NOW, SHAKE THAT BELLY! (Ombelico del mondo)

I love belly dancing. You don't have to be good at it. It is one of those things a woman can just treat herself to: to embrace and celebrate her own femininity wholeheartedly, with no "if"s or "but"s.

You don't have to be thin: in fact, if you have some extra body fat it actually looks better! The more you shake and wobble, the better.

You don't need to know how to dance: you won't be needing the splits, or any extra talents at all. You'll just gradually discover just how many parts of your body you can isolate and move.

You don't have to be fit: you'll be building your capacity very gradually.

You're never too young, nor too old for it: it's for all ages. My 6-year-old daughter sometimes joins in, and some women in my class are probably over 60.

And soon you'll be freeing yourself from the slavery of our modern-day woman ideal: necessarily tanned, necessarily toned, anonymously and septically perfect.

No no no. Soft is beautiful, shapely is beautiful, pale is beautiful. Female, in all its femininity, is beautiful. We have (somehow?) sort of forgotten that--- haven't we?

Now this below is a video of the Veil Dance we did in June. Not what you typically expect when you think of belly dancing, but one of the things you discover along the way is that there are so many possible variations on the theme. Try it to believe it!