GG

About GG

I have no dance training pedigree. I’m simply a woman who has never been able to keep her feet still when the music starts to play. Several years ago I began gravitating to “world music,” and found myself playing my CDs late into the evening, dancing in my home, eyes closed, transported to other places. Then, the day of my birthday our newspaper did a 2-page spread about the belly dance scene here, and by the following day I was in Cory Zamora’s studio taking the dance lessons I had given myself as a gift.

I danced stiffly, my zil playing sounded like a train wreck, and I chafed at having to learn steps. And I didn’t understand middle-Eastern music one bit. My first teacher, Laura, sensing my frustration told me what La Meri had said about studying dance: “Technique--bodily control--must be mastered only because the body must not stand in the way of the soul's expression.” I began listening to middle-Eastern music exclusively, committing to a yoga practice, and trying to learn something about the cultures whose dance I was studying.

Then a funny thing happened – it opened my heart to people, their histories, their art, and their spirituality, who had always been so remote from me. For that alone I am grateful to the dance.

Gradually I began to hear the subtle complexity and beauty of middle-Eastern music while my extraordinary teachers, Laura, Bay’la, and of course, Cory Zamora, gave me a vocabulary of steps and techniques, refined my ear and showed me how to express the music with my body, or, as Cory would say, “dance my own dance.” With the depth of instruction and support I receive my dancing continues to evolve and my creative expression continues to unfold. For that I am grateful to Zamora’s..