By Mikayla van Loon
Celebrating International Women’s Day (IWD) is about surrounding yourself with other women to share experiences and stories.
This was the motivation for Japara Neighbourhood House’s belly dancing class on Wednesday 8 March which saw over 25 women of all ages come together to move their bodies.
Humm Coaching’s Kelly Koolen, who helped organise the event, said it was about bringing women together while allowing them to do something for themselves and try something new.
“We thought it would be something a bit different and fun. From my perspective it’s also about being able to connect directly with yourself and a way of doing that and expressing yourself is through dance,” she said.
“Particularly belly dancing, it’s just really freeing and flowy…even though you’ve got a room full of people, you can just be free.”
Being led through the movements by longtime belly dancer Ranee Hanlon, she said often belly dancing can be daunting but by simplifying the movements and allowing each person to add their touch, it makes it more mindful.
“Everybody has their own little touch to it and everyone had a smile, they were doing something different. They built up my momentum and it was beautiful,” she said.
Allowing young and old to sit or stand and join in, Kelly said it gave women a chance to connect with and appreciate each other.
“Being a community house we have so many different people coming through but the big majority are women and it’s really good to be able to recognise that, to celebrate ourselves, to celebrate each other and to be able to recognise all of the things we’re doing,” she said.
“But also to just put that time for ourselves and have one hour where we can be free and have the catch ups afterwards, meet new people. It’s been a nice little thing for our community to open up the space and give them an opportunity to try something new.”
Japara community engagement coordinator Christie Humble said with more data released about the gender pay gap and how predominantly it is older women who are struggling, community spaces are more important than ever.
“It’s really important to us as an organisation, we are specifically trying to engage with women who predominantly may be left out of the workforce because of caring duties, because they can only work part time, because they’re looking at cutting down on their work because they are nearing retirement age as well and making it a supportive and flexible environment,” she said.
For Ranee who hadn’t taught belly dancing for 13 years, she said often now it would be refined to the kitchen, just swaying to music.
“Once you have those moves, any music, you naturally just have to start swaying,” she said.
But more than that Ranee said belly dancing or any form of dance can be rather meditative as long as people leave thoughts with them at the door.
Kelly and Ranee said because of the success of the IWD event and with the interest from so many people, Japara is considering adding more workshops or classes to the timetable.
