Shimmy Shimmy Baby!

Sisters in dance,
I have posted the first official story for the Sacred Source Forum. My name is Zabel, I am a member of Sacred Source Dance Studio and I have been keeping up with the website as well as getting this forum off the ground. I have chosen the shimmy as my first topic of interest.
Learning the shimmy is one of the most challenging moves in belly dance. There is so much a dancer needs to pay attention to when learning this basic step. I was having trouble for a very long time grasping the concept and emotion behind the shimmy. This is my story about overcoming and growing through the shimmy.

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I had walked up these steps before. Not many times, but I knew by now where they took me. I knew the familiar smell of dust that clung to each and every cob web spun by the myriad of spider generations that lived in this hall way. The sounds of machinery punching holes in some kind of sheet metal were lost in my ears when I rounded the corner to ascend up the second flight of stairs. The old brick warehouse was sweltering hot this late summer afternoon. The heat seamed to trap and muffle all noises, holding them down someplace in the cold cement basement where none dare walk alone.
I didn’t mind the silence. I savored these moments of solace. It was my time to meditate and gather my thought before she arrived. I always tried to get to the studio with time to spare so I could get comfortable and make a part of the space mine. I loved it here, high above the corner of Washington Street and Stone Place, in my tree house studio, with the sweeping weeping willow tree outside the window. And I always wanted her to enter the studio where I had danced peace and serenity into the space already. She had two jobs; one was more stressful than the other. She had already given so much to me, the least I could do was make her time her as stress free as possible. She was a second mother to me instantly. Everything about her, even her faults, I had come to love. I knew the universe wanted us to meet, wanted me to be here; to learn from her.
Half way through my dance warm up I could hear the key turn in the lock, and her head popped through the door. The smile she flashed me hinted towards the kind of day we were going to have together. That little “boy, do I have something for you!” smile that curls her dainty lips. The softening of her age brushed cheeks told me we were doing some serious dance work today.
The name of this wonderful woman is Lorraine Lafata. Her occupation is a social worker and belly dance teacher. I made the decision to take a year off after high school and train with her for a year as a student of the ancient art of belly dance. I found my way into her incredible studio through a shamble of e-mails I sent out, desperately hoping someone was looking for a dance intern.
I found the wonders of belly dance three years earlier when one of my friends brought me to a beginner class. From that moment on, I knew that this art form was my calling. I absolutely fell in love with the movements, and the mystery that encompassed it. I took classes for two years afterwards. I was always searching for a way to improve my skills. I had seen dancers perform before and I knew I was missing something. I couldn’t put my finger on it; this elusive force that seemed to emanate from some dancers. I decided that I must figure out how to find this force and capture it, because just learning how to imitate the steps was not enough.
Lorraine was the one who took me under her wing. Our agreement was, she would give me classes and take me on as her intern, if I helped around the studio, and handled advertisement. I was also to give the studio a push on the internet by creating and maintaining a website for her.
Today, I was receiving one of my private dance lessons from Lorraine. I had asked to run shimmy drills. A shimmy is one of the basic building blocks for a belly dancer. It is a slight, almost vibration, originating from the hips while the rest of the body stays completely still. It is a subtle yet powerful up and down motion like a piston moving at dangerously high speeds. When done properly it looks effortless and smooth as if the dancer could do the motion in a resting position. I knew I didn’t have the proper momentum in my hips and I needed to get my shimmy right before I could move on to more advance movements.
Lorraine took my hand and led me to the middle of the floor. Gentile music played in the background, easily forgettable it was so soft. She told me to center myself in my feet. I had to find my natural placement in my own body, evenly weighted over each foot, arches kissing the ground. Then she told me to close my eyes. A bit hesitant, I obeyed. I had never heard of a shimmy drill starting out this way. Normally the music was blasting and you literally shimmy until it hurt, trying to layer it with other moves, walking around while shimmying, and all sorts of other acrobatic like stunts.
This was obviously not the case today. I wondered for a brief moment if Lorraine even remembered we were working on my shimmy. But my restless thoughts were smoothed over when she began to speak. She told of how I could, with my own life energy, reach into the ground; the very earth, and feel the vibration that rests within its core. This vibration, the heartbeat of the earth was the thing that powered my shimmy. And in order to do a shimmy correctly, I had to connect with the earth in the most intimate levels.
With Lorraine by my side, I took my conscious energy and imagined it flowing through my body out the soles of my feet. It had to travel through the ground, through the stars, through the room below us and the room below that. My energy traveled right through the concrete of the basement foundation. Like a flower stretching it roots it groped for rick dark soil, spreading out in long silvery tentacles, my energy intertwined itself with the very crust of the earth.
When I was inside the Earth, I could pause and feel the smallest pitter patter, a very light beating; like the heart of a mouse. It was a warm vibration that found its way to my energy strands. Once I found this power, Lorraine’s voice drifted to my ears. She instructed me to grab onto the energy and pull it up; up from the soil, up from the basement, up from the rooms below all the way up into the soles of my feet. I let the Earth’s energy into my body and I could feel actually feel the power hum and collect in my feet. It was a small tingling inside the sole of my feet that bounced around; the life energy grew to such an amount that I had to let go of the control and drag it up into my ankles where it could expand. And expand it did!
My legs trembled in a fascinating way. My knees gave way to the demanding pulse I had pulled from the earth. This power almost with a mind of its own finally found its way to my hips. They loosened and swayed gathering up all the energy from my thighs all the way down to my feet. I was wrapped in a kind of warmth that did not belong to the summer air, but to the earth in all her majesty.
I came to the realization that I held in my body a force that was not my own but something that was so much bigger than I am. It was a force that belonged to no one and everyone. This force that was playing in my hips was something that everyone could use, if they choose, it was a gift from our planet; our living, beating planet. As I meditated on this thought I noticed the shimmy had grown to an even larger amount. I was so filled with it, that if I did not move it up it would burst right out! So the shimmy continued to travel up my body.
The energy passed into my shoulders moving them back and forth at high speeds, then into the center of my chest making the movement smaller and sharper. Raising my arms above my head I raised the energy that was building and offered it to the sky. I could feel the earth’s pulse leave from my fingertips, allowing for a calm to take over my insides. A velvet black silence slipped into every corner of my body, and left it at rest. Lorraine was cooing praises along with direction in the background. “Good, now bring the energy back down, Nichole.” I distinctly remember her saying. “The energy must travel back through your body, let it sink into you. Think of it passing into your fingers, playing in the palms of your hands. Guide it back into your chest, passing through your heart. Let it become part of you, offer part of your energy to it. Feel how it has slowed to a heartbeat, how it translates to your hips; a more gentile rhythm…” I closed my eyes and focused on the pulse. I felt how the energy pushed through the velvet quiet of my body, leaving ripples, tiny echoes of the force it once was.
I felt so fulfilled and connected at a complete peace that I felt small tears roll down my flushed cheeks. They caressed my face, cooling on the way down to my chin. So taken was I with the idea that I had just been given an amazing gift and I was now giving back to the earth, moved me to tears. Never had I cried so openly. Never.
Once the earth received her energy entangled with mine, I was able to breath, and collect myself. Lorraine swept over to me and wrapped me up in her motherly arms, whispered in my ear “And now you know how powerful a real shimmy can be.” She let me stay there just breathing and reflecting on my experience.
Ever since that day, I have never danced the same. I know I can call upon the earth’s energy whenever I need it. I frequently, tap into this energy allowing it to float me over the dance floor or raging behind me pushing me through whirlwind of turns and leaps. I understand now what I had been missing. I was missing that intimate connection to my surroundings and to myself. I found out that I could not send a universal message in my performance if I did not have a way to connect to others through myself connection. On that fateful shimmy day, I was given the chance to go inside myself and learn what it felt to be completely in tune with my body and the force that feeds all life.
I have been able to connect more to my audiences and more importantly, I have connected to myself.

Since this forum is a place to talk about dance, it would be great if anyone could share their experience with a difficult dance move, or perhaps an experience they have had in the dance practice room. Belly dance is a difficult dance style to master because when done correctly it looks effortless. And we use so many inner muscles, so it is hard to find them and control them sometimes. Dancers who are new to the dance must understand that they should never give up, someday they will find that the dance will just click in their bodies, just let go and enjoy the moment in your body and in the dance.