A Middle Eastern dance legend passes

I was saddened to learn of the death of Serena Wilson--legendary performer, teacher and popularizer of Middle Eastern (belly) dance--following her collapse on Sunday while shopping with her son, Scott Wilson. The cause was said to be a pulmonary embolism.

In the 1970s, during the big American revival of belly dancing--a revival that owes much to Serena's visibility and influence--I studied in a small, private group of students with one of her former teachers, Cia Beverly Cirel. I loved--and still treasure--this dance form and found it to be not only a beautiful, aesthetic expression, intertwining sensuality and spirituality, but also marvelous therapy for mood, figure and fitness. At the time, it rivaled only jazz dance as my favorite dance technique to learn.

Although, over time, I fell away from studying dance of any kind, when I briefly returned to it in the '90s, it was at Serena's small, impossibly-crowded studio on Eighth Avenue near 55th Street. I made sure to get there early to secure a good spot on the floor so that I could keep an eye on the Empress of Beledi, perched atop her little platform, as she broke down all the million-and-one isolations that go into making the extraordinarily fluid effect of the dance. At the time, she was no spring chicken but she ruled, and woe to any student who came in chomping on a wad of gum.

I still have my well-worn copy of The Serena Technique of Belly Dancing (1973), which Serena co-authored with her husband, Alan Wilson. I'd purchased it in 1974, the year that I also began studying how to write dance criticism. It shares shelf space with the original Our Bodies, Our Selves and Sally Banes's Terpsichore in Sneakers (1980). Quite a trot down memory lane, that shelf.

My condolences to Serena's family and to her generations of teachers, students, professional associates and many fans around the world.

(c) 2007 Eva Yaa Asantewaa