(Cover photo by Denise Marino at the Rakstar International Belly Dance Competition, October 2, 2016. Phoenix-al-Danse’s Group Competition choreography).
After two months of no periods, intense shimmy rehearsals, a callus on the bottom of my foot and stress to spare, our day of reckoning had arrived. Six months had passed, this journey beginning in the midst of an Arab culture and dances class, I, was chosen among many for this important feat in our innocent lives. And so with a nose stuffed with boogers and a waterfall of blood down my pants as soon as that plane reached high over Florida, U.S.A. we arrived to our final destination: the RakStar International Belly Dance Festival.
No pressure of course. My group and I were only going to take workshops with some of the world’s best belly dance teachers, vulnerable to any screw ups in front of other fellow bellydancers, carrying the Puerto Rican pride on our young shoulders (there was only one other Puerto Rican dancer aside from the five of us there, Yesenia, she’s awesome, and Linda Zaré, Dominican and part of our corillo), dealing with sharing a single apartment among seven people and competing against a super bad-ass Japanese dance team in the competition finals. The dead eggs flowing out of me were the least of my worries.
The good thing about going to these dance workshops with a whole team is that we become each other’s support group. All of us (except our teacher of course, she was much more experienced in these high strung dance classes) were inexperienced, unused to learning a four minute choreography in the span of 2-3 hours. And it was even more unnerving when you’re running late into your very first Master Class workshop with Tito Seif, one of Egypt’s most prominent male belly dancers (and a piece of sweetie pie, charismatic, ray of sunshine, shimmy wrecking man) and you pop up in the middle of his choreography, unprepared for the three hours of fast paced belly dancing instructions, all the while trying to find a good spot for you to both see the instructor and not crash into any of the other dancers there thinking up the exact same strategy… Well, I for one felt a little bit like a hot mess without the hotness.
Quickly, I realized: a workshop is never the same as a dance class. I was indirectly expected to know so many advanced techniques, to catch on the way this or that move was done (unless about 80% of the class was lost, or someone asked questions, there was no break to fully grasp what we were supposed to do), to have a keen eye as to which muscles the teacher was using to make this strange little hip lift from the back and then just drop it like it was nothing, to be protective of my space or else someone else would take it (or I would take someone else’s if I wasn’t careful with how far away did I have to slide off in a mid-air hip drop), so on and so forth. It was a lot to take in, and the adrenaline could only last so long when I felt like I was doing everything wrong and couldn’t keep up with the class, not even if I had actually gotten there on time. It got to the point of desperation and bewilderment: How the hell can I learn all this? Can I even learn it all?
But then I would look at my groupmates, just as lost and bewildered at the whirlwind of dance steps as me, and I couldn’t help but crack up laughing and just try to go to the same lost flow of the rest of the dancers present. And, as intimidating as some dance instructors can get to be, they would surprise us by letting us take a group picture with them, remembering these chaotic yet wonderful experiences together.
(Introducing Phoenix-al-Danse (left to right): Patricia Infanzón (me), Amarilys Romero, Diana Soto, Ismael Joel Sánchez and Winic Pamela Fernández. Accompanied by Yesenia (far right) and the wonderful Tito Seif (middle).)
This was our adventure in Miami Beach: getting up early, eating whatever breakfast we could find, realizing that there was no need to speak English since nearly everyone there would give you directions in Spanish, and thanking the Great Universe for the fact that the workshop was in the same hotel building that we were staying at. It is all part of the experience (being a heavy sleeper, mornings are never the best time of day for me so this was a very life-saving fact). Sure I was sick and bleeding then, but dancing my heart out with the likes of Munique Neith teaching us a samba and belly dance fusion can actually make the gnawing pain in my lower belly lessen (and taking an Advil first thing in the morning helps with the cramps).
We would have workshops in the morning, half-hour lunches before the midday class (to which some of us blessedly missed for the sake of our tired souls from trying to take in Amir Thaleb’s techniques and diva-like moves) and a final run in the afternoon. And by Thursday night and every night until the end of the week, we had competition and gala shows with performances by some of the best dancers out there (Latinoamérica REPRESENT!) which lasted into the wee hours of the morning. Only to start the whole thing over again the next day.
In other words, RakStar had every intention to be a complete immersion into the belly dance world and see how long you could last until the bed was your only salvation for your overexerted body.
Luckily, we were in Miami Beach, which meant there was a beach right behind the hotel. A beach that reminded us of the warm waters of the Caribbean we were so used to (and the tan I had missed since the last time I had caught some sun had come back after 4 months of having vampire pale skin. For someone who lives so close to the shores of Puerto Rico, that is a devastatingly long time not to face the fifteen minute drive into Piñones). So the beach was a relaxing diversion from the high strung sha’abis of Anna Borisova and her flipping hair that would actually leave Willow Smith awestruck.
(Foto by Diana Soto de Jesús. Me and Pamela can strut it when we’re not aware of a secret camera phone aimed at us.)
So there came a time in which I had to decide ‘Do I keep going to every single workshop and die a little every day or take some time off and limit myself to those workshops I really wanted to take?’ I wasn’t the only one who thought so (Amarilys, tu compañía en la cama y con el chocolate caliente es lo mejor). I was still sick and pads could only keep you safe for so long so I did just that, went only to those workshops I knew I really wanted to take and those that I could take without being overwhelmed by exhaustion.
By Sunday, all of our little group was chill. Even our teacher Diana and dear Pamela, mother to us all, took only the morning workshop and spent the rest of the afternoon together at the beach, regaining energy, getting ready for the calm before the storm: the Rakstar Group Competition.
Nerves are the worst you could ever have in you. They tormented me to the very end of that competition; to the point I was in what we Puerto Ricans call “el Planeta Mofongo”. To this day I still don’t know what force kept me going across that stage and hip slamming into the air without dropping to the floor or making a slip and fall right onto the judges’ table. But guess what.
We won second place.
Pictures of us in our costumes swarmed our phones that night, and, sure, the skirts and bras and galabeyas smelt funky but hey, that’s the smell of success. I had just danced with all that I had, never dropped my tahtib again (that’s another story), our only male groupmate had impressed nearly every one of the judges in our evaluation sheets and I had just shimmied my heart out in a skirt that would give my dad a heart attack if he saw the cut it had up my thigh. And later, I had the gall to yell out to the presenter, a fellow Boricua, while I was standing in the middle of the stage, holding our star-shaped trophy, that we didn’t just have mofongo at home but “¡Alcapurrias también!”
And to think, this all started after our dance class in the university, joking about a sha’abi song about crabs in the dessert when we thought it was actually about alcapurrias.
(Foto by Winic Pamela Fernández Rubel (I’m the grinning one at back to the left, with the braids), just before getting on that fateful plane into RakStar Land. I love you guys so much.)