Believe it or not you don’t have to show your belly in a belly dancing class. You can wear what you like — from sweatpants to spikes —- in Brooke Robitaille’s classroom.
Robitaille, who runs Divine Image dance studio, says she has the capability to teach women how to take control of their bodies and the way they feel about them.
“Belly dancing makes women decide that they want to live a high-quality life,” Robitaille says. “With belly dance specifically, there’s hormones and chemicals that are released for women that actually promote mental wellness to a really high degree.”
Robitaille says she studied in the gender and women’s studies department at Carleton before shifting her focus to a dance that she describes as “fantasy dance.”
She mixes modern dance, tribal belly dance, ballet and liquid pop-locking to create a dance that is “highly spiritual and highly theatrical.”
Robitaille translated the theory she learned at Carleton into dance, explaining that her dances address issues like gender equality.
Her goal is to help women “understand how to approach their sensuality” because being attractive is not just about a woman’s physical appearance, she says.
Her audience will get this impression and recognize where gender falls within her dance, Robitaille says.
“I want women to realize their full potential and gifts,” she says.
“To me, that starts with a complete acceptance of oneself.
“I’m also very into women’s rights and equalities. This is the time in our society when women will be growing to very high potential and I want to be part of that movement.”
Despite having no recollection of putting on dance shows for her family as a child, Robitaille says her mother reminds her that she’s been active in dance since she was three.
“When I hear music, I come alive,” she says.
“I can’t control myself and I want everyone around me to dance too. I want them to feel the happiness that I feel, the aliveness that I feel.”
Robitaille says she views dance as a universal language that is free from boundaries and judgement.
“People become boundless and limitless when they dance,” she says.
It is this notion that spawned her willingness to teach this dance to others.
Not only can she move her stomach from its rightfully hidden spot to the side of her body, but when she’s not dancing, Robitaille works with Girl Guides and fundraisers that promote strength in the female mind and spirit.
Robitaille says she believes the way society communicates to women about their bodies is skewed and harmful.
Her classes teach women to re-learn how to govern the treatment of the body and how to love themselves, she says.
However, since she also uses belly dance as therapy, she believes this extends to any sex.
“I approach belly dance for trauma: women with miscarriage, abortion, rape, because they start to disassociate from their body and trauma gets trapped in the body,” she says.
Even men who have been abused or molested have benefited from dance, she says.
“I’ve had men tell me how this dance has helped them own their body too.”
Belly dancing has been recently misinterpreted and commercialized, she says.
It has been modified from the original Middle Eastern dance as a result of foreigners misinterpreting it as erotic movement.
Although, not everything about belly dance has been sacrificed, she says.
But, it’s important to remember that, to a typical North American, belly dancing seems highly sexualized as if it’s for men, “when really this dance was actually made for women, by women, and it was actually danced only in front of other women,” she says.
And Robitaille praises the dance’s overall effects on women.
“It’s the best type of yoga for the womb,” Robitaille says.
“That’s where our energy comes from -— our creative energy. Our hormones are directed towards this area, so imagine what we’d feel like if we ignore that.”