By Sarah Godcher-Murphy
Berklee.edu Correspondent
December 2005

	See Lauren-Michelle dance at Turbo Tabla's web site.
	Photo by Liz Linder

When she first took up belly dancing, Lauren-Michelle Boldt was a skinny 17-year-old drummer from suburban Dallas, a bit of a tomboy, and the center snare player in her high school marching band.

"I was very much one of the boys," she says. This might be hard to believe, if you see the pretty blonde, now in her early 20s, dressed in full belly dance regalia: flowing skirt, glittering jewelry, bare midriff, and long hair reaching down her back. Take her word for it, though, and try to imagine the poised dancer as a boyish adolescent in a band uniform. It is very hard to do. Such is the transformative power of belly dance.

"Belly dancing really helped me enjoy being a girl," she says. "In our Western society, women are told to keep everything in. Belly dance is really liberating. It allows you to enjoy your curves."

Playing percussion helped Lauren express her love of beats and rhythm. She started learning concert percussion in the 6th grade, and a few years later branched out to conga and marimba, as well as African and steel pan drums. But drumming only partly fulfilled her rhythmic drive. Dancing proved equally important – which makes perfect sense to Lauren.

"In other cultures, [music and dance] are so close together. You can't have one without the other," she says. "You're never going to understand the music unless you can dance to it."

Her studies at Berklee reinforced this idea. In Afro-Cuban and African drumming particularly, every rhythm is intended for a specific dance. When teaching new rhythms, percussion faculty members Ernesto Diaz and Eguie Castrillo would use videos to illustrate these dances. And in Joe Galeota's West African Drum and Dance Ensemble, students learned to perform the dialogue between drum calls and dance movements.

Galeota's class was instrumental in Boldt's development as a performer. "With the West African group, every performance I just loved it more and more, and was learning more and more," she says. "And I got to see and feel how much I was growing with each performance."

In fact, she credits this and other Berklee ensembles with helping her to overcome the stage fright that would turn her stomach inside out before a show.

"I started looking forward to performances and got really excited for them," she says.

Photo by Liz Linder

Boldt was as committed to her dancing as she was to her drumming. During her first few semesters in Boston, she made weekend trips to New York City to study with accomplished belly dancers. Then, a dancer she knew, Amar Gamal, relocated to Bridgewater, Massachesetts, and Boldt began weekly studies with her, taking long rides on the commuter rail, then walking more than a mile to the teacher's studio.

Her background in percussion made at least one aspect of belly dancing much easier. The zills, or finger cymbals, dancers wear were a breeze to learn. "It took me about an hour to be solid. But it takes other dancers years," she says.

"Sometimes your body limits you, because you've never used your muscle right there, so you don't know it exists," she says of dancing, though she could just as easily be talking about drumming.

"But sometimes it's in your head. You're definitely exposing yourself when you dance like that. And you have to let everything inside of you come up, and usually there is something in the way."

Boldt's dance teacher recommends using positive mental imagery to overcome those psychological obstacles. For instance, she advised Boldt to imagine herself as a royal butterfly when making an entrance for a particular dance.

"She meant that I should feel really proud and beautiful. But sometimes I'm scared to, even if it's just in front of her," Boldt says.

	Photo by Liz Linder

Lately, though, Boldt has been feeling more exhilaration than stage fright. She recently auditioned in Los Angeles for the Bellydance Superstars, an international dance troupe founded by music business impresario Miles Copeland. Dubbed "the Riverdance of belly dance," it is by far the world's highest-profile belly dancing gig.

"It was so much fun. There was a lot of pressure on me, but I didn't feel it at all," she said.

Eighty dancers participated in that audition, and Boldt was one of the final 12 selected as finalists. She hopes to find out soon if she will join the Superstars (and her teacher Amar Gamal) on their world tour.

Meanwhile, she performs locally as a solo dancer and with the ensemble Turbo Tabla. Boldt is one of three belly dancers who perform with that group, which is led by musican/composer/dancer Karim Nagi. Nagi's most recent album, Belly Dance Overdrive, was released last year on Copeland's label. Turbo Tabla's style may be best described as "traditional meets techno," a blend of centuries-old Arabic melodies with contemporary dance hall beats.

Boldt also teaches at an after-school arts program in Newton and at Amar Gamal's studio in Bridgewater. Her students range in age from 6 to 60, and their ability to master the dance varies almost as wildly. But what they all have in common is what Boldt first learned when she took up belly dancing in high school: Bellydance is about feeling comfortable in your own skin.

And for that, they have an excellent teacher.