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waddle: good morning, wordpress - 10:36 a.m. , 2009-07-03 elaborate murder attempt - 2:56 p.m. , 2009-07-01 building a tractor in the basement - 10:42 a.m. , 2009-06-19 ask no questions tell just a few lies - 3:17 p.m. , 2009-06-09 my long lasting flavor really lasts long - 1:10 p.m. , 2009-06-04
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Last night I signed up for a Middle Eastern belly dancing class. They'll probably send me away and tell me to go get a belly first. I'm no stick, but neither am I anything like the ample rounded dancers we witnessed in Egypt. Which is kind of a funny story... LT and I wanted to see some belly dancing, but not in a touristy sense. That sounds like an oxymoron, but there really are little tiny clubs in Cairo where the locals get together to drink Stella and ogle some dancers. The very best dancers come on last, sometimes as late as 3 am, and they are usually "famous" and have bodyguards and international press and whatnot. I'm totally serious. Some of the best belly dancers can make tens of thousands of pounds a year. Anyway, we asked around, getting laughed at for our formal Arabic the entire time, and ended up getting directions to this tiny place, through a maze of tiny alleys, that actually had a red light out front. Oh boy. It was wonderfully sleazy. I mean SLEAZY. There seemed to be all sorts of "back room" dealings going on. You totally expected Peter Lorre to pop out any minute. Anyway, true to form, the first couple dancers were incredibly unattractive Russian women who didn't dance so much as twitch. But they got better as the night went on (and they really did, it wasn't just the large amounts of Stella beer) until we got to the headliner, "Jasmin." And if you think that belly dancing is some kind of cheesy cartoon thing, all I can say is: Wow. She was good. Scary good. There were all sorts of separate muscle movements going on there. It's still a truly weird art form, but at its best it can be very entertaining. Trust me. Anyway, I don't aspire to that sort of level. I mostly aspire to some diversion one evening a week, something beyond the routine of work and home and books and television and drinking gin. I've found taking a class, even a silly class, is one way to do that. I suddenly tire of this entry. (I'm so melodramatic.) Have a good weekend, chickens. ---mimi smartypants of the 7 (count 'em!) veils back/forward |
