When Charlotte first stumbled across the art of Belly Dancing in 1989, she thought it might be a more interesting alternative to gym or jogging. So this shy and self-con
scious accountant decided to investigate this “daring option”, and very soon she found herself dancing professionally.
It wasn’t long before Charlotte was approached by an Egyptian owned company and offered a sponsorship to travel and explore her new found passion in the land of its origin. She returned from Egypt invigorated and eager to share her insights with a fledgling South African belly dance community. In 1997, she opened the reknown Jewels of the Nile (1997-2011) dancing studio, and in the year 2000, Charlotte and three of her dancers won two gold medals and a trophy at the World Performing Arts Championships in Los Angeles.
But it’s not just Charlotte’s training, experience and passion for the art form that sets her apart from the rest. She believes in a life of Authenticity, and doesn’t believe in creating clones of herself – she wants each and every belly dance student to develop and blossom into a beautiful dancing goddess in her own right.
The students, teachers and professional dancers are taught to dance from their souls and thereby express a pure feminine energy. Charlotte also does not promote the art form as a dance of seduction and is very clear in her intentions when teaching and expressing the dance. She has faced much adversity and many challenges as a result of her views and strict code of conduct as a teacher and professional performer over the years.
Charlotte’s holistic approach to life and dancing has also lead her to be successfully trained and qualified as Reiki Master (Ursui, Eastern lineage), Aromatherapist, Reflexologist; Karuna Reiki, Kundalini Yoga Teacher and in Indian Head massage. She also obtained a CIS(Honours Degree in Corporate Governance) and an ICF(International Coach Federation) Credentialed Life and Business Coach. Apart from dance instruction, Charlotte also runs Wellness and Self Empowerment workshops, including body mind awareness, BBBrobics, and various workshops including topics like Self Confidence, Values of Sensuality vs/& Sexuality, sometimes using her dancing as part of the basic tools. She has researched dance and movement therapy in order to gain a greater understanding of the amazing healing features of so many of the movements that are found in belly dancing.
For more information, visit Emotion in Motion® – www.emotioninmotion.co.za and Sacred Lotus – www.sacredlotus.co.za
Belly Dancer
by Kendall
for Charlotte
A star spangled Moment, releases
A stream of movement
That cavorts with sensual
Art. A stiff flame of middle earth
Guides the plectrum of desire
To search for a chord of
Feminine, serpentine power.
Among the costume sparkles
A jewel stands out, un-weathered
By time, or greed or jowl dribbling
Fat hands that consume and lick and
Suck the fecund feminine Flow.
Green and amber,
And showers of Venus, flow
In her skirts, as she
Rocks the primal patterns,
That leave ADD children transfixed.
She twirls, and spirals, like breezes
Among poplar leaves, she becomes
Scent and sound and love made Visible.
Still she moves, her Body
a vine that joins
The sticks and mortar of
Broken lives, into vineyards of ripeness.
She glides through caveman places,
Showing them their Stoneyhenge.
She gleams gold in shanty town souls.
A ship long lost in the blue,
She is buffeted from trough
To crest. Her salt streaming eyes,
Cajole the blind to see,
Beyond their limits,
Fasting to the obese, Braille, to the blind.
She throbs a heart sucking beat
That fills the vacuums of needy desire
With moon lit, ocean stairways
To the heaven,
Of self Love.