exciting things about Teaching is that you always end up learning as much or more than your students.

I also believe that, when you work from your heart, another unexpected treasures and lessons come your way.

Celebrating the "Internacional Women´s Day" in Cairo with an Oriental Dance class was, to say the least, risky and kind of cocky. Egyptians are known for presuming all of them can play the "tabla" and dance so, who would come to an Oriental Dance class to learn what they PRESUME thay already know by heart?!

The POINT is: they have an idea - mostly based on prejudices and mentality blocks built upon WOMEN´s secondary role in society - of Oriental Dance. An "idea" of it. That doesn´t mean they can, actually, do it properly and know the meaning and purpose of it.

Teaching Oriental Dance to egyptian women - full of potential women eager to explore all that they are through Dance - goes beyond the simple teaching of a dance form. It is not just a matter of teaching them how to dance but, while you do it, you also REMIND them about:

***The origin of Oriental Dance, ritualistic and Divine as opposed to the anti-religious sight it has nowadays. Although actual egyptian society tries to mark this dance as ANTI-religious ("haram"), the truth is that no other dance is more RELIGIOUS than this. By "RELIGION", I mean the TRUE root of the word - RELIGARE=RECONNECT.

Through Oriental Dance, you RECONNECT your body with your mind, heart and soul. You RECONNECT yourself - ALL that you are, including the body which is approached as SACRED and not a SINFUL widl beast you should tame - with your own FEELING of DIVINITY, GOD, CREATION.

Turning this prejudice around is nothing short of REVOLUTIONARY and these incredible women are sharp as butcher´s knives. They FEEL the truth on the spot.*

****Then there is the TURNING INSIDE bonus. The idea that Oriental Dance - and Women´s bodies, generally speaking - are meant to be USED to please and serve men is completely inversed, once they start to learn Oriental Dance in the CORRECT way.

The point is not to give you some sassy, sexy movements to please your husband/boyfriend/lover/whatever*. The point is PLEASING yourself and DANCING for your own PRECIOUS self. By doing this, the focus of these beautiful ladies becomes THEMSELVES and not the seeking of approval from men or the attention catch through physical seduction.

***They become OWNERS of their own bodies, once they start learning the ABC of Oriental Dance. Once they realize ORIENTAL DANCE is a gift of themselves to themselves, then their relationship with their bodies change. They OWN, maybe for the first time, their bodies and stop seeing them as tools to fulfill the roles egyptian society has given them:

Wives and mothers. Besides those roles towards which I hold nothing against, they discover they are INDIVIDUALS with a LIFE of their own, independent of men, society and family ties.

It is wonderful to have a loving family, a beautiful man and your own children. What is NOT beautiful, to me, is to presume that is ALL that you ARE.

*** Women rediscover the LOVE for their bodies, creativity, pleasures, sensations, POWER.

Once you start teaching them Oriental Dance, they realize their bodies are a WORLD of possibilities from which they can take solutions, strenght, joy, wisdom and solace in times of struggle. Then their body goes from enemy they should cover and control and tool to please others to SACRED TEMPLE of BEAUTY and ENERGY that is worth for its own existence.

***By sharpening their ears towards the RICH* Oriental music, they develop the ability to LISTEN to their own heart beat, thoughts, wishes and dreams. We turn machines into HUMAN BEINGS, once more, by LEARNING this Dance*. Women´s bodies, mechanically used to fulfill tasks, become ALIVE, HONOURED, pampered to its core, RECOGNIZED as a source of an infinite amount of miracles.

*** Women get together and learn from each other, not seeing themselves as competition for the attention of men but as SISTERS who have so much to offer each other. Once you teach Oriental Dance to Egyptian - or any other - women, they start looking at themselves and her counterparts as LOVING, BEAUTIFUL creatures. Union, instead of separation. Friendship and true partnerships instead of envy and competitions that only weakens them. United Women are STRONG. Division brings weakness and that is pure mathematics, not just a bunch of ideas.

***When Women start DANCING as Human Beings with their own UNIQUE body shape, personality, soul, then they start LOVING themselves. Each Woman is a work of Art waiting to be discovered by its own master (herself). Oriental Dance allows them to FIND their own EXCLUSIVE CHARISMA and BEAUTY. If they hated their thighs or their arms or whatever women always find to hate in themselves, they start APPRECIATING everything they are as a personal work of Art.

What better gift them to LOVE YOURSELF? And, once you love yourself, it becomes harder and harder to let others hurt you, humiliate you or minimize you in any way.

Domestic violence, sexual harassment and other ways of castrating WOMEN´s existence are widespread in Egypt and all Arab countries. Part of this phenomenon comes from the lack of self-esteem of girls and women. While men are raised to see themselves as the most gorgeous kings of the Universe, women are told to be humble, bowing their heads and praying for some "good man" to find some interest in them. This results into adult MEN who are self-delluded - all of them presuming they are George Clooney at his best - and WOMEN who think very little of themselves and feel they have to struggle for men´s attention and approval.

What happens when you give a WOMEN the POWER of LOVING HERSELF and facing her own VALUE, for the first time in her life?!

***The EMPOWERMENT of the HIPS.

Naughty, delicious point as the hips are, specially in WOMEN, a house of CREATION, EMOTIONS and POSSIBILITIES. Feeling your hips, admiring them as the funny, sensitive and powerful creative tools they are is starting a FIRE no one will be able to control.

Inside the hips we have LIFE, literally. The uterus and all the sexual organs that allow birthing children, renovating ourselves everymonth (the purifying, lunar, SACRED menstruation cycles) are also a storage room for desires, passions, drive to succeed, originality, artistic and personal resources.

Once you crown your hips, you crown your WOMANHOOD.

Living and performing in Egypt has given me so much insight into the meaning and purpose of ORIENTAL DANCE.

As a performer, I discover what catches the AUDIENCE and brings them into my space. As an artist, I discover the DIVINE pleasure of dancing with egyptian musicians, for egyptian audiences.

As a teacher, the MISSION in Egypt is unexpectedly HUGE:

***To EMPOWER WOMEN in order for them to rescue their own TRUE Oriental Dance as well as rescuing themselves. No knight riding the white horse coming to save them. No rich husband choosing them for their beauty and morals.

THEY SAVE THEMSELVES by rescuing their own HUMANITY.

What higher mission that this could a simple, oh so simple - and disgraced!!! - dance long for???