Natural Rhythms> Mideastern dance provides therapeutic form of exercise for Holden teacher

The music is cranked. The repetitive beat — boom, boom, pause, boom — blares from the tape deck as the dancers shake and shimmy with the sound. Tiny cymbals crash as thumbs and fingers meet. Boom, ting, ting. Boom, ting, ting. Shimmy. Shimmy. Shake. Shake. Boom. Ting. Ting.

Bold, bright scarves — red, gold, silver, black, green, orange — swirl around the women’s heads. Suddenly, their shrill whoops roll across the music, and the dancers collapse in colorful heaps, like crayons left too long in the sun.

This is Miraya’s Mideastern dance class, better known as belly dancing to Westerners. First performed at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago by Little Egypt, it quickly became a staple of American burlesque shows.

This summer Miraya, a k a Audrey Swanton of Holden, is teaching the art of “Danse Orientale” on Tuesday evenings in the basement of Bangor’s Unitarian-Universalist Church. She began dancing in the late 1970s, then formed the Desert Dancers in the ’80s with her master teacher Abira (Harriette Fairbrother). The troupe held classes at a studio on Central Street, entertained at parties and delivered “bellygrams.”

“I never really hung up my veil,” confesses Swanton after class. “But I stopped performing publicly because I was busy with my young children.”

Swanton, who teaches Spanish at John Bapst Memorial High School, began dancing again this winter after a difficult bout with fibromyalgia, which is chronic pain in muscles and soft tissues surrounding joints. She was diagnosed with the disorder following a neck injury in 1988. Over the years she has suffered “excruciating pain, mental confusion and depression.”

“When you have fibromyalgia, you must do gentle exercise to increase the blood flow to the muscles,” she explains, her voice quivering with emotion. “But you are in pain. You don’t want to. But, you have to.

“This winter, I had a horrible flare-up brought on by cold weather, over-exertion, and depression. When my dear friend Aundrea (Wilkes) died, what little was left of my heart was broken.” (Wilkes, 32, a well-known dancer in the area, died of lupus Feb. 13.)

On her doctor’s orders, Swanton began working out on a treadmill at home. But it quickly became one more chore in her busy, hectic life as teacher, wife and mother. She found that she spent a lot of time checking her watch to see how much longer she had to exercise.

“One day this spring, I just decided to put on one of my old tapes and dance,” she recalls. “Forty-five minutes later, I glanced at my watch, and couldn’t believe that much time had passed.

“People with chronic illness often feel as if their body is the enemy, and they are trapped inside it. I felt that way. But, I came to the conclusion that I had been trying to heal the exterior of my body, when what I really needed to do was heal the interior. Dancing was helping me do that. So, I decided this class was a gift I could give to other women.”

Swanton believes that the rhythm of the music matches the natural rhythms within the body, such as the heartbeat, the division of cells, breathing, etc. That allows the music to act on the body as a kind of healing agent, as well as being good exercise and fun, she says.

Class members, bedecked in the colorful costumes and scarves Swanton has provided, gather around their teacher to learn how to do the belly roll, which earned the dance its name in Western culture.

“Pull your stomach muscles in very tightly, as if you’d been punched,” she explains. “Now imagine there is a string attached to your sternum. Lift that string. Drop it and relax your stomach muscles. In, up, down, out. In, up, down, out. Belly dancing is just ancient Lamaze.”

The women spread huge scarves across their shoulders. They hang down to their knees and extend past their fingertips. Under Swanton’s direction, the dancers swish their veils in front of their faces, backing away from an imaginary audience almost flirtatiously. The next movement is snake arms.

“Lift your right elbow, so that it is perpendicular to your body,” Swanton instructs. “Now lift your right wrist, but don’t move your elbow yet. Then drop your elbow to your side, and lower your arm. As you are dropping your right elbow, bring up your left and repeat the same movements on that side.”

The moving scarves become airborne swatches of vibrant colors tinged with specks of sparkling gold and silver. As the women, mostly middle-aged, practice the dance steps, they giggle like school girls. Some of the women are friends of Swanton’s, others are members of the women’s singing group Women With Wings.

“It’s like play dress-up,” observes Ann Fellows of Bangor, whose bright orange and green harem pants complement her hair and eyes. “I like to stay teachable, and Audrey’s an old friend. It is good exercise, and it’s easy on the joints.”

Ann Davis, who’s performed in local theater productions with Swanton, agrees. She even purchased a silver headpiece to wear to class. Its beads cover her head and hang down over her hair. Swanton dubs her Cleo.

“When I was a little girl, my friends and I used to get into our mother’s scarves and things. We’d dance and play as if we were grownups,” the Bangor hairdresser recalls. “This reminds me of that. It’s also a way of feeling free naturally. It’s very freeing to the spirit.”

Kelley Thibodeau took lessons from Swanton when she was a student at Brewer High School almost 10 years ago. Now a first lieutenant in the Air Force stationed at Langley AFB in Virginia, Thibodeau is in the area on vacation.

“I’m surprised at how much I remember. I haven’t danced since I graduated in 1989,” she says after Tuesday’s class. “Audrey always told me I have loose hips, and she was right. It just feels really natural to me.”

Social worker Peggy Genest of Hampden became acquainted with belly dancing at a Women With Wings retreat earlier this year. She did not need to dig into Swanton’s costume bag. Genest found an outfit in her own closet that turned her into a dancing gypsy peasant.

“I always have the perfect outfit,” she giggles. “It’s my thing. But I enjoy this as a kind of exercise and I like her [Swanton’s] emphasis on not being ashamed of our bodies.”

“This kind of dancing is not a tease or a come-on,” insists Swanton. “It is an expression of feelings: joy, love, sorrow, friendliness, passion, contemplation, and all the complex emotions of life. And it’s a way to celebrate the body, no matter what shape it is.”

Swanton’s class meets at 7:15 p.m. Tuesdays at the Unitarian-Universalist Church on Park Street, Bangor. For information, call 989-4093.