A Funny Thing Happened While I Was Bellydancing...Vol. 3

All professional performers must be able to think on their feet. This goes double for bellydancers - we are all about that improv. In this blooper reel of a blog series, we shine a spotlight on some of the most ridiculous moments of our careers. Let the stories begin! 

COUSIN IT

Dancing at one of my favorite spots in Athens, Greece, I still had lots of energy left for the drum solo. I was hitting the accents hard. At one point I did a big hair flip, bending forward all the way for that DUM DUM. For TEK, I rose up with that fiery little-mermaid-hair-splash. This was a great show, with a captivated audience. I reveled in that awesome feeling. 
Soon, something felt different.  Was I just light-headed? As I looked around, I realized people's eyes were fixated near my feet. I glanced down - and to my horror, discovered my ponytail hair extension stuck on the sequined patterns on the skirt. It looked like Cousin It from the Addams family, a hairy creature doing its own dance on floor level. This was now an unintended duet. What's a bellydancer to do?  I was on such an endorphin high that instead of embarrassed, I actually felt empowered. I stuck my fingers in my real hair, releasing it from those useless hairpins and elastics, and tousled it free while violently shaking my head. The audience suddenly refocused on me…the liberated wildwoman I had become! For the grand finale, I bent down to remove the stray ponytail off my skirt, and took a gracious bow - with a bunch of fake hair in my hand. 
Next time, I pinned that pony on hard. 
Athena Najat - US / Turkey

These days, Athena holds onto her hair 24/7

AND NOW, AN ALLURING DANCE FROM THE DESERT

Our group was performing at an open-air festival in Tallinn, Estonia, as part of a diverse lineup. A few minutes before we were to take the stage with our swords and canes, it started to drizzle. We were hoping it would just be a few drops, and proceeded. We were wrong. Soon it was pouring. Wet skirts clinging to our legs, makeup running down our faces, we bravely performed for a handful of umbrella-clutching people. Strangely enough, it was the most liberating and refreshing performance ever! We had no complaints whatsoever - and hey, we got paid.
Kaidi Udris - Estonia / Egypt

Kaidi in dry weather

ME SHAKE BOOBIES

I used to perform at a restaurant which had three dancers on Saturdays. One night there was a group, who for some reason assumed we dancers didn't speak English - when in fact two of us were American and the remaining Brazilian was of course fluent in English. In their minds, we were some poor fresh-off-the-boat Eastern European girls, who had to do this kind of work to survive. This may have made sense in a country like Egypt, but not so much in Atlanta, Georgia...The customers dissected us as if we weren't there, making all sorts of unpleasant comments. They worried my boobs would fall out of my "too small" bra - it fit just fine, thank you very much - so I made sure to shoulder shimmy with gusto every time I passed by their table. 
Omega - US

Omega, just chilling in the Land of Opportunity

LAST WOMAN STANDING

My show at Turkish restaurant had been going well - until a fight broke out between two groups of clients. Men stood up to throw punches. In a blink of an eye, it was Wild West in there. Shellshocked, I continued to dance in the safest corner. The owner had to empty the entire place to put an end to the mayhem. Music still playing, I collected my things. The waitress wiped the blood off the floor.
Suvi Safira Turunen - Finland 

Suvi and a peaceful banana

BLAST FROM THE PAST

Two years ago, backstage before the show, I was asked for my cassette.
Suvi

Pro bellydancers, submit your funny story at zainadance@gmail.com

Loss of a Language

There's a special type of shame an immigrant feels as she returns to the homeland, attempts to speak, and sounds like a moron. Every time I go to Finland, my mouth is at first incredibly clumsy. I struggle piecing together a sentence of more than three words. Those four, five syllable words, that the Finnish language is so abundantly blessed with, get stuck in my throat and come out mangled and maimed. All the conjugating just kills me.
Humans have migrated since the dawn of time. There's nothing special about leaving one's country. But unlike most immigrants, I left alone, with no one to speak my language to where I went. It was the prehistoric times before smart phones and social media - I didn't even have a laptop! Without Skype or Facebook newsfeed, my exposure to Finnish was close to none. My brain deemed it a thing of the past, and began letting go. I'd once known this language inside and out, confident of comma rules like a little nerd. I'd enjoyed its nuances and quirks, expressed myself and identified with it. Now, fresh off the plane in Helsinki, I stutter at the train station ticket counter, and raise eyebrows buying a pre-paid SIM card. There's something wrong with her is written all over the faces of those I encounter.
To make matters worse, I don't always remember or know how things work. The conductor has to explain the transfer several times before I get it. I arrive at the supermarket cash register with my vegetables unweighed, and hold up the line. I'll never forget the time I was stuck at a train station without cash - they wouldn't accept my 200 Euro bill. My money was no good at a grocery store, nor at a bar. All it got me was suspicious looks and runaround. Finally a kind taxi driver took me to a big supermarket equipped with bill scanners. Feeling lost and humiliated, I promptly burst into tears on the backseat. There's no place like home.
Until it happened to me, I didn't think a few years abroad could have such an impact. Why would anyone believe I wasn't faking it, then? Ah, she moved to America, and now she thinks she's better than us, I imagined people imagining.
The scenario repeated itself throughout the years. I landed all embarrassed, then got cozy with the language, and even learned a new word or two. (Such as some, pronounced saw-meh. Get it? It's short for social media.) As soon as I gained some confidence, it was time to leave. I'd return in a year or two, back in square one.
Nearing the ten year mark of immigrant life, I was done with the shame. I decided my shaky Finnish was excused once and for all. Now, I stutter with my head high. What a relief.

This past summer, I visited Finland with my Swiss boo. We planned to spend a day in Helsinki, then visit my family in the East of the country. There, we'd rent a big-ass RV and drive up to Lapland, loop around the Atlantic coast of Norway, and return via Sweden. I'd never brought anyone to Finland, and I was excited to see the place through the eyes of a tourist. It had been two years since my last visit, and the thought of pronouncing those long words and filling in the clueless foreigner was enough to tire my tongue.
"I'm not going to be your damn translator", I told the boyfriend. "Speak for yourself."
And what do you know: we received excellent service in English everywhere we went. The level of skill was what I'd expected, but the willingness to engage was a pleasant surprise. Scandinavia switched to relaxed and friendly English without missing a beat.
"How long have you been abroad?" asked the RV rental guy.
"Twelve years."
"Wow. No wonder."
That bad?
Back in the hometown, a friend's uncle offered a blunt analysis of the state of my mouth.
"Oh yeah, you've got that Yankee accent. T's and D's blend into one. My daughter sounds just the same."

Three months later, I returned to Finland in an entirely different state of mind. I entered through the door of my childhood home, leaving it cracked open for Death. Graciously, she waited outside for some hours so I could spend a little time with the living. Then she quietly let herself in.
Since I hadn't been gone for long, getting my Finnish on was easier than ever. For what I lacked in fluency, I made up in not giving a fuck. If I could make myself understood, it was good enough for me. By now I knew returning my Finnish to its former glory would require months of constant exposure - and double that time for tactful writing, or reading anything beyond a magazine without constant retakes.
In my old bedroom, I dug into the closet for some vintage treasures. It turns out I was an avid writer around the age of seven. I authored several books, made out of scrap paper, with plot lines varying between remotely clever and downright bizarre. To boost my credibility, I'd thrown in some fancy grown-up words, the meaning of which I hadn't quite understood. From there the learning curve went up, and it went down. Now I'm back to not having the complete command of any language.
At the morgue, I placed two white roses inside the casket, on behalf of my sister and I. Rest in peace dear Dad said the little card. I'd written it in the language of my childhood, so my Dad would better understand.
"Could we have a moment", I asked the staff, so my mother wouldn't have to speak.
"Of course", they said, and stepped outside.
In this most surreal of situations, I felt a misplaced jolt of pride for having so eloquently cleared the room. I was quite the linguist.
One of those days, my sister had a strange outburst. She accused me of being rude and bossy. I was at a loss. She gave me an example.
"Can you see if Mom needs help outside, since you have shoes on?" I had said, in a totally unacceptable tone.
Really?
True, I hadn't said 'please', since such a frivolous word did not exist in Finnish. I shrugged the incident off as a bout of death induced stress.
On the train to Helsinki, I had what Oprah calls an Aha! moment. When asking my sister to step out I'd translated the request into Finnish word by word. CAN YOU SEE IF MOM NEEDS HELP. It didn't work that way. The result was too formal. To me it sounded polite and proper, to her it came across as demanding.
I thought I was all fluent and shit. In reality, I'm tone deaf.
A while back, a Finnish expat blogger was wondering if one's first language could ever be replaced by another. I thought of replying, but coining up a coherent response in Finnish felt too difficult. Doing it in English, I feared, would have seemed pretentious and self-serving. The answer as I know it is that without maintenance and effort, it can and it will. However, losing ground on language does not equal losing identity. The self is not married to a title, a profession, a nationality. I am my thoughts and my beliefs, but the language in which I dress them is irrelevant.

The edge of Finland is not the airport. Finnish chatter accompanies me all through the first flight, out the plane and into the terminal. There it disappears like ashes into the wind, eluding me until the next visit. Before that, a few words may tease my ear on a Manhattan street, or the tourist trail of Southeast Asia.
Finnish thoughts pop into my head, becoming less frequent by the hour. In two days, they're gone. 

How to Tell You're in Finland

1. It's July and you're wearing a jacket

My plan to visit Finland mid-July seemed foolproof. For the first time in a decade I was going to my home country smack in the middle of summer! What could possibly go wrong?

The weather, of course. The temperature hovered below twenty degrees Celsius - low sixties Fahrenheit - with some rain and thunderstorms. I mean, what the fuck? This was summer? Everyone kept telling me how the entire June had been hot, which was a cold comfort, literally.

2. The sun seems to never set

It's easy to lose track of time, when 10 pm looks like a cloudy afternoon. Me like!

3. Every single house comes with a sauna

And every kitchen with a coffee maker, a built-in cutting board, a built-in dish rack inside a cupboard over the sink, and...

Back in the day, babies were born in saunas

4. It speaks fluent English - until

You know that arrogant European tourist, who expects people to speak their language wherever they go? Well, you won't have to learn Finnish to know what the hell we want from you. It's a fringe language and we know it's our job to make ourselves understood. It's common for kids to study several languages in school. English is expected of everyone - you'll be hard pressed to find anyone under 50 who cannot converse in English. But some things will inevitably get mixed up. Like, when "valleys" is translated into "hills". Oh well.

5. You get off the bus at  "Kuusmiehenkaari - Sexmansbågen"

What? How are you supposed to read that? The names of everything are long and exhausting, twice (Finnish and SWEDISH! Useful, right?). It's kind of like trying to read Turkish or Malay. But fear not, getting around is easy enough. In Helsinki, all the buses and trams have electrical signboards announcing the next stop - so you only need to remember the first few letters of your destination.

I'm sure orange was a really hot color in the 80's...but I would have gone with plain silver

6. People pick up the phone by saying their name (when they don't know who's calling)

Saying just "Hello" would be considered kind of rude. Only a hillbilly would do that.

7. It plays by the rules

Whether it's waiting for the green lights to cross the street or buying a tram ticket when no one is checking...it's a pretty obedient society. Street crime is close to none. In the small towns no one would snatch your bag if you offered it. You really don't have to give a shit about your stuff.

8. The ladies in huge black skirts and frilly tops ain't headed for a renaissance fair

They are Finnish gypsies. Oh yeah. It's a small ethnic minority here. Traditionally horse traders, fortune tellers, and artists, these days the gypsies have mostly main-stream professions. The men wear black pants, and match them with a seemingly random top, like an Adidas jacket. There's always been some friction between gypsies and the general public, but it's nothing compared to the discrimination and human rights violations that go on in central Europe.

9. The cashier says hello! No exceptions

You know the kind of service you get in the average supermarket or pharmacy in NYC? I'm talking of the people who take pride in giving customers attitude because they really don't give a flying fuck about their job. You simply cannot find that here.

Rudolph is food.

10. Reindeer meat, rye bread, licorice candy, sour milk...

...is sold in every corner store.

11. Just when you give up all hope, summer appears

And then it's all ice cream and short shorts in a warm bright night. Awesome!