This weekend Suhaila asked me, "When did you start The DragonFlies Belly Dance Company?"
I said, "About 5 years ago."
She said, "Where did you start it?"
I said, "In my living room."
She said, "Where did the name come from?"
I said, "My daughter made it up."
Madelynn was 7 years old at the time. We were living in a 30s style bungalow house in East Campus. We had transformed the living room into a dance studio the year before. I started teaching classes in the house after the birth of my second daughter, Isadora, who is now turning 7 this year. It is odd to think that the company is nearly as old as my daughter. I have birthed, nursed and managed to raise up a healthy 7 year old and a 5 year old dance company.
I was single when both of my daughters were born. During both pregnancies, the relationships I was in, with their respective fathers, crumbled. So, by the time they were born--I was solo both times. When Isadora came along, I was a bit more freaked about having two kids by myself than I was the first time around when I was younger, more free-spirited and more ignorant about the unfairness of life in general. Nonetheless, I bucked up and decided I would do it the way I wanted to do it despite the odds against me. I committed to nursing Isadora and staying at home with her until she was two years old. This was important to me. Teaching dance in the living room became one of the many odd jobs (including as close-as-you-can-get to sweat shop sewing labor) I performed at home to make ends meet. They barely met most months.
Teaching dance came out of necessity for me. I had been dancing for nearly 6 years at that point (I calculate how long I do anything based on my children's ages. I started belly dancing when Madelynn was a baby and she is now 13 years old, you do the math). It was a passionate hobby for me, but my dream was not to become a professional belly dancer. I was on the road to PhD Professor. Unexpected pregnancy, extreme poverty, lack of child support, an economy designed for a two-person income, and a stubborn refusal to put my babe in daycare put a bit of a damper on plan A. (I am not opposed to daycare by any means. Madelynn had gone to daycare as a baby. But this was my second baby and the last baby I knew I was every going to have. It was a choice I made for my personal values at the time.)
Teaching belly dance was fun. The living room studio started with random old mirrors I had found here and there that were supposed to fit on dressers or decorate bathroom walls. It was so bohemian it is hilarious. Isadora toddled around our feet in class. I could only get about 7 or 8 people in class at one time. I didn't have any idea where it was headed. My main priority was to be able to stay at home with my baby. In spring 2002 she was less than six months old and I performed with her wrapped up in silks and strapped onto my belly at Earth Day. Madelynn danced with me too. It was so sweet. I will never forget that dance.
The DragonFlies came about a year or so into teaching. I realized that I was starting to really love teaching and I wanted to bump it up a level. I wanted a troupe and I wanted us to perform out in town in a more organized way than I had done before. I wanted us to prepare choreographies ahead of time and rehearse them well. That sort of thing. I was starting to take this whole "belly dancing" thing more seriously.
Madelynn had been calling our house the DragonFly House because it was owned by the infamous Grace Ho of East Campus. She was a Chinese immigrant who, in her heyday, had owned a very large portion of student rental houses in East Campus. Her husband had died many years earlier in the house and still wandered the wood floors late at night. The basement was full to the ceiling with all of her belongings, as well as enough supplies to hold us over 3-5 years after a nuclear holocaust if we did it right.
Grace Ho was called the "Dragon Lady" by many who knew her because of her witchy ways. So, Madelynn called our house the Dragon-fly house. I was sitting on the basement stairs pondering what to call my new dance troupe. I was staring at an old Chinese novel that was stacked on top of a random box and was starting to fall apart. Madelynn said, "Call them The DragonFlies." And that was that. She has always been good at naming things.
