So it was that when I met Charlotte Desorgher, she had just realised this very big aspiration. He made it spectacular and people saw Irish dancing in a new way.
Since her first synchronistic exposure to belly dance in , when the then year-old Charlotte visited an Arab nightclub in Grosvenor Square and saw a belly dancer, she was determined to learn the technique, immerse herself in its history, development and culture as well as to teach it to as many women as possible for them also to be able to enjoy and share in the fun of it.
There were long tables and all nationalities of Arab men and women as well as a stage and orchestra. It was the beginning of the oil boom and the Arabs, especially from the Gulf, had a lot of money.
There too they would bring lots of singers and dancers and I saw some famous Egyptian performers there. It was very heady for me and I loved seeing the way Arabs get completely into the music. At the time, Desorgher had always dreamed of being a ballerina and had trained in ballet from the age of five, but by the age of fifteen it was clear that she was never going to have a tiny English ballerina body. At the Froebel Institute of Roehampton University, she learned about contemporary dance and theory as well as the Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham techniques.
But it was this new and rather strange dance that had captured her heart and imagination. You can have hips, a bit of belly and boobs. I just thought this is totally for me! So then I taught myself belly dance because there was nobody teaching it back in those days. Fast forward thirty-five years with a little time out, Desorgher is the authority to go to for all things belly dance. Over time, she has not only trained herself but thousands of others at the professional, semi-professional and beginners levels.
