BARNESTORMING
Dramacast

The Theory and Practice of Belly Dancing

TEXT EXCERPT (Full length - 20 minutes audio)

Slow eastern music and the sound of Alison dancing to it.

ALISON: Six Travelling Hip Rolls, for Figure Eights, four Camel Walks and repeat...I was just a ghost washing clothes till I took up belly-dancing. Mention belly-dancing and they all think of Greek restaurants, swirling skirts and pop-eyed Sultans. But all over the country women're signing up for belly-dancing classes in Y.M.C.A.'s recreation halls, Women's Guilds and Church social groups. I'm thirty-four years old. I've had two pregnancies and my stomach used to bulge like a football. Bellying got it back into shape, improved my posture, made my hips supple, tummy firm - no flab - and my circulation's one hundred per cent.

Socially I'm better too. When someone asks, 'What have you been doing?' Instead of mumbling 'Kids, house, same old thing,' I say, 'I've been belly-dancing.' Their mouths drop. People look at you with new interest. And it doesn't stop there, you can follow up with remarks about Middle Eastern culture and the rest. I've known women who went into belly-dancing for exercise and ended up experts on Etruscan tomb sculpture and Turkish cooking...Four Figure Eights, three Hip Circles - mustn't forget to make the Hip Circles large, come down on the right leg, up with the left hip into an up-and-down Figure Eight Snake...But belly-dancing's more than just exercise, it's an art. A marvellous physical and emotional experiece. It frees you from everyday. Your mind wanders across the world when you're dancing and the pavements disappear......

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Copyright Technofilm 1997