Almost two years ago I fell madly in love, and the time since, which has been spent almost daily with this love, has only served to strengthen my commitment and devotion.\u00a0 I\u2019d even go so far as to say I might not be here today if I hadn\u2019t had this love to center and support me during this transformative phase of my life.\u00a0 It all started one fateful night with the conception of a burlesque fundraiser to raise money for the local community radio station, WXPI.\u00a0 Burlesque had been a faraway dream and goal of mine for more than seven years, and during that long stretch of time I had tried to teach myself to dance, get in shape, come to terms with my body issues, and overcome a disabling shyness and case of stage fright.\u00a0 Given that the opportunity for my dream to quite literally come true had finally arrived, I decided to just suck it up and get through the show, hopefully managing to reveal all that I had to offer (wink, wink).\u00a0 To prepare for the prospect of getting virtually naked in front of a roomful of strangers and, even scarier, friends and family, I wanted to lose those last ten pounds, so I incorporated a cardio routine into my daily workouts.\u00a0 This seemed to do the trick, but I quickly found the routine monotonous. \u00a0Enter my love.\u00a0 I had been doing a belly dance DVD once a week for the previous year as part of my rotation of workouts, but decided to substitute a daily cardio belly dance DVD, and within a week I was obsessed and forever changed.\u00a0 It was like looking across a room and suddenly realizing that the friend you never gave much notice is in fact your soul mate, the epiphany striking like a bolt of lightning.\u00a0 I had found the thing for which I\u2019d been searching for longer than I can remember right in front of \u00a0me, in all her luminous glory.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Growing up, I had longed to be a dancer, just like many other girls, but I never seemed to have the opportunities to learn and had no idea how to get started.\u00a0 The older I got, the more it haunted me that I was aging past the opportunity of becoming a \u201creal\u201d dancer, because the desire still permeated my entire being.\u00a0 During the seven years between my initial discovery of burlesque and my first show, I searched for burlesque dance moves and tried to understand just what burlesque was, but it still wasn\u2019t popular enough for there to be a lot of instructional material available, and there were no events or classes locally where I could experience it directly.\u00a0 The closest I could find in the beginning was Carmen Electra\u2019s Aerobic Striptease series, which was great, but I couldn\u2019t understand how to incorporate these moves into a system so that my dancing style was \u201cburlesque.\u201d\u00a0 When I started practicing belly dance daily, I realized that I had found what I\u2019d been looking for all those years: a system for becoming a dancer.\u00a0 Not only did belly dance break all the dance steps down into an alphabet of movements, it taught me how to \u201cdrill\u201d these movements into my body so that they became second nature.\u00a0 Now when I would dance on my own or choreograph a new piece, my body would naturally flow into the circles and undulations I had taught it.\u00a0 Plus, there are literally hundreds of instructional belly dance DVDs, so I could learn to my heart\u2019s content in the comfort of my own home, and all for a relatively low price.\u00a0 What more could a girl ask for?\u00a0<\/p>\n
As I started devouring belly dance DVDs, it quickly became clear that this dance was the language of the Goddess, and with it I could translate to the rest of the world all of the things she had been whispering in my ear for so many years.\u00a0 For the first time in my life I wanted to master something, and I wouldn’t stop until I had.\u00a0 However, just like a self-possessed woman, belly dance can be deceptively challenging and complex.\u00a0 In fact, the more experienced the belly dancer, the subtler the movements and the easier they can appear.\u00a0 It was surprising to realize how much it uses not just the abdominal muscles, but also the glutes, thighs, arms, and every other part of the body, and\u00a0 I soon found that I could eliminate all of the toning, stretching, and cardio workouts I had been doing separately and replace them with this one practice.\u00a0 Plus I noticed that if I diligently practiced every day, I was rewarded with accomplishment and enviable skills.\u00a0 Techniques that I would initially gawk at on my television screen and think \u201cthere must be some CGI going on here, because that\u2019s just not possible\u201d would one day \u201cclick\u201d and soon enough become automatic.\u00a0 That sense of accomplishment cannot be compared to any other elation in this world.\u00a0 With belly dance you can become a living, dancing goddess, with a look I\u2019ve learned to call \u201ctoned fat,\u201d where the body is tautly pulled together into smoothly sloping curves, still retaining its luscious cushion that is so often evocative of the feminine body, but which now shakes in the most beautifully controlled ways when shimmied, just like young flesh.\u00a0 It’s a dance form that is innately feminine and natural to every woman, comprised almost entirely of myriad ways of moving your body in arcs, circles, and figure eights, not to mention pops and shimmies that jiggle a woman’s wobbly bits in ways that make men weak in the knees.\u00a0 Trust me, I can attest to this from many first hand experiences.\u00a0 Plus the sensual nature of belly dance immediately brings me into my body and the moment and the \u201cfeeling\u201d of the music, benefiting the audience with the same experience as the movements are so mesmerizing and entrancing, just like watching smoke.\u00a0 The more practiced the dancing, the more fluid and hypnotic it becomes.\u00a0 It is one of the truest, and might I add oldest, celebrations of all that is feminine.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That one burlesque fundraiser soon became a fledgling burlesque troupe, of which I was a founding member.\u00a0 Now more than ever I needed to incorporate everything I had learned into the art of creating an act, which was infinitely easier since I suddenly could interpret the language that is dance.\u00a0 Before I could always dance instinctively and \u201cfeel\u201d the music and translate that through the instrument of my body to the audience.\u00a0 However, I never knew how to recreate what I had done.\u00a0 I would just see a swirl of movements in the mirror but couldn\u2019t understand how I had made them.\u00a0 Before, this had made brainstorming a new dance or act a nightmare as I would watch with devastation as everything I had so beautifully and spontaneously created disappeared before my eyes.\u00a0 But now, armed with my daily belly dance practice and all that it had taught me, I knew how to deconstruct those movements, no matter how ephemeral, so that I could watch anyone, including myself, and at once experience what they had created, as well as recognize all of the little pieces that had been used to build it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I personally love the exaggeration and spectacle that comes with burlesque, as well as the subtlety, skill, and refinement that comes with belly dance.\u00a0 In fact, classic burlesque dancing, as we know it today, initially developed from dancers trying to imitate belly dance, only in a less refined manner.\u00a0 Burlesque takes the distinctly feminine movements of belly dance, which a belly dancer would show she has the utmost and strictest control over, and makes them bigger and more sensual.\u00a0 The whole point of burlesque is to make a spectacle of yourself, and what better way to do this than to make your movements as exaggerated as possible.\u00a0 Burlesque relies more on projecting the sensual experience of the dance and whatever emotions it evokes than it does on your particular skill level or flexibility, although many burlesque performers are unbelievably skilled and have years of dance training behind them.\u00a0 With burlesque, performing the simplest move can be enticing from the very first time you try it, simply by helping the audience to feel, quite literally at times, what you’re feeling.\u00a0 As you use your hands to touch your body and your facial expressions to reveal what you\u2019re experiencing, the audience feels as if they are your lover and more than happy to act in that capacity.\u00a0 You might not be that accomplished of a dancer, but if you can get the audience to feel every inch of your grind with you, then you are one hell of a burlesque performer.\u00a0 When I incorporated my new belly dance skills, which allowed me to control even the subtlest movements precisely, into my previously learned moves and the theatricality that is burlesque, a magical thing happened:\u00a0 I had developed my own style, which I termed Bellesque.\u00a0 Essentially it\u2019s belly dance with a burlesque flavor, combining the attributes of both into something that is uniquely beautiful.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As far as I\u2019m concerned, both belly dance and<\/em> burlesque are treasures for the modern woman.\u00a0 Oftentimes, people want to separate and distinguish between the two, pulling them apart into separate entities, but ultimately all I see are the things they have in common.\u00a0 Nothing makes you more accepting of your body than belly dance and burlesque.\u00a0 When the role models you look up to have curvier, more everyday figures, although often very shapely and toned, you can’t help but love your own curves a little more, no matter what the movies or magazines may tell you to feel.\u00a0 And not only do these dance forms come in all shapes and sizes, they come in all ages.\u00a0 With both of them, women are appreciated no matter what their level of life experience or how it is reflected in\u00a0their bodies.\u00a0 You can still become the dancer you dreamed of being as a little girl, even with your acquired stretch marks, wrinkles, and extra padding.\u00a0 Both are empowering because they center you in your body so that suddenly you feel connected to it, and with that comes the beautiful radiance that is so enticing to anyone around.\u00a0 There is also a true sense of female camaraderie with both art forms, as both fields are dominated by women, and the expressions are a celebration of the divine feminine, in all her varied guises.\u00a0 Suddenly these women become your sisters and not your enemies or competition.\u00a0 The most wonderful thing about both belly dance and burlesque is that they make you feel beautiful, sensual, and feminine in the truest senses of the word.\u00a0 Even if you look in the mirror and don\u2019t immediately see the divine incarnation of the goddess reflected back to you, the movement and expression of both dance forms are so beautiful in and of themself that they make you beautiful by extension.\u00a0 Suddenly you don’t mind the width of your hips because it makes the curves you create when moving them that much more luscious, and this can happen with your very first experience of either dance.\u00a0 Personally I would be lost without either of them in my life, and that\u2019s exactly what I was for all those years.\u00a0 They have been the dual, yet parallel, roads that have ultimately led me back to myself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Almost two years ago I fell madly in love, and the time since, which has been spent almost daily with this love, has only served to strengthen my commitment and devotion.\u00a0 I\u2019d even go so far as to say I might not be here today if I hadn\u2019t had this love to center and support […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":62,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-15","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravynlunatique.com\/wp2\/feelosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravynlunatique.com\/wp2\/feelosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravynlunatique.com\/wp2\/feelosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravynlunatique.com\/wp2\/feelosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravynlunatique.com\/wp2\/feelosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravynlunatique.com\/wp2\/feelosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravynlunatique.com\/wp2\/feelosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/62"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravynlunatique.com\/wp2\/feelosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}