Restaurants and haflas. Two very different worlds

The last blog post I wrote - about my youthful bellygram career - resulted in a fascinating discussion on my Facebook page, in the course of which I mentioned that I increasingly feel uncomfortable about restaurant dancing. I'll explain more...

I think ours is a very schizophrenic dance form. Bellydancing exists, I would argue, in two very different worlds. On the one hand we have the world of dance classes and haflas. A primarily female world, it’s one where we learn about the fascinating dance and culture of the middle east. It's a world where it doesn’t matter what age or what dress size you are. Where women are encouraged and supported and recognised as beautiful and special.

In this world, haflas and showcases give us the opportunity to perform a wide variety of styles grouped under the general banner of bellydancing. We dance baladi, saidi, khaleeji, sharqi. We whip out a stick or a set of wings, set the audience alight with a drum solo, or move them to tears with an Om Khalsoum number. We experiment with fusion: tribal, gothic, hip hop or samba. Or keep it pure, with none so pure as Egyptian.

It’s wonderful participating in these events. Our audiences are wildly appreciative. They whoop and zhagareet and clap along at the drop of a hip. Forgiving us when we go wrong, not caring about our age or our stretch marks. Every clever belly trick, every quivering shimmy, is recognised and applauded. We are given space and time and attention.

Then there’s the other world. The world of the restaurant dancer. A world that (with a few notable exceptions) only the young, beautiful and slender may enter. A world where we have to dance whilst squeezing between tables, trying to avoid waiters and taking care not to step on broken glass or spilled humous. This is a world where the (mixed) audience cares not a jot for the authenticity of our performance, they just want to look at the pretty girl in the sparkly costume. Sadly, a few of them really wish we weren’t there and some just can’t bear to watch, especially when we get up close.

And, however appreciative the audience at a restaurant, in most cases we are never able to properly dance. There will only be space for a bit of undulating, a few isolations and pops and of course, some of our very best shimmying. Our job is to create a party atmosphere. A taste of the exotic. And, in most cases, to get up close and personal with the punters.

Maybe it’s my age, maybe it’s because I’ve just been around too long; but I find myself increasingly uncomfortable when I’m in a small space and a dancer’s naked flesh is very close. I don’t think I’m a prude and I love the sight of a beautiful body, male or female. But the tight layout of many restaurants means that at times I find my eyes just a bit too close to a bouncing pair of partially covered breasts for comfort. I know that many men really don’t know where to look when a bellydancer comes up to their table. And actually I understand how they feel. I can imagine that for some men it might sometimes feel a little too near to lap dancing.

I’m sure that one of the reasons bellydance isn’t taken seriously as an art form is that most people only see a bellydancer in a restaurant setting. Where she can’t dance properly and where the flesh on show is not only close, but is highlighted by the costuming and by those few movements we have at our disposal. A bellydance bra really pushes the breasts up high. And then we do a chest bump! What’s a man to think? That it’s art?

But! Restaurant bellydancing is great! People love it. Most diners in a Middle Eastern restaurant really enjoy seeing a bellydancer - she’s exotic, she’s lively and she lifts the atmosphere wonderfully. People often ring me to book my gorgeous colleague Chantel Phillips to dance at an event. “She’s amazing”, they say, “we saw her dance at a restaurant and she was incredible!”

Because, of course, restaurants not only offer bellydancers regular income, but they're also a public showcase. They are the only venues a professional bellydancer can perform for the general public and be paid too!

But we’re caught in a vicious circle. Our only public platform doesn’t enable us to dance properly. So we’re not taken seriously. Here in the West, no-one outside the world of haflas and monthly showcases sees our ‘real’ dancing, so no mainstream promoter is ever going to put on a bellydance show. And so the circle winds round and binds us in to the chest bumps and the belly pops and the association with pole dancing or worse.

I just wish that there were other opportunities for professional dancers to perform. In spaces where we can really stretch our legs and showcase our dance skills. And that's why all my energies are currently channelled into trying to create a new bellydance style for the big stage. A style to thrill the general public and keep them coming back for more. A style to capture the attention of journalists and mainstream promoters. A style with drama and excitement and big ideas. Bellydance for the future.

I’ve started work on my dream properly now. In January I started to develop my new way of dancing in my Project Lift Off classes in London. We used far more drama, more dynamic range, greater extension in our movements - leg kicks, jumps, dramatic floorwork. My Extreme Bellydance classes are part of it too, of experimenting with different ways of moving. Incorporating exciting footwork, jumps, leaps and spins. And the exploratory process will continue throughout the coming year - in all my classes in London and Croydon.

And, most excitingly, I’ve gathered together a small company of six superb full-time professional dancers who will be exploring the future with me. We start this Friday, working experimentally to create something that we hope will be really amazing. We have until September to create the style (when we will showcase it for the first time at Shimmy in the City). And we’re giving ourselves a year to create a show to thrill.

We première the show next January in London and we are beyond excited about it. We believe it’s the future. That we can move bellydance forward and create new opportunities for dancers and new experiences for audiences.

Whatever happens, it's the start of an exhilarating journey! Maybe to a different bellydance world...

Backbends and Bellygrams

There was only one place to hide - a narrow cupboard in the corner. The problem was that it had a slatted wooden door, so if I moved I’d be seen. It was cramped too, but I had no choice. I climbed in quickly and shut the door behind me before I could be discovered.

Then I heard voices. There were four of them. The boss (a man I had only seen once, but who, I could tell, was strong and powerful) and his three employees. The big man entered first, the others followed, quiet and subdued.

When the big man spoke he was clearly angry. His rage was controlled, held in check, but anyone could tell there was trouble ahead for his three shaken colleagues. He started to berate them. Told them how they’d messed up, how they’d lost him money and credibility. One was in hotter water than the others and, with a cold voice, the boss outlined how, while the target of his wrath had been away, the job had gone dreadfully, terribly wrong.

The man being accused was clearly shaken. It was sounding bad.

The big man’s invective was coming to a head. “To see what I mean, JUST LISTEN TO THIS!!!” He pressed a button. The room filled with bellydance music. I leapt out of the cupboard, headed for the man on the far left and started to gyrate and shimmy, before dropping down to the floor and writhing in front of the shocked employee.

It was the man's birthday. And I was the surprise. Thank goodness he was young or I think we could have been calling an ambulance!

The place was an advertising agency in Covent Garden, the year was 1982 and I’d been booked as a bellygram. Singing telegrams and strippergrams were all the rage at the time: out of work actors dressed as police officers, nuns or gorillas would appear out of the blue and proceed to sing or strip to embarrass a birthday boy or girl. As far as I knew, I was the only bellygram in London. I would climb on to my motorbike (dressed head to toe in black leather if you’re asking…) and ride off to a venue somewhere in London where I would find a place to change secretly. At the appointed time I’d burst into the restaurant or bar, place my Sony Walkman on the floor or table and proceed to dance and undulate around the victim. I did a mean backbend and some pretty sultry floor work in those days too.

I remember changing in a freezing outside toilet in a slightly dangerous looking pub in the Old Kent Road, directing the heat of the hand-dryer onto my icy body before parting the crowds in the public bar. I jumped up on tables in restaurants, shimmying my way through the plates and glasses. And I got up on the antique polished desk of the manager of The Who, went down into a backbend and laid myself out in front of him, while his laughing staff looked on.

Yesterday, on Facebook, someone asked me what I thought about bellydancers who advertise themselves as exotic dancers and perform in nightclubs alongside pole dancers or strippers.  The questioner pointed out that, by doing so, they are perpetuating the perception of bellydance as a sleazy activity, rather than a serious dance form. I think it’s a fascinating question and one that goes right to the heart of how bellydance is viewed.

These days most professional bellydancers want to be seen as serious dancers - as artists. They want people to understand that bellydance is an ancient dance form with its roots in the folk culture of the Middle East. That it's a richly textured and challenging dance which deserves to have a place alongside Western mainstream styles such as jazz or hip hop. And I’m one of them. I want bellydance to be appreciated by a far wider public as the beautiful, rich and fascinating dance form that it is. I want to hold my head up high amongst the ballet and West End dancers and choreographers and I want aspiring bellydance professionals to undergo the type of tough physical training that those dancers have always expected, so that we can be the very best performers possible.

So, in the light of the question I was asked yesterday, I look back at that 24 year old girl, undulating on the floor in front of a shocked advertising executive and I wonder what I think of her.

Well, firstly I have to say that I was just doing what I had seen Syrian and Palestinian dancers doing in the Arab nightclubs in London (see blog post here). In those performances there was a lot of jumping up in the air and dropping to the floor to shiver and undulate. And in front of a large crowd of Arab men too. Men who would most certainly have assumed those dancers were prostitutes.

Those of us who bellydance in the West have to accept that in the Arab world, bellydancers are considered to be prostitutes. And truthfully, many of them are. At the very least, they are behaving in a way that is far outside social norms. Bellydance has never been something that nice Arabic girls do in public. It’s true that Arab girls absolutely love to dance and will almost certainly dance at home with their female friends. But in public? No. If a Muslim woman dances in public in front of of a mixed audience she is believed to be the very worst kind of woman. And in countries like Egypt, professional bellydancers have to live with the shame of knowing that what they do is considered wicked by the majority of society.

So in trying to promote bellydance as a high art, we in the West are being revisionist. We are trying to create a bellydance culture that feels acceptable to us, that we can be proud of. There is nothing wrong with trying to change the way that bellydance is viewed, but we can’t hide from the fact that ‘exotic dancer’ is exactly what bellydancers traditionally were.

I also have to look back at my younger self and admit that I was fascinated by the sexual sub-culture of London. I was thrilled to be part of it, to walk around Soho at night and feel that, as a bellydancer I belonged to that dark, slightly dangerous underworld. I’ve always loved the ‘other’ in society - the exotic, the experimental, the people who push at the boundaries.

Of course in a perfect world I’d also love bellydance to be accepted by mainstream society, for people not to look down on the dance I make my living from. But I also rather like the fact that when I say I’m a bellydancer I know I’m immediately interesting to most people. I’m different and, yes, exotic. And I know that many of my students feel the same. It’s a giggle to tell people at drinks parties that you are a bellydancer.

Indeed, I’m prepared to guess that for many of us in the West, the exoticism and slightly risqué reputation is one of the things that drew us to bellydance in the first place. There’s something excitingly naughty for many women in learning to bellydance and I think we should accept that. Even embrace it.

That doesn’t mean of course, that we can’t disapprove of certain things. It’s everyone’s prerogative to dislike and, yes, disapprove. Personally I don’t like heavily sexualised bellydancing. I don't like seeing loads of chest bumps in a dance and I can’t abide a pouty face or a floor hump. And don't get me started on the dancers who shake their breasts or backsides in men's faces! But even if I don't like it, I don’t want to shut that dancing down, just as I don’t want to stop ‘commercial’ R & B dancing on music videos, even though I personally dislike it. Instead I want to create something that in my mind is ‘better’ and put it out there in the hope that people will love it and choose it over the other.

And I have to admit that I did my fair share of ‘floor humping’ in the past. Not least on that beautiful polished antique desk, behind which sat The Who’s manager. I’d jumped up there because I’d never seen anyone look quite so bored with my performance as Bill Curbishley did that day. I suppose when you’re the manager of The Who it’s hard to be impressed and I would imagine you get to see an awful lot of semi-naked young women in the course of your job. But his staff had paid for me as a birthday treat for him, and were now crowded in the doorway, excitedly watching me dance.

I leapt up on the desk, did a full backbend and then descended slowly down onto my knees and then my back in front of him. I undulated, I belly rolled, I fluttered. I was 24 years old, I was in great shape, I was dressed in very little and I knew I looked amazing. Surely I’d get a reaction from him now!

He looked down, held my eye, took his cigar out of his mouth. And said: “Mind the desk love.”

Oh well, you can’t win them all.

Creating a new style of bellydance

I’ve always struggled with the concept of authenticity. As I said in a past blog post: I’m not Egyptian, I’m from that most English of towns, Cheltenham Spa, and now live near its uptight and green-inked cousin, Tunbridge Wells. You can’t get much more English than that!

After many years of trying to recreate Egyptian styling and Egyptian sensibilities I finally came to the conclusion that in aiming to be ‘authentic’ I was in effect being its exact opposite. I was pretending to be something I am not. When I was trying to dance with the soul of an Egyptian woman I was certainly not being true to myself. And I believe that if I’m to communicate through my dancing I must say something that is real and true to me.

But what should I do, as an English, middle-class, ballet-mad girl who grew up into a jazz dancing young woman, studied contemporary dance for her degree but then fell in love with bellydance in her twenties? As for so many women, bellydance felt like it was made for me. The movements seem created for my body. They celebrate my curves rather than encouraging me to starve them away. And the first time I saw a bellydancer, and then tried the moves out for myself, I knew it was what I wanted to do.

But one of the major difficulties for me is that the dance I love comes from another culture. It’s middle eastern. So I don’t feel I own it, despite having danced and taught it for decades. And my inner conflict has been deepened recently by news stories highlighting the sometimes shocking treatment of women in the middle east. I read reports of organised gang rapes of women in Cairo, or the recent beheading of young men and women for dancing in mixed company at a wedding in Afghanistan, and I wonder what I, as a western feminist, am doing teaching a dance from a part of the world that thinks it is shameful and wicked for a woman even to dance socially with a man, let alone bellydance in public.

To be truthful I have sometimes even thought about giving up bellydance in recent months. It’s started to feel wrong to me. I’m a feminist, I believe in freedom and equality for women. So I’ve been deeply affected reading about the lives of women in that part of the world who seem to me not to have the freedoms and the respect that I take for granted.

I’ll also be honest and say too, that for a long time I’ve found the bellydance movement vocabulary narrow compared to the dance forms I grew up with. Much of that comes from the costuming - there is little opportunity for expansive leg gestures in a bellydance costume. A full chiffon skirt hides anything going on below the hip line and a modern lycra skirt is way too tight. And the weight! It’s hard enough work hauling all those crystals and sequins and stiffening around the stage, let alone trying to leap and twirl and soar.

And here we find ourselves back to the subject of culture. Leaping and twirling and soaring is not what a nice Egyptian girl does. Let’s face it, she’s not even meant to dance in public! I find it noticeable that the grand, exciting stuff in Egyptian dance: the jumps and leaps and dynamic movements are given to the men. The female vocabulary is far more internalised, smaller, more ‘feminine’.

I’m also painfully aware of the fact that bellydance as a performance art just doesn’t cut it with a western audience. Small, internalised isolations don’t work well on the big stage or even on TV. And the narrow dynamic range and lack of dramatic, exciting movements leave modern westerners frankly a bit bored. I believe it’s one of several reasons bellydance isn’t taken seriously here.

Yet bellydance is a truly beautiful dance form. And it has a remarkable ability to help women feel good about themselves and their bodies. Moreover, for me, as a musician (I’m a trained opera singer) it has a unique and very deep association with music. I adore the way a bellydancer tries to show the music through her body. To me it’s very profound and has the ability to deepen the whole experience, both for dancer and audience.

I'll always love traditional, culturally authentic bellydance, whether it's performed by Arabs, Turks or Westerners. And I really don’t want to give up the dance I love so much. Even if I am sometimes frustrated, often troubled by inner conflict.

But maybe, as with so much art, inner conflict, limitation and frustration is the mother of creativity. Because I’m finding that the limitations and the conflicts and the feeling of disassociation are driving me towards creating a new style of bellydance. My style of bellydance. Without constraints, without cultural baggage, without apologies. Just dancing the way it feels right to me to dance.

If I allow myself to break free from the cultural straightjacket what will happen? If I no longer have to worry about whether what I’m doing is ‘correct’ or ‘authentic’, what will my dancing and my teaching look like? Where might it go?

My thinking is also driven by my desire to create a large spectacular bellydance show sometime in the future. Whatever happens with the Hollywood film - whether it is made or not, and if it is, where it leads - all my creative energies at the moment are working towards trying to create a style of bellydance which will work on the big stage and appeal to a western audience.

I started with Project Lift Off - my initiative to try and raise British bellydance nearer to the professional standard of other styles of performance dance and to work with larger, more dynamic movements. But I’ve found myself terribly constrained by the desire to teach ‘authentically’. I’ve found it impossible to break free from the cultural and historical background of our dance. Of course I could ignore the cultural relevance. I could just teach bellydance moves without caring about their provenance, but that would go against my grain. I know bellydance has a cultural core and I can't ignore that.

So I’ve made a decision to stop trying to copy or recreate, and instead to create.

I’ve found it helpful to think in terms of creating a new style of dance. With a new name, so that I don’t feel I’m doing something inappropriate. Right now in my mind I’m calling it Western Oriental style bellydance. Because that to me is what I’m trying to create.

I’ve started by working with two superb young dancers who come to my Project Lift Off classes and who have agreed to be my muses - the clay for me to work with. And I’m going to start teaching jazz-bellydance classes at Dance Works in central London from January onwards, as a way of experimenting with marrying bellydance to the western dance forms that have influenced me and breaking away from my natural desire to do things ‘right’.

I’m sure there are people reading this who will think what I’m doing is wrong, or at the very least arrogant. But every style of dance has had its innovators, including bellydance - tribal and tribal fusion are wonderful, exciting styles which rightly take their place alongside Egyptian or Turkish bellydance. I’m just trying to do my bit. For myself, if no-one else!

And for those people who might think I’m rejecting Egyptian bellydance, please know this. I will never reject Egyptian bellydance, it’s part of my dance heritage. I may have deep inner conflict about cultural attitudes towards women and dance in the middle east, but I truly love the Egyptian people, women and men both. And I don’t believe that will ever change.

And I'm sure I will always teach classic Egyptian style bellydance. I love it and my students love it. I’m just trying to do something alongside it. To develop something that feels more like me, rather than trying to pretend I’m something I’m not.

It’s really exciting for me to be travelling down this road. Exciting and pretty scary too. I’ll write more about the journey as I travel it. And I hope some of you will come with me to see where it takes us. Hold tight, it could be an exciting ride!

A darkness at the heart of bellydance

I was intending to write today about my joy on signing my contract with the film studio. But a Facebook posting from Lorna Gow, the only British dancer working professionally in Cairo today, has driven me to come clean about something I feel very strongly about, and which has affected me personally on a very profound level.

WARNING: This story details experiences of rape and may be traumatic for anyone who has been through such an experience themselves.

Lorna wrote:

“So very very sad… Landlady discovered I am a dancer and has thrown me out. I have spent the entire week packing and crying. I am totally gutted. This flat has been my home for nearly 6 years and I can't count how many fun times I have had here not to mention all the wonderful people from all over the world who have stayed here with me. Thank you all. Here's wishing for a more tolerant, accepting Egypt in the future....”

Most women who learn bellydancing in the West find it incredibly empowering. The community is largely supportive and accepting of all and women tell me again and again that bellydance has changed their lives. They say they have learned to accept themselves and their bodies for the first time since adulthood, that it has helped them overcome fears and phobias and that they have made wonderful new friends as well as discovering a rich culture and a beautiful art form.

But the dark alter ego of our dance is the attitude in its home country towards dancers. There’s a very strange dichotomy in Egyptian society. Egyptians love music and dancing and elevate famous dancers to the status of megastars, yet at the same time, they look down on them, viewing them as ‘haram’  or sinful. In films, bellydancers are portrayed as sexual temptresses, trying to lure the hero away from the heroine and to have a dancer in the family is a cause of terrible shame.

In Egypt, dancers are assumed to be prostitutes. And indeed some are. The reason most top dancers in Cairo are Westerners is that nice Egyptian girls do not dance in public. And certainly not in revealing clothing. The natural extension of this attitude is a belief that all women who dance in public are sluts.

And it’s not just dancers. There is a firm conviction amongst Arab men that all Western women are sexually rapacious – desperate for sex with any man, at any time of the day or night. It’s an attitude I discovered when I lived in the Middle East and which is confirmed by female friends who live out there now. And I experienced the horrible consequences of that attitude myself, the first time I visited Egypt.

I first visited Cairo in 1982, at the age of 24. I was living in the Gulf at the time and wanted to learn more about bellydance in its spiritual home. While I was there I was gang raped. I had met two young men who were also on holiday in Cairo and we had stopped off at their apartment before going on to a nightclub. There was suddenly a frantic knocking at the door from the concierge, who told us the police were in the building because they had learned that there was a girl in an apartment with two men. He insisted that what we were doing was illegal and we would be arrested. He suggested the boys went out the front way and he would take me down the back stairs to safety.

You can guess the rest. Half way down the stairs I was pushed into a side room where he raped me. He then brought men from other apartments in the building to have sex with me. I assume he charged them for the privilege. Although I wept and begged them to stop, only one did. One Japanese man at least had the decency to stop raping me in response to my pleas.  The Arab men just continued.

I would guess that these men assumed I was a prostitute because I was with two men. And that therefore I was fair game. In recent years, when I talked about it to friends who live in Cairo or who visit regularly, they told me that sort of thing doesn’t happen there. But I have a feeling that military rule may just have kept a lid on it. Because the public gang rape of Western women is becoming frighteningly prevalent in Egypt since the revolution.

In Tahrir Square on the very day of Mubarak’s resignation, a Western female reporter was violently gang raped with hundreds of men watching on. It happened to a French woman in January this year and then, just eight weeks ago a British female student was violently and publicly raped in Tahrir Square, even though she was with two Western male friends. Her friends were overcome and the woman was brutally sexually attacked by an enormous crowd of men. In public. In broad daylight. In the middle of the biggest square in Cairo.

And it has been going on for years much closer to home. In our very own bellydance community. Not gang rape as far as I’m aware, but the sexual abuse of Western dancers by certain Arab men who believe that all dancers are sluts and are asking for it.

I don’t actually blame these men for their attitudes – if you have been told something all your life, of course you will believe it. And this belief in the sexual rapaciousness of Western women, compounded by a belief that only bad women dance in public, is all pervasive and very, very strong.

In America last year there was a high profile scandal when the wife of Yousry Sharif – one of the best known and most respected Egyptian dance teachers in the world – accused him of years of physical and sexual abuse. And shockingly she said that he had always made it clear to her that he believed that all Western women who bellydance are sluts (yes, those same women who give him his living as a bellydance teacher). Furthermore, she challenged all women married to Arab men to acknowledge that their husbands despise Western women.

Now I know that it’s absolutely not true that all Arab men despise Western women. Wonderful men like Khaled Mahmoud and Hossam Ramzy respect us enormously and are good and kind and supportive to us and our community. They have been living in the UK for a long time and understand and respect our values. And I’m sure there are many other Arab men here who are just as respectful.

But I also know of shocking incidents in our own UK bellydance community. One of my closest friends was raped several years ago by a prominent member of the community. This man then told her friends, other dancers and even some potential employers that she had come on to him and begged him for sex. She was so traumatised by the event that for two years she wouldn’t leave the house alone. And I understand it has happened to others.

I know this is difficult stuff to talk about – to say that many Arab men think we are sluts for being Western AND bellydancers is not only tough and unpleasant, it also risks feeding the Islamophobia that is increasingly prevalent in our society.  But it is very important that we Western women understand that attitudes are different in other societies and our modern ways can be very easily misinterpreted by men who hold ugly, outdated beliefs about us.

And I believe passionately that women should be open and honest about the abuse that happens to us and fight prejudice with all our might. It’s only by bringing things out into the clear light of day that we can look at them honestly and attempt to change the world for the better.

Cairo is a wonderful, amazing, exciting city. I love it and I love the Egyptian people, despite what happened to me in the past. But if you are going there at the moment, please dress modestly and do everything you can to keep yourself safe. And ideally go with an organised group such as Kay Taylor’s Farida Adventures.

Most of all, behave with propriety and self respect, both here and abroad. And of course continue to enjoy all the beauty and pleasure that there is in bellydance.

Back to the blog!!

I've been away from blogging for eighteen months and I'm so pleased to be back!

I stopped because I was working on a very big writing project that took up an enormous amount of time. I was also organising the first Shimmy in the City international bellydance festival with Khaled Mahmoud, as well as running Hipsinc, my bellydance school.

I knew something had to give! And the blog drew the short straw.

But now the writing project is finished and delivered. Shimmy in the City was a great success and the second one is comfortably underway. And I have a brilliant team around me at Hipsinc, including the very best PA I have ever employed in thirty years - Louise Sullivan, Wonderwoman!

But most of all I'm involved in such wonderful, exciting, remarkable things at the moment that I knew I just had to start writing again.

Right now I don't want to go into details about the biggest thing I'm involved in, because I'm in the middle of contract negotiations. But you can be sure that as soon as everything is signed and sealed and I've been given the go ahead, you'll hear about it here first! And believe me, this particular project will be the biggest and most exciting thing the bellydance world has ever seen, with the potential to bring bellydance international worldwide fame!

But for today, I'm really excited to be launching my new, personal website at charlottedesorgher.com! I've been working on it for what seems like forever, but it's finally all up and tested and checked and I think it's looking good!

The original Hipsinc website is, of course, here to stay! But I've been feeling for a time that I needed a personal website to highlight the things I'm doing and to give me some space for a bit more self-promotion!! A lot of the information on my  new site is also on the Hipsinc website, but there are lots of extra areas, such as an online store, videos, photographs and yes, this blog!

So, please do check out my new site at www.charlottedesorgher.com  and tell me what you think!! Is there anything else you would like to see on there? Any links not working or (shock horror!) any spelling errors?!!!

And what about this blog. Is there anything you would like me to write about? I love writing and I'll gladly cover anything that you are particularly interested in. Do leave me some feedback or comments - I'd love to hear from you!

To diet or not to diet?

I’m currently on a diet. Like a quarter of the population, I’m trying to lose weight. But, unlike most of my fellow dieters, I’m finding it a bit of an ethical dilemma.

Oh, give over Charlotte! Spare us the existential angst! I hear you say.

I know, I know. It doesn’t really sit comfortably with the big ethical questions of our age: should we buy clothes made by workers on poverty wages? Is animal testing justified? Should we have gone to war with Iraq?

Should Charlotte be on a diet?

But there is a fundamental mismatch between what I tell my students and how I treat myself. It’s not that I tell my students not to diet. But I do tell them that they are beautiful just as they are. And they truly are.

One of the most moving things about being a bellydance teacher is hearing so many women say that bellydance has enabled them to feel good about themselves for the first time in their lives.

We are bombarded every day with images in the media of beautiful, slender women. Photographs of even the most beautiful and seemingly perfect are airbrushed to remove ‘imperfections’. And I know, because I hear it time and time again, that many women feel truly awful about themselves as a result of judging themselves against these images.

Only a couple of days ago, two women of very different shapes (one slim, one voluptuous) confided to me that they stand at the back of class because they cannot bear to see themselves in a mirror. As I say in the sidebar on this blog, I know without any shadow of a doubt that a very large proportion of women look in the mirror and they judge themselves. They see themselves as unattractive, or fat, or just not good enough. And they live with that every day of their lives.

Yet men look at us and love us. Painters have painted voluptuous women for centuries. Ordinary men, normal men, think we are beautiful. They think we are lovely just as we are.

I’ll never forget my first student show, held in the Women’s Institute Hall in the little town near where I live. The students had only been dancing a year and were a fabulously mixed bunch of ages, shapes and sizes.  None of us could possibly have withstood the scrutiny of TV, but we went out there and danced our socks off, tummies proudly displayed, in front of 100 people.

Afterwards I was truly astounded by the responses of the men in the audience. Every single one I spoke to commented on how beautiful the women were. Several men made a point of coming over to tell me just that. We were all very ordinary women. Aged between 20 and 60 and a wide range of body types. But to the men we were really beautiful.

Even more interestingly, each woman seemed to have one person unrelated to her, who singled her out as being particularly lovely. In other words, each of us had people in that audience who thought we were really special.

A year later I took some non-dancer friends to see the Bellydance Superstars, a bellydance troupe from the US managed by music promoter, Miles Copeland. The Superstars are a well-rehearsed, highly professional troupe of slim, beautiful girls. They left my friends cold.

They said they were put off by the cookie-cutter nature of the dancers. That the array of slender bodies and perfect smiles made them feel they were watching Californian cheerleaders. And every single one said they had preferred our student show in that little WI hall. The reason? Because there, they were seeing ‘real’ women. In all their imperfect beauty.

So what’s with the diet then?

Well, I’m shooting an instructional DVD in a couple of months and the truth is that I am just as affected by media images as every woman out there. And just as self-conscious about my wobbly belly.

I fear that when I look at the DVD in the future, all I will notice is the roll of fat that always shows when I do a hip drop. And the extra belly fat that hangs over my hip belt no matter how good my posture is.

I don’t want to lose too much though. I think it’s important that people see real women on this DVD. I want them to realise that a woman in her 50s and with curves can still be a good dancer. And I hope they can identify with me as being like them: a real woman, not an unobtainable image of perfection and beauty.

But as a real woman, I also have to hold my hand up and say; I wish I were thinner! More beautiful. Just a bit more like Cheryl Cole.

Thank goodness for my husband, who never fails to tell me he loves me exactly as I am!

But is it authentic...?

Since I returned to bellydancing eight years ago, I've often been troubled by the question of authenticity. As an English woman from Cheltenham Spa, living near, of all places, Tunbridge Wells, what exactly am I doing bellydancing?

And when I dance, who do I dance as? Do I imagine myself as Egyptian? Do I try, as many do, to recreate the gestures used by Egyptian dancers? Or attempt to feel music the way the Egyptians do?

I remember being in a workshop with Aida Nour, an Egyptian bellydance star of the 1980s, now a popular international teacher. It was an advanced workshop with many experienced dancers. Aida became increasingly irritated because she said we weren't dancing on the beat. And the more we concentrated on just that, the more irritated she became. Finally, exasperated, she asked me to video everyone dancing the routine, herself included. She then left the room (in pretty high dudgeon) and told us to review what we were doing wrong.

Well, I'm a trained classical singer with a strong sense of rhythm and I was flummoxed. I knew I had been dancing on the beat. And the video confirmed it. But oddest of all, the only person who wasn't dancing on the beat was Aida Nour herself! She was behind throughout.

And there, of course, was our answer. We were hearing the beat as punctual Brits. She heard it as a woman from a hot country with little sense of urgency. Arabs use the term 'English Time' to mean punctuality. In practice it means being only half an hour late.

Aida Nour confirmed our suspicions. We were dancing 'early'. And of course the more she had complained, the earlier we had become. No wonder she found us infuriating!

Later she thoughtfully explained that no-one outside Egypt hears the music correctly. It wasn't just the Brits, it was everyone - from the US to Japan, Norway to South Africa. And I've heard that said by Egyptians time and again - dancers and ordinary people alike. No-one dances bellydance like the Egyptians. No-one feels the dance or hears the music like them. Good try but no cigar.

So where does that leave me? Cheltenham born, English speaking, a ballet girl from the age of five. Faced with the realisation that I'm never going to get it right, you can see why I sometimes ask myself the question in that first paragraph.

For a long time I tried hard to recreate 'authentic' Egyptian styling and gestures. To denote heartache or love I would dutifully hold my hand under my ribcage as the Egyptians do. I would take little trouble with my arm technique and try to look 'lazy' in my arabesques.

But the more I tried to be authentic, the more hidebound I felt in my dancing. And the more I felt like a fraud. Because you see, I'm not Egyptian. I'm English. Always have been, always will be. I love the Arab world, but I'm not from it.

The breakthrough for me came, surprisingly, in a workshop by an Egyptian teacher. Professor Hassan Khalil came to teach at Fantasia and brought with him a technique chock-full of ballet moves and ballet terminology. Suddenly I realised I didn't have to deny my years of ballet training; I could draw upon it; I could revel in my ability to dance graceful arabesques, to spin and to posé.

The next revelation was meeting Aziza from the US. Quite simply, her first trip to the UK, which I organised, and now organise every year, changed my personal dance world. Interestingly, Aziza, who styles herself an American Cabaret-style bellydancer was a little intimidated by the fact that the UK has a reputation for being very Egyptian focussed. She feared we may look down on her as not being properly authentic (yes that word again!)

But seeing Aziza dance was an inspiration. I've never seen anything quite as wonderful. Like me, her early training was in ballet, jazz and contemporary dance. But unlike me, she wasn't trying to deny it. Typically American, she had simply grafted her western dance forms onto the middle eastern one. And in the process created something uniquely hers. And uniquely beautiful.

The time since has been a fascinating journey for me. It's a journey I'm still on. I always have to ask myself at what point does something stop being bellydance and become something else. There is a lot of fusion dance around at the moment and, although I respect and enjoy it, I believe one needs to be very sure of what one is fusing and why.

When I started to break free of what I increasingly saw as an Egyptian strait jacket, I knew I needed a lodestar to guide me. A fixed point I could weave around and still know where I was going. I had been lucky enough to have as my first teachers, Hossam and Serena Ramzy - true giants of Egyptian bellydance. Hossam is one of the greatest musicians and composers of Egyptian music alive today. His wife is a superbly musical and beautiful bellydancer.

Hossam and Serena taught me how to interpret the instruments and rhythms of the Egyptian orchestra. They taught me one of the greatest truths about bellydance: that 'the art of oriental dancing is to visually hear the music'. And this has become my guiding principle.

So here, for what they are worth, are my own dance rules. Firstly I dance to Arabic music, secondly I expect to use a significant number of 'core' bellydance moves. And finally I try to show the music through my body.

This is what I personally call bellydance. They are only my rules - and I certainly don't demand others follow them. But they are rules that have perversely given me freedom.

Like a child I need boundaries, but they are boundaries I embrace. Boundaries I hope others understand and appreciate. And which represent my own personal authenticity.