SHERYL BLOGS ABOUT ADONIS’S.BELLY DANCING WORKSHOP

I have just started belly dancing classes. To be honest, it was the only class left with a free space and since moving in with my mum three months ago I have been desperate for a night out.
‘Belly dancing’ says my mum. ‘Do you really want to show off your stomach?’
‘Mavis says it not about stomachs,’ I explained. ‘It’s about the music.’
Mavis sporting her new aqua blue highlights said more than that, she said it was just what I needed and after one class I’d be hooked.
Mavis is a no frills sort of a woman whose idea of treating herself is a packet of fags and a half down at the Argyll and her idea of music is anything on radio 2. But since taking up belly dancing Mavis is a new woman, she wears amazing jewellery, walks like a princess and plays Hossam Ramsey on full pelt while heading into Tescos, she’s even talking of going to Egypt!
The class is held in the back room of the Argyll, a pub more known for it’s Karaoke than anything else. Shifty, the barman is opened minded in a Mid Argyll take the mic sort of way. He’s sort of guy who thinks culture is anything written in French and Gaelic is what the French cook mushrooms in, he wouldn’t know art if it jumped up and ripped his nails out one by one. But he seemed fairly impressed when I walked in clutching Mavis’s coin belt and ordered an orange juice and soda.
The last time he saw me, I was clutching a large whisky and singing ‘Island in the stream’; trying to convince myself that losing Martin was the best thing that had ever happened to me.
Martin is my ex and he along with a calligrapher half my size is the reason for me now living with a mother who thinks her wheelchair is a racing car and her daughter is a live in home help. She’s even got me cleaning for Mr Rugby the ole boy next door.
The teacher or mentor as he likes to call himself is a young Greek called Adonis. He wears tight cycling shorts with a black sequin scarf tied in a large knot over his groin; his pelvis action boarders on scary.
‘Belly dancing is a gift from one free spirit to another’, he said. ‘Let the drums unleash the woman in you’.
I watched a class of woman unleash more than the woman in them, woman I had known for years. They looked nothing like the dancers I remembered seeing in a James Bond film and nothing like the women I see in the Coop and I had trouble keeping up. I haven’t moved my hips like that since the good old days when Martin was on the scene and into Salsa.
‘Learn to paint the music with your bodies,’ said Adonis rippling his torso to ‘Hobbik Feyya Haram.’. ‘Find the dancer within.’
Adonis showed me (among other things) how to shimmy and said I should ‘do it’ in front of mirror.
‘The last time I did something in front of the mirror’ I said, ‘was in the salsa days with Martin. It required low lighting, a sense of humour and a small bum.’ The whole class laughed, even Adonis and I have been shimmy ever since.
I shimmy in the shower, vacuuming the house; even standing over a fry pan and for a while I forget that I am cleaning.
Mum says the house sounds like an Indian restaurant.
‘Sheryl’ she says, ‘Even if you do have to show your stomach keep going, that drum beat is definitely the best thing to happen to you since that tosser, Martin left and you never know you might even loss a little weight.’
The funny thing is when I shimmy losing weight is the last thing on my mind.
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Nefertiti replies
Adonis is gone; apparently he was caught in the Argyll Hotel handing out his ‘free gifts’ to a client. It was probably the only time Adonis was caught performing pelvis tilts with no Lycra....
Come to my class honey I’ve seen you dance and you are an inspiration for ordinary looking women. And don’t worry about your size, with the right costume you could, carry it off.