The Belly Dance Club will host a Belly Dance Night at 9 p.m. April 15 in the Fred Meyer Lounge, sponsored by Health Promotion and Student Wellness and the Linfield Activities Board.

The event will include a dance performance by club members and a belly dance workshop.

“We’re doing a group dance and then a couple of solo dances. There will be a workshop section in between,” senior Meredith Sagara, president of the Belly Dance Club, said. “There will be a little bit of history at the beginning, too. It’s a fun event that we’ve done every year.”

Senior Linh Tang, a member and former president of Belly Dance Club, said students attending the workshop will have a chance to learn how to belly dance.

“We hope to have a good turnout for this event since it will be on Friday night and last week has been long. There will be other activities happening on campus, but we think this event will draw a good amount of students’ attention,” Tang said in an email.

The Belly Dance Club offers belly dance lessons, weekly meetings and performances. They start the semester learning basic dance steps for members without former knowledge of belly dance and then focus on choreographing dances for performances. Sagara said that club members do not usually join having previous belly dancing experience, although some have dance backgrounds.

“Experience is not the most important thing in joining the club,” Tang said in an email. “It is the passion that counts. Belly dance, just like other dances, is about expressing yourself and your emotion.”

Sagara said she thinks that club members receive a sense of empowerment from participating in the club.

“Belly dance is exotic and fun. It was originally a dance for women by women, and only women watched it. I think the girls really enjoy practicing and just having fun,” she said.

Sagara said that the number of club members has declined since she was a freshman, but the group continues to practice and perform.

“When I first joined, there were about 20 people in the club. We started out last semester with about 15, but we’ve had people quit since then. I’ve tried to keep consistent with our practices and performances because the club had such good organization when I joined my freshman year,” Sagara said.

The Belly Dance Club performed at the Linfield Annual Cultural Show hosted by the Linfield International Club in Ice Auditorium. The club has also performed at Dance Ensemble, Parents’ Weekend and during Friday Night Live events.

Sharon Gollery/For the Review
Sharon Gollery can be reached at [email protected].