Susan Senator

To everything, turn, turn, turn
There is a season, turn, turn, turn
And a time to every purpose under Heaven.
–The Byrds, and also, Ecclesiastes

Last night felt like a miracle to me. I went to my new bellydance class, ready to work hard, but a little nervous. Last week had been so hard, so new to me. I had never done turns before. So I had practiced them at home all week, and now I was feeling a little more confident to try them in class, but I knew something was still missing from what I was doing.

I walked in and went off to the side, where the barre was, and started stretching. A woman named Ritia came in shortly after and we started to talk. I asked her a few things about the mechanics of the three-step turn, and she answered me, but I was still confused. Then she showed me while the other women got ready. While I watched Ritia, something clicked about the turns — you are always supposed to start each turn from the same leg, so you need to do a small setting-up step in between turns. I tried this, thinking of her feet in motion, and I could do it.

The whole class then lined up in front of the huge mirrored wall and started warming up with Katia, our teacher, leading us. Katia, who is a delight, seemed more playful this week, or maybe it was that I was more relaxed, and could tell at the beginning of most things what it was we were supposed to do, but I found I could concentrate on the little nuances of most moves, the kind of accents that make your technique engaging and playful. I was so happy to be able to keep up with just about everything she had us do.

When it came time for each of us to do our turns from one end of the room to the next, I struggled a little, but was able to remember what I had just learned — with Katia coaching me. When I completed my row, Katia had the class applaud for “Lilia.” She calls me by my dance name! And I didn’t feel stupid, I felt proud. It was a truly wonderful moment.

Then we learned barrel turns, which is a gorgeous turn with a veil held behind you at arms’ width. As you turn, your arms and the veil appear to be making a fan shape, and a rhythmic flutter of colored fabric behind you. It is mesmerizing.

I could not do it at all at first, no matter how much Katia broke it down. Once she moved away from me, I asked Paulina, the woman behind me, who had it down, to show me what she was doing. She demonstrated how you just keep alternating one arm up overhead and then the other; using the veil makes it easier to get it right, we found. (My veil was pastel pink; hers was an earthy rust.) I realized that just by watching and feeling where her arms were as I raised my own, I could do it, better than when it was broken down tiny step-by-tiny step. I thought it was fascinating to realize that sometimes breaking something down into little steps hinders understanding. It makes you overthink at times.

You would think that, knowing me and how much I love to massage any point, overthinking would be impossible. And yet, in dance, it turns out that just doing may be more effective for me to learn.

I wonder. If that is true for me, could it also be true for Nat? But Nat is largely taught in a method that breaks tasks down to little steps. What if Nat needs to see the whole of something, or needs to understand the overall purpose of an exercise, for it to make sense?

I am now going to try to find ways to step back and show him things I want him to understand, all in one piece, because that might be the way he learns — like me.