It’s also the pattern Sophia — as Jennifer Mollenhauer is known when she’s involved in the dance form she began studying 10 years ago — will use to introduce belly dancing to beginners at a workshop scheduled for 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday, July 18, at the National Trail Parks and Recreation Department’s Administration Building.
Cost of the workshop is $35. To register, call 328-PARK by the end of Monday, July 13.
A woman who took up ballet while at Radford College to balance her biology major’s academic load, Mollenhauer said she was still loving it years later when she walked into a belly dancing summer workshop given by former Fairborn teacher Ray-Anne.
She then encountered what she calls a “powerful dance” that swept her on and off her feet.
“It’s the one dance where I feel everything’s engaged — your mind, every part of your body, your soul, the audience, yourself — it’s everything,” she said.
“The music transports you,” she said.
After a decade working in the form, Mollenhauer said belly dancing calls for control of muscles in the shoulders, back and chest, hips and pelvis.
“You have to hinge your body in all these different spots,” she said. “And a lot of the motion comes from down in your knees,” something that requires strengthening the thigh muscles.
In the Saturday class, she’ll introduce basic movements in various regions of the body, then have her students create short combinations and a few shimmies.
The workshop is designed to provide a sample of what will come in regular classes that will begin in November.
Because belly dancing is sensual — “everybody talks about this dance as being ‘earthy,’ Mollenhauer said — newcomers are often a bit shy about trying the moves.
“Actually, they’re a lot shy,” Mollenhauer said.
But as students learn the moves, they gradually grow more comfortable.
“It takes time. Some new students come to class and think in a couple of weeks’ they’ll be great,” she said.
“It’s an exciting dance, but it’s humbling, too. It takes patience.”
Part of the patience involves growing more accustomed to the rhythms of Middle Eastern music.
As with much of dance at its higher levels, Mollenhauer said, “there’s relationship between the music and your body.”
Some Egyptian music she dances to leads to “a softer, coy dance,” she said.
Other music offers less regimented rhythms and contributes to a more fluid style.
Audiences respond to the differences in all dance forms, she said.
“I think some people forget, but you actually feel that way when you’re watching modern dance.”
Another aspect of dance is the fitness it brings to the dancer, she said.
But Mollenhauer, whose own style includes a near poetic fluidity of arm movement, said muscle development encouraged by belly dancing develops over time and her classes are not as fitness focused as classes in jazzercize.
It’s the subtleties of technique and the mastery of the art she’s most focused on — the things that take belly dancing rise above the rudiments of head and shoulders, knees and toes.
Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0368 or tstafford@coxohio.com.
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