How beautiful are we!

She was twenty, she was blonde, she had skin like a soft peach, a face to inspire poets and the sweetest of personalities. Anna gazed out at the world through clear, grey eyes, enhanced with expertly applied make up. Anna was beautiful

But Anna was fat.

Not to me, not to her friends, not to the others in the class. But in Anna’s mind, she was fat. When I looked at Anna I saw a glorious, sumptuous girl with dewy skin and plump arms like that of a baby. I confess at times I had an overwhelming desire to sink my teeth into those arms, they looked so succulent. But Anna wouldn’t have understood how much I loved the look of her. Because, like far too many women, Anna hated her body.

Despite being beautiful, Anna's perceived fatness defined her sense of self and stopped her doing the things a twenty year old should be doing. Dancing in nightclubs, lying in the sun on a foreign beach, wearing the latest fashions.

She came every week without fail, along with her friend Jess. Pretty, blonde, slimline Jess with the bubbly personality and the handsome boyfriend. The two of them were inseparable. I know it’s easy to categorise the friendship as the pretty one and the fat one, but I really don’t think it was like that. Because Anna honestly was beautiful. And gentle. And thoughtful. And oh, just the very best friend a girl could have.

She’d been coming to my classes for around a year. Always standing in the same place, gazing at me clear eyed, trying to replicate my moves. Sweetly thanking me after class, asking careful, thoughtful questions.

There was a time that neither of them had been around for a couple of weeks; but then they were back, same places as before. Happy, smiling, a little tanned, a lovely glow about the pair of them.

That night Anna hung back after class. Then came over to me, bright and bubbly and terribly excited about something. She wanted to tell me something wonderful, something so momentous and remarkable she just couldn’t keep it in. She wanted to tell me I’d changed her life.

“Charlotte!! We’ve been away on holiday and… and… I wore a bikini for the first time in my entire life!”

I know I’m an emotional person, but I’m crying right now as I remember that moment. Beautiful, sumptuous, gorgeous Anna confessed to me that until that holiday she’d never worn a sleeveless top. Never exposed her peachy arms outside of our classes. Kept herself hidden out of shame.

But, she said, since she’d been coming to my bellydance classes she’d realised gradually that yes, she was beautiful. That she didn’t need to be thin, she was lovely just as she was. She told me that recently she’d started to go clubbing with Jess wearing the latest fashions, rather than trying to cover herself up. And then, the biggest moment in her life she said, she bought a bikini to go away on holiday. And wore it on the beach. And felt proud of herself.

Time and time again women come up to me after class to tell me stories like this. How bellydance has helped them feel better about themselves, how they’ve learned to love their bodies, how they can now look at themselves in the mirror without fear.

One of the things people always ask when they phone about classes is what they should wear. I tell them to wear comfortable clothes they can move easily in and not to worry, they don’t have to show their belly. There’s always a laugh and a sigh of relief at that point. It’s what they’re most worried about - getting their bellies out in public. So they come along to class in baggy sweatpants and loose tops, well covered up, trying to hide at the back of the class, avoiding all sight of themselves in the mirrors.

Early on they buy themselves a coin hipscarf, then, as the months go on, the t-shirts get a bit shorter and the bellies start peeking out. The full midriff is usually out and proud by the intermediate class. And then the dressing up starts. The sparkly cropped tops, the rhinestoned classwear, the fancy tribal  pants - all wide legged swishyness and drapery. And I smile to myself, remembering how afraid they were when they started.

The thing is, I truly believe all women are beautiful in their own ways. When I look at my class I see a rich array of lovely women - tall, short, slim or voluptuous. Red heads and brunettes, pale skinned and dark, fine featured or generous. All of them have their own personal beauty.

One of the most remarkable memories I have of my first show (see story here) was of the conversations my husband Paul had as people were leaving. One after another, men came up to him and remarked on how beautiful those dancing women were. But each time they would confide to him that there was one dancer who was particularly lovely, one who stood out amongst all the rest.

And you know what? Each man would single out a different woman. And not only that, but every one of the women who danced in that show had someone who thought she was the most beautiful of all. When I think about it, it seems the most remarkable thing I can imagine. We were all ordinary women, with insecurities and bits we hated, but in those men’s eyes we were all beautiful and they loved us. And each one of us had someone thinking we were the loveliest of all.

Of course men love us! They love our soft skin and our soft flesh. And each man is attracted to something different. Some men love skinny women, some like us chubby. Some go for a nice big backside, others are attracted to large breasts. It’s we women that stress about our cellulite or our stretch marks, not them. Just as some of us are attracted to big chunky men, others to willowy artistic types, so men love women of all shapes and sizes. Sex, love and chemistry is what makes the world go round.

And now you know the truth - every single one of us has someone who thinks we’re hot.

You can be absolutely sure of that.

How I learned to bellydance. The shocking truth!

This post continues from the story told here.

I was 25, not long out of college and I’d fallen in love. With a foreign culture and with a dance that seemed made for my body.

As a girl I'd been ballet mad, spending my Saturdays at the Lister School of Dance, the rest of the time reading and dreaming about ballerinas. I remember my first ever ballet class, aged five. I remember the pride and excitement of my first pair of pointe shoes, and the pain of the blisters that followed. I would paint my toes with surgical spirit and wrap lamb’s wool around them in a vain attempt to stop the skin rubbing off, but I have very soft feet and nothing would work. I also have a long big toe which made pointe work difficult and I really struggled with getting up and staying on those poor skinned toes during pirouettes and fouettés.

However, these problems paled into insignificance when I reached adolescence and the terrible truth emerged. I had hips. Proper childbearing hips. A nice small waist yes, but that doesn’t count for much in western dance. No, the big problem was those hips.

All ballet girls hold fear in them as they approach adolescence. Because no matter how hard you train, how dedicated you are, there’s one thing you really can’t control and that’s your developing body. It let me down completely at the age of 14 when I contracted a bad case of glandular fever and was ill for months. Banned from dancing for a year, by the time I was back in class it was too late - my adult body was well on its way and I was never going to be a dancer. I was too tall, too wide hipped, too chunky.

But if you’re a dancer you dance. It’s just what you do. And I always held the dream that one day I’d find a dance that could accept my body. So I trained to be a teacher, with dance as my primary subject and later took daily jazz classes at London’s newly opened Pineapple Dance Centre; working the phones in a marketing research company to pay the bills.

And then, in an Arabic nightclub I saw my first bellydancer and I knew this was it. This was a dance that was made for hips! A dance that seemed to celebrate a woman’s body rather than wanting to starve it into submission. A dance that gloried in the sensuality and sexuality of the feminine form rather than trying to keep women as girl children, denying them breasts, bellies or hips.

I would beg my Libyan boyfriend to take me to those nightclubs, night after night. And I'd sit staring. Trying to analyse what the dancers were doing. How did they move in such a sensual way but not seem overtly sexual? Music videos and R&B dancing these days use highly sexualised moves, but bellydance doesn’t (or at least shouldn’t) pout or thrust, there’s something far more pure about it, almost innocent. It’s as if the dancer is just letting her body be taken by the music. 

At the end of the night I’d go back to my little flat in Clapham Junction and try to make the moves work on me. I’d stand in the middle of my room in the very early hours of the morning, shimmying and undulating. Then drop down to the carpeted floor to writhe and shiver like I’d seen that fiery Syrian dancer do just a few hours earlier.

Then I broke up with my boyfriend and I could no longer go to the nightclubs. The world of the Arabic nightclub was not one that Westerners ventured into alone and it was most certainly off limits to a young Western woman. I knew I had to find out more about bellydancing, but I had no idea how - in 1981 there were no bellydance teachers in London, no videos and certainly no internet.

It’s so easy to learn stuff today. Type bellydance into You Tube and you'll be presented with videos of dancers from every country in the world. A quick trawl of the internet and you’ll discover countless instructional DVDs and online courses, teaching you everything from absolute beginning moves through to the most complex specialist bellydance techniques. But when I started there was nothing. Even CDs hadn’t been invented!

I took a trip to the HMV record shop in London’s Oxford Street and there, in its then tiny World Music section, I found a single cassette tape. The Joy of Bellydance by George Abdo - a Lebanese singer living in America. With his long drooping moustache, sideburns, velvet bow tie and heavily frilled shirt, George Abdo was the very essence of 1970’s sexual allure. And the music, played by his band ‘The Flames of Araby’ was everything a young English girl wanted bellydance music to be. Exotic, sinuous, magical.

On the cover of the cassette a bellydancer, barely clad in skimpy chain-mail costume, posed dramatically, her nails long and silvery, eyes heavy with makeup. I dreamed of that dancer while George Abdo’s mellifluous voice transported me in my imagination to a perfumed tent in the desert. To be ravaged by a dark eyed sheik.

And then I found a book. A book on bellydancing. In a health food cafe in the scruffy south London suburb of Balham. I was riffling through the books on yoga and vegetarianism and there it was: How To Bellydance. I remember the moment I found it. Picked it up, flicked through it, saw the black and white line drawings. I couldn’t believe it! Beside myself with excitement I took it home and read it obsessively. I discovered the names of the moves I’d been trying to copy: figure of eight, snake arms, ribcage isolations. I learned how to do a bellyroll, how to do a backbend into a laydown. And how to use finger cymbals.

So yes, it's time to come clean. Time to admit the terrible truth. I might pride myself on my technique and my standards. Indeed, people tell me I'm one of the most respected bellydance teachers in the UK. And I'm proud to say that some of the best dancers in London come to my classes to learn from me.

But I can't deny it - I learned to bellydance from a book!

Sweat, struggle and wild imaginings!

I’m 54 years old. I’ve got arthritis in my knees, my toes, my right ankle and my spine. I currently have a torn cartilage in my left knee which is so painful it stops me sleeping at night. Yet later on today I’ll be leaping in the air, spinning like a top, then dropping to the floor, to roll over and then rise back up through an extended backbend.

I’ll be doing it vicariously of course. If I actually performed any of those feats right now, my torn cartilage would probably never recover. No, I’ll be doing it via five of the most exciting dancers I’ve ever worked with. Five young bellydance professionals who are giving me wings and enabling me to fly.

When I was younger I felt sure I could never teach dance - I thought I’d be insanely jealous of anyone who was better than me, or prettier, or more able to descend into the splits. I couldn’t imagine standing by and watching a lovely young woman dancing in my place, let alone helping her develop the ability to be better than I could ever be.

But the last twelve years have shown me how wrong I was. I’ve realised the intense pleasure of imparting knowledge; of seeing the joy and satisfaction women gain from moving to music; of helping bellydance students improve and become richer in their abilities; and now, of stretching excellent dancers further than they had ever expected to go.

I suppose I always had it in me. I have four siblings and although one of my brothers is older than me, I was very much the older sister. And as any big sister will know, younger siblings are terribly useful things - the ability to use them as actors in whatever game you wish to play goes some way towards compensating for all the responsibility that’s heaped on your shoulders throughout your childhood and teenage years.

My sister and younger brothers willingly played supporting roles in the plays of my childhood. Me as an eight year old blushing bride (my six year old brother as the groom, wearing an old raincoat, a flat cap and smoking a pipe.) Me as teacher, my three pupils sitting dutifully in front of me as I lectured them for hours. But most of all, me as director of countless musicals and plays which relatives were corralled into watching whenever they came to visit. When we knew a visit was forthcoming my siblings were expected to spend days rehearsing my vision for our latest show. They were remarkably dutiful and obliging so I got very used to the idea of expectant young faces looking up at me, awaiting instruction.

The girl guides were my next training ground. After a few years in the brownies and guides, I was made patrol leader (Chaffinch Patrol, 6th Cheltenham Girl Guides if you’re asking) and now had several teenagers under my command. They expected knots and flags; they got song and dance routines. The guide leader was a piano teacher and more accommodating of my artistic leanings than others might have been, but I blush when I think of those poor girls rehearsing Chattanooga Choo Choo week in and week out. Spending their precious evenings being bossed about by me as I tried to fashion non-dancing adolescents into a highly trained dance troupe.

So by rights I should always have been a dance teacher and choreographer/director. In fact, teaching is in my blood and I had grown up expecting to be a primary school teacher, like my mother. I went to an excellent teacher’s training college but it took just two weeks of teaching practice to make me realise I just wasn’t cut out for it. I was a truly dreadful school teacher - intimidated by the children, depressed by the surroundings. The tiny chairs, the smell of wax crayons, the chipped mugs in the staff room. My heart sank like a stone when I tried to picture myself there.

So I swapped my teaching degree for one in dance and decided I would be a dancer. The trouble was, I was never quite good enough or committed enough. A professional dancer needs to be practicing every single day. Nothing stands in the way of that practice, and nothing gives a dancer greater joy than performance. But both were a struggle for me. I have a fully equipped home dance studio these days but my computer is a far stronger pull than my ballet barre. Worse though, is the horrible truth that I hate performing.

That last fact will probably come as a surprise to many people, but performing makes me bad tempered and miserable. Not only that, but I have never experienced the fabled post-performance high; only an immediate, cruel, come down which can last for days. I don’t suffer from stage fright - I was pretty much brought up on stage (my first proper stage performance was at the age of eight) and when I’m on stage, walking through my choreography or standing waiting for the curtains to open, I feel like I’m at home. But the trouble is, I’m not as good a dancer as I want to be. I know I'm not and I never will be. Especially now I’m 54 years old with arthritic toes and knackered knees.

When I started bellydancing in 1981 there were no bellydance teachers in London. I learned by watching the dancers perform in the remarkable Arabic nightclubs of the time, going home to my little flat in Clapham Junction in the early hours of the morning and practicing, bleary eyed, until it was time to go off to work. In those days there was no concept of technique, it was just about trying to analyse how they did the moves and most of all, getting the feeling right. So, as a young performer my bellydance technique was very rough and ready. I would flit around the stage, shimmying and undulating and playing zills like a demon, but I didn’t really know what I was doing.

When I came back to it twenty years later everything had changed. The internet and videos had opened up an amazing world of bellydance and introduced us to the strong teaching technique of dancers from the US. I soaked up everything I could learn from workshops with visiting teachers and from the remarkable bellydance forum Bhuz.com.

But although I worked hard and despite having trained non-stop in dance from five to twenty-five, it was too late. By the time my bellydance technique was good enough for me to be up there with the very best of professional dancers world-wide, I was in my late forties and my body was letting me down badly. Twenty years of sitting at a computer desk had resulted in arthritis of my upper spine, the natural ageing process had stiffened my neck and all those early dance years had taken their toll on my knees and toes. The truth is I just can’t do the things a twenty year old can do. A backbend, head spin or big rippling undulation is actually not possible for me any more.

At times that’s been very hard to accept. It’s not just having to come to terms with the sight of my wrinkles on video footage of my dancing (we all have a fantasy image inside our heads of what our bellydancing self looks like - mine is 25 and gorgeous. Those videos lie I tell you!) No, the most difficult thing has been the fact that I have a incredibly strong idea of what I want my bellydance style to be. It’s thrilling and fabulous and unlike anything that has been done before. It’s just that my body won’t let me do it.

So that’s why I started to do the work I now do every Friday afternoon. In London’s Dance Works from 2pm until 6pm I work with five wonderful dancers who can realise my vision for me. I push them harder than they’ve been pushed before. Their bodies are young and strong and supple and I’m getting them to leap and spin; to drop into backbends and splits and become the fantasy bellydancers that have been populating my imagination for so long.

The unexpected result is that, over the past few months, I’ve felt as if I’m in some sort of a mania. Suddenly the half-formed ideas that have been floating around my imagination have flowered into vibrant life. And instead of seeing myself moving in my head, I’m visualising my dancers, who I know are able to do whatever I want and more. At times I’ve thought my head was about to burst with the noise and the images spinning around. Indeed, many nights I’ve been unable to sleep for the music and the pictures in my head. Then, in the morning, the first thing I see are more pictures, as my brain brings forward what it worked on when finally I slept.

It’s as if I’ve always been a choreographer but it’s all been bottled up inside me for fifty years and now it’s desperate to get out. And, far from being jealous of the abilities of my young company of dancers, I’m unbearably excited. My adrenaline is flowing right now as I think about the work we’ll be doing today. And while we’re working together I feel absolute joy. I know they feel the same way - last Friday was Good Friday and a holiday, but that wasn’t going to stop us. We were all there in the classroom working as hard as we could ever work.

I know that they hurt after our classes. I know that their bodies are sore and exhausted. But from what they tell me, they feel alive and deeply satisfied. That they are stretching themselves to the limits; that they are helping create something new and exciting; that they are pushing the boundaries of what our dance can be.

We’ll be premiering our work for the first time at Shimmy in the City in September - just one dance as a taster of what we can do. Raqia Hassan will be there and I can’t wait to talk to her about what it’s like to create a new style and have wonderful dancers executing it on your behalf. But mainly we’re working towards an exciting high profile show in January next year.

My five dancers will form the core of that show, which we hope will blow the audience away. My Project Lift Off girls will be dancing too - in three big group numbers. I just hope I can do them all justice with my choreography. I’m excited and I’m frightened in equal measure - I want so much and I really hope I can deliver the goods.

Oh, and I promise to spill the beans on who these wonderful dancers are very soon!

Remembering my first bellydance show

I walked into the long dressing room above the stage. All was colour and sparkle. Lightbulbs glowed around mirrors, glitter eyeshadow spilled across tables, sequinned bras hung from the backs of chairs. Half dressed, but full to the brim with uncontrollable excitement and fear, my girls primped and preened and yelped with laughter.

They turned and looked at me. And all talked at once. None of them had ever done anything like this before. The lightbulbs! The mirrors! The costumes! “Look Charlotte! Look! Look!!” I looked. And saw a room of excited women about to embark on something most people are truly terrified of - public performance.  But more than that, what I saw was a room full of women who were comfortable in their own skins.

Someone had brought along a bottle of vodka, someone else a phial of Bach Flower Rescue Remedy. And so, between them, they came up with what I still think is the perfect cocktail for pre-show nerves - Vodka and Rescue Remedy!

I had my own fears but mine were different from theirs. I knew we hadn’t managed to sell many tickets. We had lots of promises but little hard cash. I wasn’t worried about the money - the small Women’s Institute Hall hadn’t cost that much to hire. But I was worried about the atmosphere in the hall and, most of all, the disappointment for the girls if, after months of hard work, they came out on stage to find themselves performing to only a few people.

Two weeks earlier I had sat in the hall all alone and imagined rows and rows of seats facing the stage. In my imagination I saw twenty people huddled in coats. Sitting, chilly and miserable in the two front rows as my girls desperately tried to entertain them with their shimmies and eights and hip drops.

So I had determined to do something about the atmosphere at least. I decided to set the room out with round tables, cabaret-style, reasoning that it would make the hall seem fuller and the audience more relaxed. I bought candles and nuts and olives, Lea and Heather talked their husbands into running a bar.

The day before the show I had arrived in the hall to find a small group of my girls hard at work, carrying swathes of chiffon to make drapes for the back stage wall. An elderly man I’d never seen before was painting a beautiful oriental-shaped window looking out onto stars and minarets. “Who’s he?” I asked. “We don’t know! We just found him here and Shelley flirted with him like mad until he offered to paint some scenery for us.”

On the day of the show itself we rehearsed on stage until the last minute. Paul worked the sound, my nephew Alasdair the lighting. The bar was being prepared, the tables set. At 7pm I lit the candles, gave Paul and Alasdair a hug, then said an urgent internal prayer, before climbing the rickety stairs up to the dressing room.

And now we were close to the moment for me to go down to the stage and confront my own fears. Like many people I have a fear of failure. It’s mostly a fear of being shown up as a fool for thinking I can do something. And, like most people I also have an internal critic. Mine sits on my right shoulder and spends a lot of time pointing out my many shortcomings. That critic knows that one of my greatest fears is of publicly being seen to fail. It never ever actually stops me from doing anything, but whenever I push myself, I know that fear and doubt will be my constant companions.

The girls were excitedly buzzing around, squeezing into costumes, sharing makeup, posing for photographs, sneaking another Vodka snifter. Thrilled to be there, telling me how wonderful everything was. But inside my head I was as low as I could possibly be. Knowing that no-one was going to turn up. Wondering what on earth I was doing trying to put on a show with fifteen women who had never been on stage before and who had been bellydancing for less than a year. Knowing that I really wasn’t up to the job and never had been.

And then the sound of feet running up the stairs, a frantic knocking on the door.  Paul’s voice. “Can I come in?” A quick look round, everyone decent? I opened the door.

Paul burst into the room. “The hall’s full! We’re having to pass chairs over heads and tell people just to find anywhere they can to sit! You’re meant to be on in five minutes and they’re still queuing down the High Street! You’ve got a hit on your hands girls!!”

The excitement rose several notches. And as my fear abated, theirs lifted. “Oh my God, we’re going to go out on stage in front of hundreds of people!!”

I turned round to them, told them they were wonderful. They were my girls and they were gorgeous. Everyone would love them, they were going to be fabulous! And at that moment someone sprayed glitter up into the air. The girls looked upwards. And glitter rained gently down onto their glowing faces.

I don’t remember much of the actual show. But Shelley remembers standing in the wings waiting to go on stage and seeing a line of girls in the wings opposite; their costumes and excitement mirroring hers. I remember them all sitting around on the stage, playing finger cymbals as one by one they got up to dance short solo numbers within a bigger group dance.  I remember Louisa, blonde and dressed to kill in very little, burning up the stage as she danced a dramatic drum solo. 

And I remember Chantal. Not the Chantel who now teaches at Hipsinc. No, this first Chantal was the quietest, the shyest of all my students. A young woman with a dark beehive, milk white skin and dark eyes. Who hardly spoke a word in class but whom I had noticed as time had gone on and realised was a lovely dancer. I had asked her if she would dance a solo and very quietly she had agreed. I had taught her a gentle, fluid veil solo and now she danced. Softly, with reserve, but with such tenderness and beauty that every man in that hall fell in love with her.

I know the bar ran out of alcohol and the guys had to run out and buy more during the second half. And I know how many men made a point of saying to Paul that every single woman in that show was so beautiful. Which was when I realised that men don’t expect us to be supermodels. They love us for being women, with all our lovely soft flesh and our lumps and bumps and our imperfections.

I remember the applause from the audience that seemed to go on forever. And the wonderful bouquet of flowers they presented me with at the end of the show. I remember seeing the vicar in the audience, cheering his head off. And Chantal being dragged off into the night by her boyfriend; a wonderful Mona Lisa smile on her face, a look of lust on his. And I remember Lea calling out: “come on girls, let’s go and raise some more money - we’ll charge them a quid a shimmy!!” And seeing them in amongst the audience, laughing and shimmying and rattling the collection tins. As the bar ran out of alcohol once again and the audience refused to go home.

And finally I remember standing at the back of the hall, watching all the laughter and mayhem and joy. And thinking to myself. “This would make an amazing film.”

I never thought I'd be teaching cubs to bellydance!

Fifteen Cub Scouts, half of them autistic, all of them highly excited. And all swinging sticks around like mad helicopters. Not for the first time in my career as a bellydance teacher, I seriously questioned my own judgment.

My sister is Akela of her local Cub Scout pack and had asked me if I'd teach the Cubs some Egyptian-style dancing as part of their Faith badge. Bellydancing may be primarily a female dance form, but men are also keen dancers in Egypt. And in Luxor, near the Valley of the Kings, they are famous for dancing with big sticks in a stylised martial arts dance called Raqs Tahtib.

Teaching the Cubs how to do stick dancing had seemed like a good idea when she had first asked me - I thought the boys would appreciate a more masculine style of dance. So my husband visited the local wood merchants to buy lengths of wooden dowelling to cut to size and I choreographed a simple routine involving lots of mock fighting.

Ten minutes before I left on the day itself, my sister rang: "Just to confirm, we'll have around fifteen boys. Oh and by the way, seven of them are autistic or somewhere along the autistic spectrum."

Huh? Boys. Sticks. Fighting. Autistic spectrum. Help!

I'd better give you some context here. I'm childless. By choice. I trained to be a primary school teacher but gave up half way through because I realised I was useless with children. I've got a bit better since becoming an aunt but really, I don't do children.

And here I was, going off with armfuls of dowelling to teach 15 lively boys, half of whom had communication or behavioural problems, how to fight-dance with sticks.

My first contact with the Cubs was a little unnerving. A solemn boy marched up to me and demanded to know why I was wearing makeup. But my response that "I always do", seemed to be acceptable. And when they were all gathered together it was clear that for many of them, keeping their attention and channelling their energy was going to be quite a challenge.

My sister was brilliant with them though. She told them stupid jokes, bossed them about and managed to keep their focus on all things Egyptian rather than on beating each other up or racing around the room. And there was always the bellydancers time-honoured way of gaining attention - a zhagareet (high-pitched ululation) stopped them in their tracks most effectively!

It turned out to be a great day. The boys were certainly challenging, but they really did learn how to stick dance. Not brilliantly, but with bucketloads of enthusiasm.

There were particular areas of appeal: I had choreographed some sections of partner dancing where they would do some very stylized mock fighting. That went down particularly well, although as you can imagine, we had to calm them down a couple of times during practice sessions.

Then there was the salute. One of the characteristic things in this style of Egyptian dancing is to touch the hand to the forehead in a sort of salute. Of course this appealed enormously to the Cubs and one boy insisted on saluting through the whole dance - even when he had the stick in that hand!

And the autistic boys particularly enjoyed counting the beats in the music. As my sister pointed out - counting is a big thing with many autistic people and they loved the regularity and repetition of the beat threading through the music.

At the end of the afternoon the Cubs performed their stick dance to an audience of parents and siblings. As I stood at the back of the audience, discretely directing, I was overcome by the look of utter pride on the parents' faces.

I had thought I would be pleased just to get through the day without someone losing an eye. I didn't expect to be quite so moved by this funny little bunch of boys.

Unforseen circumstances

"Hello, my name's Amir Thaleb and I'm here to teach you how to dance Thaleb-style."

These were the words I was looking forward to hearing last weekend. But I hadn't expected them to be coming from my own mouth!

For years I have wanted to take a class with Argentinian-based dancer Amir Thaleb. With a strong ballet-influenced style and a classically-trained dancer's emphasis on strong technique, he has been a major influence on my own mentor, Aziza.

To my knowledge Amir Thaleb has never taught in the UK, so when bellydance festival, Jewel of Yorkshire (JoY) booked him to teach, I signed up immediately.

I was very excited at the prospect of learning from someone who not only dances in a style I am increasingly developing for myself, but who has an amazing dance school in Buenos Aires. Aziza teaches at his festival every year and tells incredible stories of the exacting standards expected of the students, and of massive workshops of 1,500 attendees!

I told my Thursday students I was travelling the following morning to Yorkshire to take workshops with this great teacher flying in from Argentina. To which they replied: 'Oh no he isn't!'

A volcano had just erupted in Iceland, sending a gigantic ash cloud over the UK and northern Europe. And all flights into and out of the UK had been cancelled!

The next morning I rang Mandy, the JoY festival organiser, to find out whether Amir Thaleb had arrived before the volcano had done its deed. She told me that he had left Argentina and was actually in the air as we spoke, but there was no knowing whether or where he would be able to land. She had two other international teachers booked. Both were currently stuck in Cairo, with no knowledge of whether they would be able to fly in at any time over the weekend.

For a festival organiser it was the stuff of nightmares. The workshops couldn't be cancelled, because the international teachers might manage to get there, at least on one of the days. And since they had contracts, they would expect to teach, and to be paid. So Mandy and her colleague, Chris, had to continue with the festival, asking local teachers to be prepared to cover if necessary, knowing that many people, like me, were coming specifically to take classes with international teachers and would be unhappy with local substitutes.

I offered to help in whatever way I could. And Mandy asked if I would perform in the show and be ready to teach if the international teachers were unable to get there.

For me it was a great opportunity to showcase myself in the north of England where I'm not well known. And to help out a fellow event organiser. On the downside, I was truly knackered after a hard few weeks and was worried about how well I would perform, both in the show and teaching - especially since I was unprepared for both!

It was a long, five and a half hours drive to Yorkshire and I arrived late in the evening, tired and worried I had done the wrong thing. But soon the bar filled up with bellydance friends from around the UK and I felt my energy lift.

One of the great things about working in a niche industry is that you make friends from far away, often online. Festivals and weekend workshops bring us all together and when we meet, we have our love of bellydance and many friends in common. So conversation flows easily and we are all relieved to be able to talk about our passion with people who share it.

And the festival itself was a delight. JoY is certainly well named! Set in a fabulously decorative  concert hall within a charming Victorian village on the Yorkshire moors, the central theatre was bright with sparkling bellydance bazaars and full of the warmth of women chatting with friends and revelling in a weekend dedicated to dance.

There was a certain amount of tension at first amongst people who clearly hadn't put two and two together - that closed airports mean international visitors can't arrive, even to teach bellydance workshops! But as the weekend went on, everyone relaxed, and the atmosphere that JoY is renowned for started to manifest itself.

That atmosphere was really lovely. I performed in the show to a fantastic reception - the warmth from the audience was palpable and extremely welcome, given that I had had so little time to prepare. And on the Sunday I was very amused to be teaching the very same workshop I had hoped to take!

I was so grateful to the workshop students. They were very accepting of me, gave me back so many smiles and worked really hard. Even though it was the last workshop of the weekend and they were probably exhausted.

I drove the five and a half hours back to Kent feeling relieved that I had been accepted by the delegates, and very pleased that I had decided to go to JoY despite the lack of international teachers. I really hope others felt the same. It's a truly lovely festival and the organisers are warm and generous people.

I'll certainly be going again.