Τό γυναικεῖον τῆς Ὑπατίας - An Áit Bhanda na Hypatia - Hypatia's Gynaeceum

Romka', as they do every year at this event, performed their unquiet unique innovative postmodern punk/Goth way of taking belly dance to a whole other level. This year they started going into the audience and pulling people onto the dance floor to try and match their hip undulations and bosom shimmies. Soon it became a free for all rushing to the dance floor.

I waited for one of the Romka' women to pull me up from my chair... as I hit the dance floor I busted some very basic Belly Dance 101 moves. Her expression showed astonishment as she exclaimed "Oh my, you dance so well!" Well, she was being generous. But with the encouragement I managed to match her shimmy for shimmy. She used easy techniques for me to follow along with, not her advanced level of creative synchronized choreography.

Could it really be so surprising they would find belly dancers at this event they've gotten to know so well? There were dozens of fellow amateur belly dancers undulating in our midst. I didn't find out that irenejericho was across the room from Diana and me until later. Each of us was surprised to see the other there. Or I would have totally reprised the belly dance class we took together a few years ago. I bet Irene remembers she and I were the only two good students there.

This evening we went to see this Egyptian movie, دنيا Dunia, at the DC Muslim Film Festival (followed by a live belly dance performance by Katarina Gala). Directed by Jocelyne Saab and starring beautiful Hanan Turk, Dunia is a major achievement of Arab women's cinema, stunningly visual and carrying a powerful meaning.

Dance.
Poetry.
Sensuality and desire.

The film, very rich in symbolism, explores how these themes come together in a woman's life. Dunia is a university student taking courses in poetry, and also a promising belly dancer, about to enter a dance competition. Her mother had been a star of belly dance, who was referred to in Arabic respectfully as fannān: an artist. She is studying with the same dance teacher who had taught her mother, and while revering the mother's accomplishments in dance, he urges Dunia to release her potential and stop imitating her mother, to find her own self in the dance.

But something is blocking her from dancing fully: she is a stranger to her own body. She lives only in her head, while her body remains unknown to her. She has never even seen herself naked. When she feels threatened, she curls up into a ball as a defense. She needs to overcome the inhibition of her sensuality to be able to dance with her whole being. This problem is tied into the whole issue of eroticism versus puritanical censorship in Arab culture, especially in poetry. Women's bodies are the real battleground between sensuality and the fear of it in the private sphere, while in the public sphere this battle is fought over literature. The film's genius is to intimately unite the two.
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Sunday afternoon, I got with my circle sisters for a Dianic Yule. One of the presents handed out was Willendorf magnets. After I got home in a rainstorm, I stayed up all night translating a legal document. Monday night I went to Drum Lady's house for a drum jam. I saw two or three other people I knew already. There were also some people from the Rhythm Workers Union. We spent most of the evening drumming. It was the first New Year's Eve party I had been to in 23 years. It was not a kissing party, we mostly drummed at midnight, which is when the belly dancing began. Kristen and Cherie, another woman I know from the Guerrilla Poetry performances, changed into long colorful broomstick skirts and belly danced, showing a mastery of fast hip shimmy. I joined in the dance but have not perfected that technique yet. They said they learned it in a class somewhere. The tempo of the drum rhythms was way faster than the rhythms used in belly dance, so they sped it up accordingly. Kristen had asked us to bring ideas for saving energy in the coming year, and provided posterboard for us all to write our ideas on. Shortly before midnight, Kristen had us all circle together, she passed around fresh pineapple pieces, everyone took one and said something about how they want to live in the new year. We practiced meditating a little with ujjayi breathing and then went back to drumming, and we drummed in the new year. I may be shy and not be the best at socializing, but joining in a drum jam, I'm in my element.

The Open Hearth Foundation sponsors monthly Pagan Band Jams - free live music - usually one band at a time, but this time Shea went all out and put together a veritable Witchapalooza on Saturday at College Perk in College Park, MD. Fourteen hours of music. Bands who tour the Pagan Pride Day circuit up and down the East Coast got like an extra PPD this year, and this time, as the saying goes, it's all about the music. The lineup was: Claire, Mark Sylvester, Lauren Kendall, Kat Devlin, Scott Helland & The Traveling Band of Gypsy Nomads, DragonSong, Cassandra Syndrome, KIVA.

I missed the first two and the last one (being too tired out to stay there until 1 a.m.), and heard everyone in between. I got there in time to hear and belly dance to Lauren Kendall up from Richmond - I first saw her there at a PBJ last year. She plays piano and cello and sings, all 3 at once, accompanied by Blake Methena, her husband and dumbek drummer. She has two CDs out, go see her if you can, she travels up here to play several times a year. After her set she invited me to go shopping with her because there were lots of vendors out there. I got a gorgeous purple/blue/green/gray silk skirt from Vixenvisions, made of puckered silk so that Lauren liked how it clung and flattered my curves, light and airy like wearing nothing. :) It was affordable too. I also got beautiful handmade iridescent purple/black glass earrings made by Tina Van Pelt.

More friends I saw there included emcic, enlightened77, humanpacifier & idragosani, irenejericho & revelrain, ninthraven, odilla, quedishtu, and seer_eridanus. I was glad I finally got to talk with humanpacifier and make friends with her.

It was a pleasant hot afternoon drinking ice tea hanging out with Irene and the gang, occasionally dancing, mostly chilling. First time I'd seen Jay in a while--he has trimmed his hair moderately short and now looks more handsome than ever. The service at College Perk was really awesome, such hard working courteous people. Go give that place your business, they provide a lot to the community, they're good folks, and it's just a cool place to hang out. Irene told me Esoterica will have a new belly dance class soon, which was welcome news, I took a class with her there a couple years ago.

The next performance was Kat Devlin down from Brooklyn, NY, whose music moved me deeply. Just 1 woman+1 acoustic guitar. Her voice really is "pitch perfect" as her web site says. By the time she got to the first chorus in her passionate lesbian song "Touch of a Girl" I knew I was going to buy her CD. She had been added at the last minute, and I felt lucky to have found out about her. Hope she comes back around here soon. During Scott Helland's set, Samantha passed out percussion instruments into the audience for one song, and invited me to play her djembe. As a djembe lover, I was deeply honored. When they played percussion duets, they reminded me strongly of taiko drumming. When Samantha sang in French, I translated for Irene. Dragonsong's music got me dancing to "Mountain Song", couldn't resist.

But I saved my main dancing energy for the mighty music of Cassandra Syndrome. (Wikipedia: "The Cassandra Syndrome is a term applied to those whose predictions of doom are initially dismissed, but later turn out to be correct.") When Irene explained the band's name from the stage, and why they write dark songs of impending catastrophe, she added "We don't like the government." Big applause from everyone. Look what you done started, Dixie Chicks!

The band, with Jay on a state of the art electronic Zendrum, plays their dark melodic heavy metal riffs impeccably tight and crisp--you can tell they've rehearsed the holy living hell out of them. With this band Irene got a chance to unleash her classically trained operatic soprano. MUST BE HEARD LIVE TO BE BELIEVED. The dramatic and heartfelt intensity of the music is well served by their talent. Irene introduced me to her Mom, who was there to hear her perform for the first time. I thanked her for Irene's existence, and for bringing her up singing. I had known for years that Irene and Jay were talented, but the first time this fluff bunny heard Cassandra Syndrome, I was seriously blown away. A large group of kids came in off the street to hear them and sat down to listen. They made lots of new fans that night.

Whew, that was fun--let's do it again sometime!

Belly Dancer

Can these movements which move themselves
be the substance of my attraction?
Where does this thin green silk come from that covers my body?
Surely any woman wearing such fabrics
would move her body just to feel them touching every part of her.

Yet most of the women frown, or look away, or laugh stiffly.
They are afraid of these materials and these movements in some way.
The psychologists would say they are afraid of themselves, somehow.
Perhaps awakening too much desire—
that their men could never satisfy?

So they keep themselves laced and buttoned and made up
in hopes that the framework will keep them stiff enough not to feel
the whole register.
In hopes that they will not have to experience that unquenchable desire for
rhythm and contact.

If a snake glided across this floor
most of them would faint or shrink away.
Yet that movement could be their own.
That smooth movement frightens them—
awakening ancestors and relatives to the tips of the arms and toes.

So my bare feet
and my thin green silks
my bells and finger cymbals
offend them—frighten their old-young bodies.
While the men simper and leer—
glad for the vicarious experience and exercise.
They do not realize how I scorn them:
or how I dance for their frightened,
unawakened, sweet
women.

Diane Wakoski

I love Reclaiming for being such a DIY Craft. Since I've never done things the way everyone else expects them to be done--I figure out my own approaches, even when this brings me funny looks and incomprehension from others--Reclaiming is perfect for me, since everyone brings their individual DIY Craft to the collective, and all are accepted and cherished, all contributions to the whole are welcomed.

So I'm not sure how others in Reclaiming find the ways to Witch their lives--it would be fascinating to start a dialogue amongst ourselves on this--but here is what I've figured out on my own--wondering if it matches up with other Witches' experiences at any point...

When I want to Witch something, I turn on my magick sensors and go about the activity, while noticing the way the energy patterns. Once I feel an energy pattern, I get a sense of how to work it in with magick patterns that I know how to handle.

I'm thinking of drum circles -- there's what I call a "groove," an essential indwelling pulse like the root of all the rhythms -- and when the drummers in the ensemble all tap into the same groove at once, they can do no wrong. The rhythms that synch with the groove arise as if by magick. So I run my magick energy like that. In any activity, find the underlying groove where the magick flows like a stream of power and intelligence. Breathe from there, move from there. Belly dancing, speaking of drumming and rhythm, is really my best magick stream of all, since it combines energy, aesthetics, rhythm, and the catlike slinky erotic sensuousness of my body. My body is the body of the Goddess.

In sex magick, especially, because it's so rhythmic just like drumming! :) In this case, think of a drum jam for two. A drum duet. ;)

Moon in Scorpio today. MMM, mmm

It has been about two weeks since I was at camp... two weeks ago I bellydanced to the accompaniment of a live dumbek ensemble and guitared for the talent show. I was one-fifth of our pickup bellydance team that pulled in $220 cash which was shoved into our costumes by eager Witch hands. How sweet to feel that I actually accomplished something for the good of my community... by undulating my hips. :) It was my first belly dance performance ever, and was dedicated to my first teacher LVG, whose Central Asian Dance Camp I would have wanted to attend, but it was the same week back in Maryland.

But my guitaring in the talent show was better than my dancing. Several in the audience expressed astonishment and admiration that I had played "Mood for a Day" by Yes... and one person even made the bowing-with-both-palms-held-out gesture toward me for having done that.

It's a cool piece of music, I just wish Steve Howe had given it a less dorky title. I should retitle it. How about "Therese," after my cute cousin? I once named a cool guitar solo I improvised after my cousin Antonella in Sicily.

Just today I read Margaret Cho's account of how she got hooked on belly dance. She is right on, I feel the same feelings she expressed so well... and she was with me, in the form of that book I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight, throughout the camp and was invoked by Queers for her powerful voice.

"The audience was practically all women. I had this notion that belly dance was strictly for men, like strippers, but I couldn't have been more wrong. There were women of all ages, all shapes and sizes, dancing for each other and having a blast. I've never seen a more accepting environment for women's bodies. It blew my mind. Here, what is considered excess flesh by mainstream Hollywood standards is considered beautiful. In fact it's better to have some weight on you if you want to shimmy properly. Women were moving their bellies, popping them out, popping them back in. Undulating. I had never seen women celebrate their stomachs before, ever. The stomach had always been a shameful thing for me, the dead giveaway that I was never going to be the ethereal love object, the chic and popular model, the movie star's girlfriend, but merely a fat and unchangeable human being. In ballet class, I was always admonished for not pulling my stomach in tight enough. In the gym, I was screamed at because I could never do enough crunches. I didn't even like to drink water because it made my belly bloat. These are the reasons I just stopped working out. I couldn't take all the dehydration and self-hatred. At the Cairo Carnival, my belly was free. Cairo—a name that conjures up the desert—ironically is the one place I finally felt safe to drink. Drink in the joy of women enjoying their bodies, loving each other and themselves."

(Beautiful!)

"When you go see a belly dance show, if you look around you see that a lot of the women are crying. Tears for a million different reasons. Because they can't believe how beautiful the dancer is; because that beauty is something that is reachable, accessible, not something that is elusive and distant."

:) I just love Margaret Cho.

I was going to try writing about the Witchcamp, but it was so much, so very much packed into one week, and altogether a bigger experience than I can encompass in a journal entry. One thing about camp felt like it wanted to be told. I wonder why this of all things. The last day of path was for Spirit, and homework was to come up with a prayer for my desire. It could have been words, it could have been dance or an art installation or anything. Most people prayed in words that day. Many people, as always, came up with amazingly fresh and original creative expressions.

I surprised myself. I got up in front of everyone and prayed as I do spontaneously when I'm all alone right from my heart. I'm ordinarily too guarded and shy to even do formal prayer in front of anyone, but here I was giving a genuine example of my intimate prayer in front of people. I never would have believed myself capable of that. It shows how radically living and doing magick in that sacred space in the forested hills can open up a person that much. Radically wide open—and with no fear. Is this anything less than a human miracle? Something "reachable, accessible, not something that is elusive and distant."

Belly dance is my primary connection to my own magick. This became clear at camp. If you know me, my hips want to start moving in sinuous curves at the beat of a drum. As a Reclaiming Intensive, it lived up to its name for me. I'm glad I went there and grooved with a lot of good folks.