At the time of writing this I have clocked well over 2,000 belly dance jobs, now spanning some 7 years. Until recently most of these have all been in small to medium sized restaurants run by ethnic people, mostly Turks, Greeks and a few Lebanese. Cedars was typical of one of these, I would work at my regular place where the setting was a somewhat rigid, a 20 min belly dance "show" and after that the Waiters Show, and then my boyfriend would drive me to Cedars, more or less about 1/4 hour away. The owner,Voilid, a rather portly looking fellow, would always have this air of "everything is difficult and hard work" fussing over this that and the other. Up and down from the kitchen (which was in the basement) he would come, portering one huge plate of food after another, as if there had been a famine, whining about something all the time, meanwhile various waiters just ignoring what is going on and going backwards and forewords. In this atmosphere it is hard to establish when to even start, what music, how long or anything like that. 

Voilid always rummages around this huge box of cassettes, no boxes, hundreds of them, he brings over whenever he goes back to Lebanon which is frequently. He picks out one and pops it into the player, and then he turns up the volume, deafening everyone, In this small restaurant he has mounted these 2 huge speakers and there is no question of turning the volume down a bit so that you can think straight. High profile fast stuff, it is. He opens this door to a large cupboard stuffed full of tambourines and darboukas. He takes out this tambourine and walks around playing it. Forget anything you might have learnt on the numerous workshops about taqsuims, baladi, the drum solo, the entrance and what not. The music is beaty and fast, and there is no other way but to move fast and in a bold manner. Forget about your solo, from the word go you are meant to get people up. Bit by bit people seem to be waking up. Up to that time everyone looks the same, just neutral, bit of chatting and tucking into food. Looking just like any other restaurant, just normal. The layout couldn't be worse for dancing in, a long thin layout with a narrow strip down the middle where all the traffic goes, barely enough room to squeeze past the backs of chairs, forget about a dance floor area. So I do whatever I can in any bit where there is a square foot available. Track after track of fast, loud stuff, no letup. 

Voilid has this air that you have to keep going, fast. And slowly and imperceptibly, things are livening up. One or two people get up upon plenty of prompting from both Voilid and me. They sit down again only to be replaced by others who would get up now and then. Voilid is sweating profusely, he is covered up completely in his chef's outfit and his head is glistening with sweat, I am not, but still the sweat starts coming down my forehead, my headscarf stops the sweat running into my eyes and holds my long hair away from my body, otherwise it would glue down like clingfilm. 

Forget your 20 min belly dance spots, this is non stop, fast and has been like that for the last hour nearly. Can't believe what is happening next though. Voilid is beginning to smile! Especially when I dance very fast and the music is very beaty. There are clusters of Middle Eastern women who now are beginning to dance. I love that bit, they have this air about them, they seem completely at ease physically with themselves and each other. Posy but in a nice way. They would elegantly hold themselves and do one move and subtly vary it just and in a way talk to each other via their moves. Then abruptly they would all sit down. Meanwhile the men would get up and dance in a completely different way, in almost a folky and extrovert way. 

As the long evening goes on the number of times people are sitting down is getting less and less. A hubble bubble pipe seems to add to the authenticity of it all. There are more and more smiles and people seem to be smiling for longer rather than just every now and then. The loud high profile music keeps going. Now people are doing a bit more than just smile. Here and there bits of clapping, the men holding their hands outstretched and the women doing more and more of their beautiful and elegant simple moves. Even my boyfriend now is standing up and starting to clap instead of slouched in a corner somewhere. And then one of two of the men start saying something in Arabic that is of a celebratory nature, like Yalla or something like that. Another one echoes it a bit later. They start doing this more and more frequently. Then a darbouka comes out of the cupboard and one of them starts playing it. Their smiles then start turning into large constant grins. Next one of the men just bursts out laughing, just like that and other does likewise. They are now up and they stay up. Meanwhile the women now are up as well and going at it in their way. A few of the much older women also now get up and, huge and unfit as they must be, they have this timeless elegance that is a joy to watch. 

Bit by bit Voilid marshals the various waiters to push tables to the side and amongst the moving bodies takes a table and turns it upside down on top on another in order to get some floor space. Chairs get turned upside down likewise. 

Then the women start adulating and that is really amazing! This haunting high pitched vail that ripples throughout and mixed in with constant clapping, tambourines, darboukas and constant laughing, you wonder what are they all celebrating? Just being alive I suppose. Whatever it is it is just so amazing! This strong connection that these people have with each other means that they spur and feed off each other, if one smiles the next smiles as well, over what I don't know and expect there may not be anything anyway. If I see a group of people laughing on the other side of the road, I can't but smile myself, even though I haven't a clue what they are laughing about. Everyone was up, dancing and in a genuine way really enjoying it. Some sort of Universal Joy taking everyone over. No one felt left out or judged. No one was dancing one their own. What ever even my boyfriend who can't dance for toffee was doing was joyously received and the Arabic men would shout out Yalla and spur on his inept wigglings, they were genuine, whether you dance badly or skillfully you are dancing and that is all that counts. 

I can honestly say that over my whole dancing career, dancing at Cedars, yes I found it tiring at times, but the most satisfying and enjoyable of anything that I have ever done. I worked there about 2 or 3 times a week for about a year, then Voilid went back to Lebanon and Cedars closed. 

Over the next few years this experience in various forms repeated itself over and over again. At this place which I work at now, all day the Turkish chefs and waiters would have been working, on their feet for 12 hours or so. At the end, the usual thing, one of them rummages through a box of tapes and comes up with something and off the waiters would go arm in arm round and round non stop, laud and energetic. Logically you would have thought that they would want to slouch in front of the telly but no, the party is off. They would do this energetic jumping up and down, and the women would do this very interactive dancing with each other, there would be this directness, locking to each other in a sort of intimacy that we Westerners would find quite uncomfortable. Again this Universal Joy. No matter how tired you may feel, something takes over and you feel happy to be alive. The older ones seem to know what it is all about. High profile music, non stop, keep with each other, bit by bit the atmosphere builds up and like a fire slowly starting but once under way it fuels itself. 

In the first place I worked in, small family Turkish restaurant, husband, wife and 2 grown up children all working at this place plus all sorts of in-laws that would drift in and out. AT the end of a long day, off they would go, a hapless odd English couple were still eating their desserts. The owner/chef in one swift and quick move pulled the chair on which one of the couple were sitting on, backwards as if on wheels, pulled them into the action, no choice you are in the party. Usual mix, loud fast music, non stop, end of a long hard day, no logic to it, should be resting and sitting but no, bit by bit more and more smiles and exhausted and shattered as you may be, some sort of high takes over. I remember even to this day that most incredible "HIgh" I felt. It was I think the first time I ever came to the restaurant or the 1st day I worked there, I can't remember, but anyway I was in amongst them as they were doing all this, some sort of "electricity" shot through me and I felt at one with everyone around me and so happy and high. Daft really, but maybe not, a sort of group euphoria generated by the much greater closeness that you tend to get with non Western people with each other. 

This experience I got countless number of times, ranging from Nigerian parties to arrangements where I would dance for women only groups at weddings. Same sort of idea here as well, though with the women there I felt that I had to be more careful as to what I would wear. I loved working with the women as their dance style was so fluid and they would be so effortless and direct with each other, but at the same time I would feel somewhat out of it but that was really my problem, I found their directness somewhat at odds with my own European isolatory upbringing. At one Asian party of just women, they wanted me to dance in the nude, don't quite know which ethnic grouping this was but several of the women tried to wrest off my bra, wouldn't take no for an answer. So it goes to show how little we Europeans really know of Ethnic culture. 

Makes sense really all of this. Over centuries people would work all day. Just repetitive and physical work. Imagine agricultural work or making something before the Industrial revolution. As Human Beings there would be this capacity to use Dance in a sort of Celebratory Way just to be Alive. At the end of a day you would get together with your family and those with whom you work with and get onto that high. There would no entertainment you would go and watch, no telly or anything like that. So you would need something like this for even basic survival. 

Even if the celebrations took place at weddings and similar functions. Do bear in mind extended families and everyone knows everyone else and therefore all the extensive networking that would take place. So there would be a wedding that you could go to just about every weekend if you wanted to. I found this when I was living in Nigeria for a while. Count in all the different reasons for celebrations, such as name days, events to do with particular religions and of course birthdays. Right to this day I remember the massive celebrations in Oshogbo in Nigeria to celebrate the coming of the rains. That evening I wrote the following ............

Hundreds of Chiefs waft in and out clad in sequens - colour, hats and robes, characterful faces, healthy happy but sombre, teeth missing, small heads, so many drums, bells, wallowing sticks to play them, embroidered beautiful, alive, feeling, chattering together, bells and Chakerays shuffle like stones on a tray, Hello old woman, happy to pass a smile with you, wemen with babies moving and flowing to the rhythms, mother and baby dancing in spirit with the music, wind round the alleys and markets, fish - p[phj, real peppers, strange shrivelled black things, bare feet, hundreds of people.. packed in a small area effortlessly move agily around the ground piled in heaps, cassava, poundered yam, sweets, fish, every inch utilised, how do they sell anything - too many sellers no buyers, goats tethered, sleeping wallowing, harmless, accepted next supper, colourful black brown white peppered, chickens foraging, so many new things, so much to take in, so remote to us, so alive and vibrant, no comparison in our square boxes repressed background, you haven't partied until you've experienced this, swarms of people float along with drums and crates and laughter and women like butterflies dressed the same in tribes congregate together , all head for the mountain in the distance beyond the town in the green of the hills, drummers + shakreys + chiefs and all make like ants teething along a crack, happiness, overwhelming, glad we are part of it, seemingly unobserved float along with all the rest, hot and sticky we've made it, cool breeze, strange goings on the top of the mountain, no longer flies on the wall, attention transferred to us, our moves are copied, people like sheep, off down the mountain people and children running swarming, stumbling down the mountain, panic and urgency the rain is coming, wait for the rush to pass, back to the town, wow, dancing people line the streets where have they come from, dancing and laughing, bottoms swaying in unison, feet shuffling in rhythm, alley and windows and streets and shops and roads crammed with vibrant moving, dancing singing a living happy mass of people packs of similarly dressed women floating together, birds of a feather, feel wonderful this is the party this is a true festival go for it enjoy yourself, this is where we want to be, dark alley people watching, hunters are coming people are running and panicking and fleeing move out of the way, we don't understand, feel worried, overwhelmed, lets go, jump in the car, drive through the masses, faces hands beating on the car, hunters block the way, claustrophobic, lets escape the car is like a spoon stirring a thick stew, its thinning we're free, its raining, the King can come down, Power and Union with elements, it must rain Sadness and relief to leave. 

During my stay in Nigeria there was one festival and gathering after another, small and big. 

Yes at the larger functions, usually musicians and other entertainers would be brought in. Dancers far less so, especially in the Muslim countries. Nevertheless whether these were there or not, the People would Dance. Yes dance and dance, and yes Dance for Joy. I think in this way Dance is the most wonderful and basic human activity which I think we are rapidly losing in the West. At the start of the 20th century Burlesque brought entertainment to the masses, it developed into various branches and into the dazzling Hyper Shows from Cirque de Soleil, West End in London to Broadway in America, then film and TV brought it to cinema houses and homes everywhere, then video and finally the Internet can bring to your computer monitor and speakers anything imaginable in the whole world at the click of a mouse. But none of this can even remotely match the atmosphere at Oshogbo in Nigeria or the buzz that I felt when in a back room at this little Turkish takeaway in Nottingham all these Turkish men were partying together. 

This I feel is real Dance done by people ever since time immemorial. Along the way cultures came and went, institutions and dancing of different sorts was labeled and maybe the hardest label to attach was Belly Dance.