If anyone is interested in seeing a beautiful, large cabaret dancer, I suggest searching for Magidah, a Portland-based dancer. She is one of the most amazing bellydancers I have ever seen, and she’s just come out with a new line of dance clothing called MagidahWear (for “the booty magnificent!”)

As for performance… cabaret style would probably prefer you to get waxed, but tribal is unlikely to care (ATS is full of girls with tattoos and dyed hair, and is definitely unconcerned with bodily idiosyncrasies). And if it’s a student performance or a for-fun performance and not a professional one, it’s not as though anyone could require you to do anything. I can’t see any reason why it would matter, anyway. I guess it could potentially be distracting, but no more so than a birthmark, and I’d hope that if you had a birthmark you wouldn’t be worried that it would keep you from dancing.

Another option if you’re self-conscious is just to wear your skirt or pants at belly-button level!

She also teaches with inFusion Tribal:
http://www.infusiontribal.com/welcome

There’s also Skin Deep Studios:
http://atsbellydance.com/2.html

Think of, say, the difference between Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. Each adapted his dance style to his body type, so that Astaire played to lean lines, and Kelly to muscularity. Bellies work nicely with some moves, and long legs work nicely with some moves, and so on, and I don’t think that’s inherently anti-fat.

That said, SHIT I can’t really see getting the balls to dance in public, although my son’s dance teachers have often invited me to join the adult classes.

Yeah, belly-dance in the Middle East is quite a tangled web indeed. There’s a lot of mixed messages about who dances, who is allowed to dance for whom and when, how they’re accepted by the general public, the standards of body shape, etc.

But yeah, outside the public eye, belly dance (or at least its movements) encompasses a huge range of ages and shapes.

Have you read any of Morocco’s ethographic studies of belly dance? She spent time with the Bedouin and Ghawazee to investigate the true origins of the dance in childbirth rituals and as a community dance — it’s fascinating! http://www.casbahdance.org/ARTICLES1.htm

And thanks, Sherri, for the youtube link! I’ve had the biggest girlcrush on Isidora Bushkovski since I started dance, but I hadn’t seen that one. (And I’d chime in, don’t give up on dance! Like viv said, you could try a dvd or just play music in your own home and dance your heart out!)

April_D, if Delilah is your dance grandmother (teacher’s teacher, hee!), lucky you!! I’ve never seen her perform live, but I have one of her dvds, and WOW. If you get a chance to take a class or even a seminar, do it!! I’m still daydreaming about going on one of her Hawaiian dance retreats.

You’re totally right, of course. I was actually just reading about the ban on belly-dancing in some Islamic states, which touched on that issue slightly.

I think the issue comes down to public perception and appearance. If you think of all the elderly women out there who are still dancing, that leaves a huge range of varied body shapes to imagine gracefully stepping through the dance. But are those women necessarily in the public eye? Not really.

Not to mention the fact that in some countries women will only dance for women, and photography or video of the event is banned.