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What Makes a Belly Dancer's Blood Boil?

© Shira

Back in the 1970's, there was a movie titled Network in which a network news anchor played by William Holden urged everyone to open their windows and shout, "I'm mad as hell and I won't take it any more!" Sometimes we as belly dancers feel like joining in the chant!

The room was littered with beads and sequins all over the floor, all over the furniture, down into the cushion cracks of couches and chairs, and all over the floor. Mixed in were scraps of glittery fabric. What caused this mess? Well, isn't it obvious? A belly dancer exploded! And what caused the explosion? No, it wasn't eating too much baklava or drinking too much Turkish coffee. It was her righteous fury over yet another torment thrown her way by the universe!

I receive e-mails all the time from fellow dancers who are struggling with issues that made them angry. It seems we don't have a shortage of these. Here are some of the ones I hear about...

Students and Teachers

A relationship exists between belly dancing students and their teachers. Just like marriages, brothers/sisters, and parents, sometimes these relationships are great, and sometimes they're as toxic as a waste dump.

Students sometimes become very frustrated with their teachers and classmates. In turn, teachers sometimes want to explode at their students. Whichever side of the relationship you're on, you'll probably relate to some of these.

From the student's point of view:

• Your teacher told you that you weren't good enough yet to perform in a show she was organizing. Yet she has never given you any kind of feedback to let you know where you need to improve.
• In a seminar, one of your classmates is constantly running into you. No matter how you try to adjust your position, she's on a constant crash course with you!
• Your troupe leader decided on a troupe costume design that looks extremely unflattering on you and absolutely refuses to change it.
• Your teacher clearly favors one of the other students over everyone else in the class: she invites her along on gigs, arranges opportunities for her to perform, and constantly compliments her while criticizing the rest of you. It's enough to make you ask, "What am I? Chopped liver?"
• You purchased an expensive instructional video, and when you watched it the first time you discovered that the lighting was so poor and the focus so bad that you could barely see the moves being demonstrated.

From the teacher's point of view:

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