Once a celebration of femininity, belly dancing is now a hot fitness trend
Imagine getting ready for a strenuous workout that exercises your abs, waist, back, hips and more. You wear exercise gear, but then, instead of heading off to the gym or to the park for a jog, you tie a shimmery scarf around your waist, wear a couple of anklets and bangles, and sashay off to a belly dance studio…
Let the gym gurus scoff. Let men think of it as an oriental dance form meant to amuse them. Belly dance has never been about physical fitness or about titillating viewers. It’s a centuries-old dance performed by Middle Eastern women for themselves, never for others (especially not for men) to see. Today, this gentle, undulating celebration of femininity seems to have become one of the hottest fitness trends our metros have seen.
“Five years back, when we started our Belly Dance classes, we had a batch of five. Today, we run ten batches a week, with special night and weekend classes for working women!” says Abhilasha Ganeriwala, director of Pulse Studios in Mumbai. The studio offers courses in Egyptian and Contemporary Belly Dance. Meher Malik who runs the Banjara School of Dance in Delhi, says the same thing: “From about 10 students when I began teaching belly dance in 2006, today about 500 women are dancing with us!”
Women join, Ganeriwala says, for a variety of reasons. “It’s excellent exercise for the abdomen, back and hips,” says she, “it is wonderful for pregnant women, as it limbers up muscles used in childbirth that regular exercise rarely touches!” Belly dance also builds body confidence and self esteem: “Many women who belly dance with us start looking a lot more sensuous — you can see it in how they move,” says Malik.
Watch a belly dance class in progress, and you’ll find that everything about it is calming, almost meditative. Its trademark rolling and surging movements work ‘with’ muscles, not against them. The focus is on breathing deeply through, you guessed it, the belly. The best thing? Anyone (over 15 preferably) can do it. In fact, Ganeriwala’s oldest belly dance student is 70 years old! “She’s an inspiration to all of us who feel too inhibited…and many students have signed up thinking that if she can do it, so can they!”
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So the next time you’re looking for new fitness regimen, a way to de-stress or an interesting art form to explore — just tie that glittering scarf around your belly and shimmy away!
(Geetanjali Krisha is a New Delhi-based freelance writer)
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