Together, they are a collage of American females: grandmothers, mothers and daughters. While they dance, they call to one another in a high-pitched trill of the tongue or with the “yic-yic-yic” of a coyote call. “Ai-wah!” they exclaim, using the Arabic word that translates as “wonderful!” or “yes!”
	Some of the women play zills, or finger cymbals, that chime along with the beat of the music. Others wear belts slung low on their hips or bras decorated with gold or silver coins that jingle, adding percussion to their sinuous movements.
	Click here for a 3 Mb video clip of a belly dancer Easter Wood, their troupe leader, joins the women dancing on the floor. She’s dressed in a gypsy costume: a white peasant blouse covered by a bright blue bra, a ruffly peach skirt with a multicolored wraparound skirt worn over it and a white, fringed scarf around her waist. You have to get close to see signs of her 52 years—tiny lines that crinkle around her blue eyes when she smiles and a touch of gray at the temples, her thick blonde hair bending in waves that barely brush the top of her waistband.
	As she moves among the women she reminds them that the words of the song, playing on a boom box in the corner of the classroom, are from the Song of Solomon: “the only part of the Bible written by a woman,” she adds in a soft Texas twang. The song celebrates a woman’s body: “Thy belly is like a heap of wheat set about with lilies, thy navel like a round goblet.” The psalm is a fitting accompaniment for a dance thought by many to have origins in ancient ritual celebrations of womanhood. History documents choruses of young girls and women dancing and singing together in front of shrines in Greece, in front of the temples in India and in the harems of Egypt. But this particular group of belly dancers meets each week to practice in a large classroom at a community college in Lane County, Oregon.
	Click here for a 2 Mb video clip of dancers in a circle The women are drawn to the troupe and the class, sometimes on a whim, after hearing about it from a friend or seeing a public performance. They stay because within the circle of the troupe they find a private and beautiful place where women are celebrated. With the ancient ritualized dance they can be sensual in a modern world where femininity takes a back seat to careers and where women hide their sexuality for fear of harassment or rape. Here the outside world, where the impossibly boyish figure of Kate Moss is the ideal, doesn’t matter. They can ignore the voices that say only skinny women should show their bodies; they can shake off the societal pressure that make some women starve themselves to death.
	Theora is 50 years old. She says she has never had a perfect body, not even when she began belly dancing ten years ago. She is an imposing woman, large all around with a stature that doesn’t match her delicate facial features. Her pale blue eyes are fringed by light blonde eyelashes lit by a slow-breaking smile.