As I look across the animated circle of dancers practicing a move, my body is covered in sweat and my thoughts are preoccupied with the same challenges reflected in the faces across from me. If you look down, in their bodies is the expression of where their minds are in making sense of their challenge. You will see various expressions of the way their minds have allowed their bodies to execute on the challenge, to attempt its correct presentation.

For me, there are no other types of movement that challenge in the way bellydance challenges a performer. The privilege of being able to learn from Suhaila, a performer nurtured from a very early age by highly artistic parents, touches my life in a way that goes beyond the fascination of how to deliver and present the layered rhythms and movements of bellydance. Suhaila's teaching and wisdom is like being part of a Renaissance, a Renaissance in my spirit "for the creative". At the beginning of each class, as the music begins to pulsate, I understand why Suhaila is one dancer that everyone stands still to watch at Rakkasah, an annual bellydance festival here in the Bay area every spring. I understand why she continues to attract an incredible following of talented dancers.

It is one thing to be able to perform, it is entirely another to be able to give to your students just enough so that they are empowered with the right tools to move forward on their own. Suhaila has the gift of both. She is able to truly bestow skills to students, without demanding ownership in a way that inhibits the dancer. In the time I've studied with her, I've also watched her grow; a true sign of a teacher is one who can learn from her students. Suhaila has recently taken a more formal approach to her work of preparing the world, slowly but surely, for bellydance to be accepted into the mainstream. It is a pleasure to be in synch with something (Suhaila Salimpour School of Dance) that establishes guidelines and standards for such a sensual art form. Guidelines and standards -- it reminds me of my professional life in marketing with a technology company! But unlike data and information standards, Suhaila is championing various elements of this dance form in a way that will cause it to be embraced. At the other end of the spectrum, Suhaila as I understand her is the always one of the first to receive, embrace and incorporate the unusual, the avant-garde. She champions standards but is undaunted to walk new creative paths, and I have seen these new paths express themselves in her work just since I've been a student. I watch, wait and continue to learn with excitement, anticipation, appreciation and joy in my heart to see where she, it, and I end up. I wait as these creative juices within me percolate and brew. Let the Renaissance continue.