Every Wednesday night, 80-year-old Margaret slips on her long gypsy skirt and ties a colourful scarf tinkling with coins around her hips.

Likewise, 14 year old Cassie ditches her school uniform and homework, and puts on her bling. Both Margaret and Cassie and hundreds of other women across Canberra take part every week in a dance that women all over the world have participated in for thousands of years: bellydancing.

Bellydancing is perhaps Canberra’s best-kept secret. In dance studios, halls and community colleges all over the city, Canberra women sparkle and shake and shimmy their thing. I had a chat with Fran, co-owner and teacher extraordinaire of Bellyup Bellydance school based in Tuggeranong. Fran started bellydancing when she first moved to Canberra in 1996. Living with her husband and two growing boys, Fran wanted something feminine to do, some ‘me’ time (at least for one hour a week!), so she enrolled in a bellydancing class with a friend-and absolutely loved it. She met Donna in one of her classes, and together in 2006, they started their own bellydancing school called Bellyup Bellydance. “One of the other women in our classes suggested the name,” Fran said. “It’s tongue in cheek. It says who we are and what we do, but we also have a sense of fun.”

Fun is definitely what you’ll have when you attend a Bellyup Bellydance class. I attended classes for over a year and I enjoyed them immensely, thanks to the friendly, easygoing, supportive teachers and students. But there’s a serious side to it all as well.    “Bellydancing is a woman thing,” Fran said. “You learn to love your wobbly bits. Our society is constantly bombarded with ridiculous images of skeletal-looking women…but bellydancing says that it’s alright to have that bit of extra padding, or extra upholstery.”

That’s the wonderful thing about bellydancing. You learn to love your body, no matter what size or shape or soft bits you’ve got hanging out. Bellydancing, of course, has always had its stereotypes and provocative connotations. It’s often been viewed in highly sexualised, negative terms-but after attending just one Bellyup Bellydance class, you don’t get what all the negative fuss is all about. Yes, bellydancing is sexy and sensual, but as Fran said, “it’s really all about us women appreciating and loving our own bodies and being in control of them. Our modern way of living can be very inhibited and uptight. But bellydancing is about letting it all hang out and just doing it…bellydancing celebrates our natural movements. It gives women a whole sense of empowerment.”

And that’s especially important for our teenage girls and young women who have been led to believe that being thin is the only right and acceptable way to be in our society. Bellydancing teaches them that “it’s alright to have things on our bodies that move and jiggle,” Fran said. “We had a fifteen year old girl who came to our classes and told us that her friends and classmates thought she was fat. She told them that she didn’t care because her belly could do tricks!”

Over the years Bellyup Bellydance has had hundreds of women enrol in their classes-women of all shapes, sizes, and ages. “Nowhere else do you get such a mixed group of women,” Fran said. “We’ve had 8 year olds start with us, and Margaret is in her 80s-she took up bellydancing when she was 75.” The Bellyup Bellydance troupe (the group of more experienced bellydancers who perform at festivals, fetes, and private parties) also consists of women ranging in age from 14 to their 50’s.

Bellydancing can be done at any fitness level and at your individual capacity. Fran and Donna teach students the core bellydancing movements step by step, but not in isolation. Students actually learn the movements through choreography. After all, you don’t learn basketball just by dribbling a ball around in circles. You learn it by actually playing a game. And so Bellyup Bellydance teaches students how to dance.

Bellyup Bellydance runs beginner and intermediate classes three nights per week (Tues, Wed, and Thurs) during school terms at the Tuggeranong Arts Centre. Bellyup Bellydance also runs classes via the Live Life Well studio located at the Ainslie shops (classes here are held on Monday and Wednesday nights, and on Tuesday afternoons). You can also attend one of Bellyup Bellydance’s famous haflas (or bellydance parties). The haflas are held twice a year at the Weston Creek Community Centre and they’re a fantastic opportunity to see some amazing bellydancing performances as well as getting up there and trying it out for yourself. The haflas are fun, relaxed nights of dancing, music, food, and connecting with other women. The next hafla is on Saturday, October 27 at 7pm.  If you’re interested in shaking your wobbly bits with Bellyup Bellydance, then go to www.bellyupbellydance.com for more information, or find a class that’s closer to you.

For me bellydancing made me appreciate myself more as a woman. I also made some fabulous new friends, laughed lots, kept fit, wore some fantastic bling and gorgeous costumes, challenged myself out of my comfort zone, and yes, I learned to love my wobbly bits, too!