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If you can move, you can dance.
I will never forget my first ever bellydance class. It was fifteen years ago, in France, in a communal room on the first floor of the student dorm where I lived for six months as an exchange student. Cristina, one of a large group of German Erasmus students, had been bellydancing for three years, and she offered a free class as a fun way to spend the evening. Even though I had dreamt of learning bellydance for years, I had never been able to afford classes, so I jumped at the opportunity.
Back then, I did not see myself as a dancer. The term “dancer” seemed like a foreign concept to me, reserved only for ballerinas and professional movers. As a Latina, I had been dancing for as long as I could remember, as dance is a very natural aspect of my culture. But I was not a dancer. In fact, in my mind, I was the farthest thing from a dancer anyone could be. I was clumsy, severely uncoordinated, too big for a leotard. I simply enjoyed dancing at parties and in my room sometimes.
I returned home with the steps I had picked up in that class (hip drop, twist, shimmy) and some others I had learned watching videos, and kept practicing casually in my bedroom, reserving it only for myself and the mirror. Five years later, in 2010, I began my bellydance training in earnest.