Belly up
Update: Penny performs! Get the full story here
Penny Lipman is determined to dance. As a life-long enthusiast of everything Egyptian, Lipman has had belly dancing movies, books, and costume pieces lurking around her home for as long as she can remember. “I’d always wanted to learn,” she says, but a full-time hobby as a master costumer for international sci-fi and anime conventions left her with little time for other things. Ironic, then, that costuming has now given her the best excuse ever to take lessons.
Together with a friend, Lipman, who is over fifty, started masquerade balls at the annual Polaris Sci-fi/ Fantasy Convention. Each year has a theme (this past year was Victorian Vampire Reception), and in two years’ time, the masquerade theme is Arabian Nights.
“I’m damned sure I’m going to dance,” Lipman says with conviction. “I’m going to belly dance at that ball.”
Lipman knew of studios that taught belly dancing, but hesitated to sign up, thinking you needed years of training and to audition to join. Then, irony struck again: While reading the newspaper about a year ago, she came across a photo of a friend of hers. Unbeknownst to Lipman, her friend was a professional bellydancer.
Her friend directed her to Arabesque Academy in Toronto, where Lipman discovered how easy it is to start belly dancing. “I never considered going and taking lessons before,” she says. “I didn’t realize it was just so easy to drop in.”
In May 2008, Lipman took a drop in class that teaches the basics, called Foundations. She signed up for the term classes that night. Now, four months into the Beginner I course, she takes a weekly dance lesson that has her shimmying and slinking around a mirrored studio in a coin-covered hip scarf. And while she doesn’t feel age holds her back, she does wonder if it might keep her from going forward: “I wish I’d done it a long time ago, because I feel I’m only going to progress so far.”
