Photograph by George Sakkestad
Longtime belly dancer 'Celena' puts an unusual spin on the art by incorporating swords. She'll be teaching beginning belly dance at Saratoga's Hakone Gardens this June.
'Mysterious' Celena finds art in belly dancing
Los Gatos belly dancer now teaches others this exotic art form
By Shari Kaplan
The home of Los Gatan "Celena" can be fairly noisy at times, as she shares it with a dozen birds that squawk, chirp or talk on a whim; four guinea pigs that grunt and purr; two chinchillas that bounce around their cages at night; and a lighthouse statue that sounds an hourly foghorn like a coastal grandfather clock.
The ruckus falls into the background, however, when Celena puts on some music, dons her resonant finger symbols and begins to practice her favorite art form: belly dancing.
It didn't start out as her favorite. In fact, she used to find it shocking.
The first time she witnessed belly dancing was in the early 1970s at a Middle Eastern nightclub in San Francisco's North Beach called The Baghdad. The 19-year-old newlywed attended with her husband and another couple and was sure that they would never get out of the smoky, exotic place alive.
"And then, when I first saw the belly dancers, I was freaked out. I couldn't believe someone was doing that! I was totally naive," she recalls with a smirk.
Celena did, however, notice in the belly dancers a skill that she herself possessed without even having to practice: the ability to do belly rolls, in which the stomach muscles undulate up and down in a rhythmic pattern.
A few years after the nightclub incident, she decided to tag along with a friend who was taking a belly dancing class. "I got totally hooked on it from then on," says Celena, who thinks she must have inherited her mother's dancing feet.
"My mother was a professional dancer; she did ballet, Russian-style dancing, flamenco--she loved dancing. She was a flapper girl, too," Celena says. "She gave it up to marry my dad."
To feed her love affair with belly dancing, Celena took various classes over the years, learning the finer points of footwork, body positioning and use of accessories--like veils and swords--that this ancient Middle Eastern art form entails. She also learned to sew her costumes. As for the finger symbols--also called zills--she says the ability to play them came almost instinctively.
Now, more than 27 years later, Celena teaches other women who, like her, are intrigued by belly dancing. She chose her nickname for the performing circuit because of its exotic sound.
"My real name is Lorraine Lewis--nothing very mysterious about that," she says, laughing.
Along with her classes, which she teaches in public and private throughout the Bay Area, she also runs Troupe Seléne, which performs traditional and cabaret-style (more flashy) belly dancing at ethnic festivals, banquets, birthday parties and other events.
"There's every shape, size and age in belly dancing; you get a good cross-section of people. Some women have stardom in their eyes, some just want to dance for their husbands, or to dance for fun," Celena says.
"One of my main goals is to educate people that this is a legitimate, classy art form. The 'sleazy' belly dancers give the rest of us a bad name," she explains. "People who think it's vulgar don't understand it, like I didn't understand it at first. Belly dancing is a beautiful, ancient art."
Celena will be teaching beginning belly dance classes starting June 3 at Hakone Gardens, 21000 Big Basin Way in Saratoga. Classes meet every Monday from 7 to 8 p.m.; the cost is $64 for an 8-week series or $10 per class on a drop-in basis. For more information, call Celena at 408.376.0185.
Saratoga, California Since 1955
