It’s 1030am on a grey Saturday, 12 April, Lemma Shehadi writes, and it’s the very start of the London Belly Dance Festival at the Cockpit Theatre near Marylebone organised by the glamorous Michaella pictured right.

Red, orange, pink sashes and glimpses of skin rush past, creating a jingle jangle from metallic sequins. Female voices chat speedily in Hebrew , each sound constantly on the move, twisting from one end of the room to the other. The occasional Arabic comes out elongated and emphasised “ooooooooooooh Ahlaaan!”(Hello) “ Yalla, yalla!” (let’s go, let’s go!).

Daniel Vice is the choreographer/art supervisor tiny, trim, tanned, his shoulders twist and hips bounce as he walks. “Hellooooooo, lovely to meet you, just wait here I’m going to get you a day pass” and everywhere he turns he is stopped by women with big green eyes, brown curls and shrill voices. “Danièle! Danièle!”

As with all of the crew, Daniel is immersed in the Belly Dancing world.  He is not into the European fantasy of Efnic Stuff rather emphasizing the uniqueness and art of the traditional dance. “This is not Aerobics or Erotica, it is really about the roots of Belly Dancing and with this festival we hope to show the real, the traditional belly dancing.”

“it is about the subtlety of the movement, we have to be able to see it…it is about dancing from the heart”

The first workshop Daniel took me to was for Baladi Dancing run by Fifi Ness. Baladi Dancing is a traditional, local dance form, which varies from region to region.

Each workshop was conducted as a study of bodily expression and cultural tradition - the organisers themselves see belly dancing as an inherited practice and feel a duty to pass it on. As I spend more time at the workshops I understand the deeper nature of belly dance.

Fifi Ness struts with demonstrative eyes and smile. She shows us that Baladi is something theatrical; every movement reflects an expression and tells a story. She raises her hands up in a triangle looks at the sky. Her head falls back and with abrupt sighs she exclaims “My husband has upset me today”. The other women smile. Her dance is the one of the very beautiful girl, “like the moon”, who, as walks around the village, gets things for free by flirting with the shoemaker, the fishmonger, the greengrocer and other regulars.

In the theatre room, organiser Michaella is teaching students how to dance with Wings of Isis. These are huge sashes tied to the neck. The dancer holds a wing edge in each hand and they spread and whirl. The dance is more about elegance and mystery than with Baladi dancing. Dancing with the Wings of Isis, Michaella draws cries of “Aiiwaaaaaaaaaa! Beautiful!” as the wings sweep up and around her showing fleeting glimpses of her body.

The Bazaar in the main hall had collections of tiny, noisy, shiny polyester dresses. Accessories to tighten, enhance and highlight. The tackiest, raunchiest outfits that my Grandma’s generation in Lebanon rejected in favour of the more demure French couture houses and that my own embracement of fashion as dictated by Vogue would never tolerate.  Brilliant.

With the flow of westernisation in the Middle East after the first world war, many Ottoman traditions were rejected for the European ones. By the 1950’s, Belly Dancing was seen as a dance for the vulgar and uneducated, and so the young elite of Beirut and Cairo preferred to twist to Elvis in new look dresses. But now belly dancing in the Lebanon is back in fashion; though kids learn it in specialist lessons rather than by assimilation, as they would for hiphop or house.

On the surface belly dancing can look like a lot of shimmy and shake, but beneath that lie many political connotations as well as other spiritual or cultural interpretations.

Lillee Naor, a dancer and organiser at the festival, has incorporated Belly Dancing in art psychotherapy. She believes that as an “ecstatic celebration of feminine power, creativity and sexual energy” belly dancing can help enhance self image, relieve tension through movements of the spine. “Different body types suit different strands of belly dancing, and this will even change the music a person will choose to dance to.”

The afternoon was dedicated to musical workshops run by acclaimed singer Natacha Atlas and her crew of musicians. Natacha gave a course on chants. Because of the difficulty for untrained ears to hit quarter-tones used in Arabic scales, she taught using the Hijaz scale, with had only full and half tones. She also taught the Mawal, an improvisational technique used for Baladi dancing and the call for prayer. She emphasized the importance of the shrill in the voice, very distinctive of Arabic music.

Upstairs, Aly el Minyawi, taught a drumming workshop. He is known as the best derbakkeh (aka Tablah, a drum) player in the world but has a nonchalance and a ‘can do’ manner like an Edgware Road fix-it man. Hearing him play outside the room I felt like I was about to walk into some kind of ritualistic midnight gathering round a fire. The drumming was furious, fast and steady. Inside was a cheerful smiling Aly, patiently teaching an old hippy how to drum the derbakkeh.

All these dancers, musicians, art directors, therapists, modern day orientalists were gathered together for the performance in the evening. Natacha Atlas sang and moved her hips in slow wide circles to Michaella’s dancing.

The Belly Dancing festival was wacky, quirky, sexy, intelligent and informative. Run by a small group of people who embrace the moves, the music, the clothes, the history and politics which they have innate in their identity and upbringing.

It was really a pleasure to have gone to the belly dance festival, everyone was really chatty and welcoming. I was happy discover the variations and complexities of contemporary belly dance and I’d have never thought this small group of belly dance eccentrics even existed.

 The Belly Dancing Festival was organised by Michaella, to find out more click Michaella’s Website