Let’s see…what to say about the new belly dancing class?

Instructor – Fahtiem has a cutsie personality that comes across in her dancing. Her choreography is playful, like she doesn’t take her dancing too seriously. She was trying to get the class to smile while dancing, and since so many of us were concentrating and not smiling, she stood and turned in a circle in the center of the class making clown faces at all of us in turn to get us to laugh. Because of her personality, she’s likely a better belly dancer than my last instructor. My last instructor was much better on teaching technique, however. She was very clear on how each move is done, she tells you what the move is called, and you practice the moves individually. Fahtiem, on the other hand, you just have to follow and hope you’re doing what she’s doing.

Class – The usual variety of people you’d find in a mixed-level dance class. There’s the newbies who’re self-conscious and confused. And then you have the semi-newbies who think they’re better than they actually are and get all in your space doing exaggerated moves that don’t look as good as they seem to think. And then there are the old-timers who dance with their noses in the air, except when they’re facing a mirror in which case their eyes are glued to the dancing image of themselves and they are apparently enraptured and deeply in love with what they see. A very large girl who was supposed to be to my left in the dancing circle kept making what my coworker called “elephant steps” and overstepping her bounds into our space. My coworker, annoyed, finally told her to move over and stay within the circle instead of stepping in front of it.

Me – Man, do enough unfeminine stuff like jujitsu and weight-lifting and suddenly, all the grace is gone. I felt stiff, awkward, uncoordinated, and definitely not sensuous. I couldn’t bring out the playfulness of the routine because I was concentrating so hard on just remembering the steps first and not being rammed by the elephant trunk arm of the big girl to my left. Hopefully the artistic expression of the dance will come through soon, once I get the technical parts down.

My coworker remembered the class cost wrong and we each wrote a check for $54 for the remaining 7 sessions instead of the $50 advertised in the course guide. When we realized this, my coworker went back to the instructor and told her, and the instructor wouldn’t refund the difference, saying if we had paid through the City instead of to her directly, it would’ve cost us an extra $10 for not being City residents. But we’re not paying through the City, she wanted us to pay her directly so she gets all the money without the City taking a cut. Whatever. 6 weeks left. You know it’s bad when I’m doing a countdown of sessions left already in the first class. I did that all through yoga with the Crazy Yoga Instructor.