Dancing Isis Dance!

For 15 years I have had a varied and colourful relationship with the MED community. It has brought out the best and the worst in me. Writing the Newsletter made me confront myself. Opening myself up and saying, well, here I am:  This is me. I’m going to tell you things I think, do, say.  I’m going to promote what I do and who I am.

A group of my close women friends (not involved in MED) are nicknamed after inanimate objects.  Mine is “Can Opener”. I like to get things out in the open, not something many people are comfortable with – not even me.

This industry is governed predominantly by women. With such a strong female base we could embrace the notion of operating our businesses in a less linear, go-getter, patriarchal manner. Many of us are trying, but alas I understand within the parameters of Western society we have a long way to go.

When women first come to this dance they find sanctuary in private women’s business. They talk, play, dance and dress up. A Sisterhood is formed. This happens primarily amongst students, the teacher may or may not be a part of it.  She may generate the sisterhood or it may be self-generating. Organically it blossoms week after week.  This sisterhood can be found in cities, towns and  rural communities all over the Western World.  In a rural town this can be the only outlet a woman has, away from her family and work. This can go on for years, especially for the student with no aspiration to become a professional dancer or women in rural areas. Some groups become so close that if one leaves, they all leave and remain friends.

As the dancer moves up the professional ladder and becomes a teacher and entertainer this sisterhood becomes more fraught with difficulty.  A teacher can maintain her sisterhood with her students.  However, in the outside world (with her peers and contemporaries), ego, money, status, power, jealousy can and does get in the way.

This industry, with a 95%** female content has the opportunity to develop the power of the feminine far beyond any other industry on this planet.

Thousands of women all over the world empowering each other.  A Matriarchy of strong women who use their intuition to guide them, who understand that the law of nature is cyclic and winding as sure as the moon is full every 28 days and the tides ebb and flow and our menstrual cycles occur.

I confess I am an idealist. We, as so many women in business, have the opportunity to change the face of success in this patriarchal world.  As teachers we can use the power of this dance, which in essence is so in tune with the rhythm of nature – more so than any other dance.

I have a teaching curriculum with a linear structure, but I allow my lines to curve somewhere along the way, then they grow other lines that end in spirals. And why not, this is a dance based on spirals after all. Accepting and allowing things to happen in cycles is not easy.  Let the movement find its way, organically, naturally.  Let the dance be, without the teacher getting in the way. To allow the natural grace of our body to happen.  After all dance, like any other art form, is intuitive, inspirational.

In this world that has become so caught up with the external, we have the opportunity for us women to guide other women back to our true nature.

Everyone wants something external, they want to feel they are achieving because they have learnt 10 moves in one lesson.  There is nothing wrong with that – but these moves should be subtle and organic and flow from one to the other. This is how I teach my students; I want them to discover their dance by knowing first their bodies, and then by letting the dance happen. The women who love my Mariaisms are very wonderful, brave, insightful women and a pleasure to teach and to be with. I don’t call things a lift or a shift or a flick because if I do, that is what they become and that is what they look like, all on the outside and nothing happening internally or emotionally. 

This is not a judgement of teachers that use these terms, I am just sharing what I know.

I put heaps of time and energy into advertising for a workshop.  I accept that one day you can have a full house and the next time no one books.  Is it because it is not well advertised?  Is it over- exposure?  Is it my competitors?  Or is it simply  because it is not the right universal time?  The planet Mercury is retrograde at the moment (that means in Solar Sidereal time it is going backwards).  Mercury rules communication.  Every day there is some problem to do with communication. I can’t wait till the 2nd of May when it goes forward again.  What to do? Stop, have a holiday until then? We can’t.   Our linear way of life won’t let us and everything today is about communication.  So I have to accept this and absorb it into my life.  This belief has deepened my acceptance of outcome. When I plan a workshop I often have a gut feeling about whether it will go ahead or not. Sometimes this gut feeling is tainted with fear of failure or fear of jeopardy, and I feel like just crawl into a hole and forget all about it. Every time I write this newsletter, is like going in a quest. What I do is try to move past all of that stuff in my head and get the feeling right. And then other times  everything falls into place, everything flows.  I’ve become more courageous with planning workshops, putting the work in and accepting the outcome.

I have recently become a MEDNET (Middle Eastern Dance Network) committee member. This is a big decision – to join a group of women from different tribes. To become a part of decision-making for an

organisation whose fundamental aim is to provide a network for its members and to work for the good of the whole MED community in Melbourne/Victoria. A committee meeting can be seen as very linear with all the protocol of a meeting. But it can also be seen as a ritual. Linear is not all bad anyway, it’s just overrated.

This is it folks, as you can see there is a subscription form on the last page and up and coming local regional and interstate workshops, along with where Yalla! is playing.

There are individuals and groups and organisations that I have reciprocal arrangements with, they are listed in the box below and also a note to those who have made contributions in the past 2 years.

The choice is yours.

May the Goddess be with you in the spiral dance of life

Many Blessings
Maria

* Mariaism was a term recently coined buy a friend when I was giving him some ideas with how to deal with his dislocated shoulder, which lead to a discussion about my teaching methods which he named Mariaisms.
 
** 95% is my random guess at the ratio of women to men in this industry. It is not a definite figure.

Written for the Spiralling New a Dancing Isis Dance Publication ©