It was about nine o’clock before the belly dancer came out. We had listened to a half an hour of the band warming up, and another forty-five minutes of their introductory numbers. She swept down to the floor all the way from some distant back room behind the raised bar, her bare feet silent against the floor, the sound of her washed away by the chatter of the audience.
The belly dancer was all gold and blue. Her hair was nearly waist-long and unnaturally honey-blonde; her brassiere was shaped in form of the wing (on the left breast) and the curling head (on the right breast) of a swan; her hips were hugged by blue silk and brassy bells and jangles. She wound a vast, bright yellow scarf around her head, shoulders and back. Her lips were painted a vivid red, and her smile was appropriately mischievous. She strutted out a bare foot as the band leader introduced her, wagged her bare midriff, and smirked a little.
This was my sister’s idea, to get us all together at a little restaurant in Greektown. They had a set menu and took reservations, the show started fairly early for a Sunday night, and we could all get there in good time. She and my girlfriend had just done an afternoon’s worth of belly dancing lessons not long ago, and soon both of them would be murmuring to me, “What she’s doing right now? With her shoulders, there? That’s very difficult,” or “They showed us how to do that, in class; I couldn’t, though.”
The food was good and the drinks were overwhelmingly strong, both positive points, but for me it was all about the adventure. The closest I’d ever been to a dancing woman involved a pole, extraordinarily loud music, and a stiff cover fee paid to a terrifying biker. I hoped this would be more wholesome.
After the warm applause, the band launched into their music, and the belly dancer began. She moved around her space on the floor as though she owned it, spun her scarf around and above and about her and peered out smiling underneath, moved her hips and shoulders and legs as though they were entirely under her command and not limbs indelibly bound together. I found myself grinning tightly, but only because I didn’t want to break out in the kind of enormous smile I get when I’m delighted — a manic display of teeth that puts people ill at ease, as though I’m either mentally disabled or planning their homicide.
Others were just as shy, though, and even though our seats on the floor — awkwardly and exclusively lit by spotlights, granting everyone in the restaurant a full and constant view of how we were eating dinner — were the closest to the action, people whole sections away were cautious. Before I could say to Tina, “She’s not going to go into the crowd and bring people out on the floor, is she?”, she had gone into the crowd and brought someone out on the floor with her.
She did it more than once, as she worked her way through the performance, each carefully timed. About mid-way through a number, after rumbling her hips majestically or something equally applause-worthy, she would move into the audience and pull someone out to dance. She’d show them one move at a time, doing it herself and expecting mimicry: rolling her hips thus, wagging her shoulders so, waving her arms in time, putting it all together. Every time the reaction from the participant was the same, too, a sequence of shyness, refusal, surrender, dance, and bashful pride at surviving.
My sister observed first that the volunteers were probably regulars, since the belly dancer knew where to find them and was very specific in choosing them. The result was the same, regardless: the rest of the crowd clapped, hooted and cheered happily, thrilled at the success and grateful that it wasn’t them who was chosen.
Not everyone was having a great time, of course. Directly across the floor from us was a guy who was so actively miserable that I swear he could’ve drained the color from whatever he touched. He put his eyes anywhere but on the dancer, staring mutely at the band or the wall or his drink or just off into space, as though the performance simply wasn’t happening. We theorized that he was a bouncer, though he seemed to have a girlfriend present; we wondered if he was angry about anything in particular, though his gloom seemed undirected. He just looked like he would have rather been anywhere else, on earth or in the universe, than where he was sitting right then. He stabbed sullenly at his souvlaki, chewed disconsolately on his pita, and bore his burden without grace.
Through the angry man’s despair, though, the rest of the place was having fun. The belly dancer had gotten up onto a pedestal, was timing the movements of her hips with the beats of the drums, was sweeping down now to do her final number and gather up the admiration of the crowd. As she swept away again, shooting across the floor and up the stairs and through the crowd and out of sight, the band opened the floor to anyone else who wanted to dance. I laughed, and wondered who would be brave enough to give it a go.
But as we collectively cleaned up our desserts, finished our drinks and waited for the bill, the floor filled up. One or two women trickled out at first, then a particularly bold man, and did their best with their waists and shoulders and hips. They were the kind of people who had all of those to spare, too, and were having fun using them — “I like the one with the great ass,” Tina noted to me, and I could only agree.
Soon there were more joining them, another couple of girls who were lean enough to slide through the crack of a door without opening it. They weren’t especially equipped with anything to swing and/or sway, but with enthusiasm they tried. Eventually the floor was packed, and I sat grinning at the contrast between the women who had curves and were using them, and the ones who didn’t and for once might have wished they had.
I couldn’t even bring myself to feel snide (which usually comes so easily to me), because everyone was enjoying themselves so much. Running taught me the term “body awareness”, but nothing had demonstrated it better than a forty minutes of a dance performance. There was no sleaziness or competition, just a group of women who really wanted to know how anyone could do that with her shoulders, or move that way with her waist, and then try it themselves.
I am probably not alone in this sentiment, but I’m glad to join it: The world needs more belly dancers. I cannot think how it would not be a happier place.