Kenophobia: Fear of voids or empty spaces

It is not open spaces I fear, there is a comfort in seeing the horizon, the blanket of stars, even something can be divined from a grey mass of clouds ahead. It’s the space inside, what remains when all has fallen away, the blank page, that repels me like an electric fence. While I was on retreat this summer my mind came up with all kinds of excuses why it could not move aside for silence, why I should urgently make my way another place, anywhere else. It flitted with agility from one problem to another, reminding me constantly what I should be worrying about: in the purity of morning amnesia, in the space between wakefulness and sleep, as other peoples lips moved in conversation, fluttering over their shoulders. To protect itself in the wilderness my mind held up its own mirror, like Alice's, a fantasy world where my identity was solid, my social standing unmovable, my rightness rocklike. I began to miss London, a place I had fought to carve an identity, where people knew who I was. The things I had attained there shone brightly in my mind like fools gold.

And yet in the real mirror I was becoming less and less defined. My hair grew long and I wore shorts and t-shirts for comfort, I was less and less a belly dancer, a business director, a Londoner, a follower of trends, and more and more a human, lighter from putting down my armour, and more fragile also. I no longer felt it necessary to define my "special" qualities to the world in return for its attention and recognition. Instead I became more free. The blanker my internal page, the quieter my mind, the more my creativity would bubble up in the form of words, ideas, sketches, colours. The effort and burden of perpetuating my London identity fell away. I craved to come home, I craved to stay in the stillness of meditation. I was happy and then sad. Everything made me laugh, I would cry over nothing.

I didn't know who to trust, the old me? the newcomer. The anger, the tears, the laughter. My teacher says the mind cannot be trusted, it is fickle, changes from minute to minute. But the soul just knows. It can sit silently for milennia with its knowing, listened to or not. In the power vacuum, in the intolerable emptiness, my mind, Bushlike, began to impose decisions (its sweaty hands gripping the sides of the rollercoaster ride) justifying them with a story, stamping them with a reason, filing them under right/wrong. Soon I was leaving the retreat centre, the relief of taking action, of a plan amidst the inertia was refreshing. I felt confident to be returning to the familiar.

On my return outside my window rain fell from the light of a street lamp. I re-entered the life i had built and found it to be inanimate, museumlike. My heart was homesick, searching, wandering in the no man's land, yearning for peace, for the kind of satisfaction that can only come from a quiet mind, an inner place of peace. A place I cannot not decorate, disguise or avoid. A simple uncluttered place of no furniture. A place were time expands and where the soul can rest for a while. Sometimes this is a place to be visited in sleep. But sometimes, magical moments of calm infused with rising joy take you there. And you just want to sit and sit, aligned in the silence of the place, forever, like a mobile phone on its charger, like a rock in the sun.

And yet my teacher says, if you are happy and satisfied in this moment, the future takes care of itself. Joy is not born of reason. It is something that rises from the playfulness of the soul and expansion of the moment. You can attach joy to a certain kind of weather, a certain form of love, a word, a goal, a compliment, even an inner peace. Or simply be it, now, exuding it, radiating, glowing, for no reason! Which makes me laugh - such a simple freedom! Reason is a liar, emotions do not have to follow its regimented lead, they are free of attachment and can arrive on the wind, or the lips of others. Or even emanate unfathomably from the deep silence of the inner space, its eternity like a rocking chair, empty and desolate.

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
Some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
Who violently sweep your house
Empty of its furniture,
Still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
For some new delight.

— Rumi

I'm fine. How are you?

I've been thinking about what happens here, at the retreat centre in the mountains where I'm staying, and why I like it so much. I feel so much a part of the group here and that I don't need to have anything special to offer other than my presence as a human being. If I just begin to think about something I need within minutes someone walks by who can help. And its being helpless that facilitates this.

In London I'm fine. That's my catchphrase. I'm fine because I have my car so if I need to do some shopping or get to a class I drive there. If I need some food I walk out of my front door and I'm on the High Road, metres from the supermarket. If I need to know more about something I google it.

I'm fine. And yet it is a lonely existence, never needing or asking for help. It really hit home for me yesterday when I needed to pitch my tent. I was a little anxious about doing it on my own and finding a good shady spot under the trees. I began to hatch plans as to how I could get this done without asking anyone: pitch it myself in classic super-independent style, look forlorn while carrying the tent past a crowd of people, do without etc. All the indirect, complex ways I am used to concocting.

In the end I simply mentioned it to the friends I was sitting with and soon I had an entourage of three guys, one carrying the tent, one holding my hand and leading the way, the other figuring out the route to a good spot. When we found the spot, after dismissing several less superior possible sites, I began to read the instructions and direct them on how to pitch the tent. But one of the guys just motioned to me to sit down quietly next to him. "Let them do it" he said. And I sat and watched my tent being put up without interfering. It was an uncomfortable experience at first and then I began to relax a little when I saw that the guys didn't mind and perhaps were even happy to help. (Although I couldn't help myself from inspecting the final product.)

In some ways we are isolated here, stuck up a mountain away from the convenience of civilisation, and in others we are a community helping each other get what we need. If we only ask. It's a great lesson for the English, with our excessive politeness and "don't go to any trouble." In our Mr Bean mad way we would rather walk miles into town than ask for a ride and have to, as a frend put it, "push yourself forward".

And yet its these very things, the small things, that make up the satisfaction of life. The moments of real connection with a person, when you really take the time to hear them, the laughter with friends, the gentle wind through the vanilla scented trees that you can hear before it reaches you. These moments give us co-ordinates on the grid from which we can survey the world, they define us as a necessary stitch in the tapestry. They help us sigh an enormous sigh of relief. As in the Arabic/Sufi chant we repeated as a zikr (which means to remember) the other day here. Min ana, ana huna. Who am I? I am here. And that is all.

How long until you can dance like you?

A common question people ask is "how long until I can dance like you." I can't teach you to dance like me because my dancing is me. But I can guide you towards dancing like you. And with each step you take with more confidence, the more your personality will permeate through the everyday mask you wear. The more fun you have with the movements, the more teasing and playful you allow yourself to be, the more your personality will come out to play. And the more you look internally, the more inspiration you will find bubbling up to be expressed. My Sufi teacher used to talk about expansion and contraction, going into the self and then in performance, protraying all that you have found. Like a treasure hunt, you have to find the gold first before you can tell people of its astonishing beauty. This is the hidden side, it is a part that some people are interested in and others are not.

Technique is the structure on which all this hangs, its is the safe framework, the pole around which we swing. I find I have signature moves for certain moods, I turn a lot when I'm angry, I do figure 8's when I'm lost, camels if i feel I need to impress more. But when I am turning with the veil, or immersed in the slow music of the flute or the violin I simply follow the next impulse, my body leads me, using moves i already know and some i don't, my mind is quiet. And this is what some people call being in the moment - I am not planning the next movement, nor influenced by the previous one.

Improvisation is self-gratifying but the opposite, choreography, has the advantage of order and repetition as well as a clear connection to the music it has been written for. Not only that - it is a repeatable, teachable experience. I used to hate choreography. The first show I did I tried to hide and dropped out of the dress rehearsal, when both of these failed I sat stony faced on the stage, aghast at the need for me to contain the limitlessness of the improvisational dance into a simplified right-left-right combination. But strangely, to me, the audience enjoyed it, and I learned that this was another aspect of the dance, a discipline. That people moving together, synchronised to each other and the music can be satisfying and beautiful. In the same way as a friend once told me drummers have to divide their minds into sections to focus on each aspect of the rhythm, so I had to separate my mind for technique and yet pour in the enjoyment and flow from the freer, more nomadic side, taking it to a different place each time.

It takes a while to be able to dance a choreography and emote at the same time. It takes a lot of practice, until you are so secure with it you no longer need to think, like - and I hate the overused metaphor - driving a car, at this point you can really trust your body - you muscle memory - and your mind is free to enjoy the experience. It is satisfying to allow the body to take control and it takes trust. Trust that the mind doesn't need to filter everything first. That the movements can be absorbed by the body, that the feeling can be transmitted straight from your heart without interpretation. Because after all this is what dance is. If we wanted to sit down and explain something we would. What we want is to reveal something of ourselves, to talk in a deeper, simpler language, to be witnessed, to be seen for who we really are, to be understood, to touch people.

My teacher never spoke while he was teaching. He would just smile a cheeky little smile and demonstrate the movements. The advantage of this was that I got to discover my own way, to figure out the dance for myself. The disadvantage was I never got to map my body clearly, to feel precisely what muscle was moving what. And this was eventually what liberated me. So technique is now my refuge and improvisation is my journey, when I need to go travelling away from familiar shores I take the audience with me.

"Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it."
- Rumi

"My biggest fear is getting cold and not having a cardigan"

Yes, it sounds like a quote from someone on Big Brother but was in fact me last weekend. I was fussing around the room getting my costume bag ready for our gig later that night, as I said it one of the girls from my dance company burst out laughing. And that is when I realised that company is not just nice, it's essential. As a performer I have been working alone for nearly 10 years now. I don't even think about my routine of getting made up, putting my bag together, checking the address and shooting off to a gig - where I stand alone waiting for my invariably late performance. It has become quite predictable, except of course for the moment when I step on stage, or into a room, and my dancing and my smile take over.

Yet, here were two girls for whom the experience was totally new, putting on their make up for the first time, giggling and bubbling with excitement. And not only that, here was a big mirror for me, to show me how to laugh at my eccentricities and to enjoy the process, even the preparation, after all you can when you are all in it together. We left the house, me with cardigan under arm, and piled into the car to pick up my drummer from the station, where he had been "waiting 45 minutes, but really no problem" and then it was straight for the East End, with Ken (the Satellite Navigator) calling out ambiguous directions.

It was nice to have a full car, and my car is a Micra so it really was full, my hand knocking on a drum as I changed gear, the girls squashed up against their costume bags as they chatted and thrilled. With this many people around you it is much easier to get a sense of what you have achieved, how others have been influenced and inspired to take part and how we were bringing this gift, this swirl of energies to a party somewhere in E1, like an explosion of joy. There is an anarchical quality to this that I love, shaking up a previously staid event and getting people bouncing up from their chairs, naturally, not forcefully. For many years I sat in grey offices wanting to burst out of my chair and get everyone moving and here we were doing just that. There is something very enticing and hynotic about this ancient dance form, the irresistable rhythms, the openness and joy of the dancer, who herself is enjoying moving to the music and interpreting it with her body - sexy, feminine and empowered.

You can't fight it, man or woman, even the most sourfaced non-participative people get a little bit fluffed up around the edges. It is acccepting of everyone, in particular the older members of parties often are most moved to dance, or those who are very shy, or never usually dance. I love dancing with the grandparents, they have an innate respect for dance, whether they take your arm and dance 1940s style, as a war veteran wearing his medals once did with me at the Royal Festival Hall, to an entranced audience, or whether they throw their stick aside, grab a napkin and dance in their country's national style. For them dance has a cultural place, is not a joke or an embarassment. They are not afraid to move.

As it happened it was a fairly sombre crowd, the space was big and the energy diffuse, people had appearances to keep up, but my entourage (well 2) cheeky dancers carried on sparkling like roman candles and working the space fearlessly, revelling in their own star quality (they had a video camera following them around). They kept my spirits up and we sprinkled some of our magic dust - some over people and some onto the floor when the people, too afraid to accept, moved away.

And this I suppose is a culmination of a plan I made subconsciously years ago as I tore myself away from my teacher's retreat centre in the mountains, if I was going to go back to London, I was going to bring the mountain to the people. And that it seems, is what I did.

Memories of Morocco

The man with the banjo sits by the entrance to the salon. His eyes are deep and glistening, his smile toothless. His long blue robes are indigo in the twilight. My group is seated outside, by the edge of the swimming pool, and above us is a rectangle of sky. Around us Westerners in their chinos and white t-shirts converse softly, sitting in couples and groups at the wroughtiron tables, while dark young waiters call to each other over their heads.

The banjo player is singing a lament; he is engrossed in the sadness of the song, pausing only to inhale. He catches my eye and nods, crying out accusatory lyrics to the darkening sky. The music drives forwards, never quite repeating. My mind follows, curious, open like the night. My heart follows, aching, our cup is full, now empty as the music peaks and falls.

Between songs Ali, our guide, beckons him over to sit with us. He smiles shyly and addresses us. He tells us we are all friends, that even though we may find ourselves far from each others' eyes, we will always be close in our hearts. His eyes fill with tears and Ali explains that this man's best friend, a snake charmer, was killed by his own cobra a few days ago. As Ali talks, the banjo player blinks and smiles at each of us in turn.

Ali asks him to play another song at our table and we clap to the music, our enthusiasm hovering on the brink of good manners. A passing waiter picks up a clean plate and a fork, and puts his foot up on a leather cushion, joining in with a berber rhythm. Our clapping becomes heavier, our concentration more intense.

Two more smartly dressed waiters appear, one sings and the other drums his hands expertly on the edge of the table. As each new man appears he says "bon soir" politely to the group then throws himself into his chosen implement and rhythm with abandon.

As the music reaches its crescendo we smile at each other, friends, strangers, our hands stinging, there is great joy in the air, and we are in awe of the simplicity of the recipe.

Found, one belly dancer

We all want to be found. We all want to walk into a room and feel comfortable there. More than that we want to be loved for who we are. For some of us the journey takes us far from the families we grew up with and away from familiar surroundings into unknown territory that is exciting, and in which, like a character in a play we can explore other sides of our selves. Inspired by Alain de Botton's TV series on philosophy I once made one wall of my bedroom into an "Epicurus' wall" - filling it with positive quotes and affirmations to remind me of how I wanted to be, my own form of advertising to my self. Long boxed away, one of them fell out of my airing cupboard recently when I was getting out the hoover, "In order to discover new lands, one must be willing to lose sight of the shore for a very long time." Andre Gide.

I remember laughing so hard at the scene in the film Mermaids where the older daughter, played by Winona Ryder, drives to a beautiful suburban home with white picket fence and flowers in the front garden and encounters, to her delight, a homely mother and father and two cute red-cheeked children. She sits down to dinner with them, trying to assimilate herself into their normality. I remember feeling that as a child, that I wanted to be from one of those spotless carpeted, endless gardened families who seemed, on the face of it, so perfect. And yet it's funny, I received an email recently from an old school friend. She visited my house once when we were kids and remembered it so vividly that when she got married she moved into my old road and lives there now. It's so much easier to see the beauty in the unfamiliar, we get lost in the magic of other peoples worlds and, in losing direction there, our intuition comes to the fore and we begin to know what we want and, eventually, who we are.

The strange thing about long voyages to far off lands is that at some point home is spotted on the horizon and the ship returns to harbour, laden with exotic fruits and treasures from the journey. At some point we all come home, we want to be acknowledged and accepted by the very people we moved away from. We want to make a home, to create a haven, sit down and discuss the journey with people with whom no explaining is necessary. In defining ourselves as different, we strip away the limits to freedom, we tear down the barriers to expression, and yet inside we want to be belong. Just as the performer sometimes longs just to be In the audience, clapping along with friends.

Natalie Goldberg, a writer I discovered in New Mexico, writes about the fear she had of moving away from the practices and traditions of the culture she was brought up in. She was so inspired by the learnings she received from other traditions, and yet was afraid she was moving away from roots. Yet in her book she says, every path took her back to her self. Took her back to re-examining those values she had been taught in a new light. She found that she stood sturdier in her own shoes having taken the journey, and brought back the fruits to others.

In some ways that is what I do - what i decided to do many years ago, after experiencing life in a grey office and deciding it was not how I wanted to live. I bring a magic and beauty into the room, so that people begin to be enraptured and the next thought they make is from the heart, which never fails to put a smile on a face. They experience the joy of movement, that bypasses the brain and tingles through the body. The exotic and unfamiliar mystical quality and reputation of belly dance intrigues people. Like a merchant or storyteller of old, I bring the foreign lands to them.

The Belly Dance Lone Ranger

These days, with satellite navigation, gigs are a lot easier to find. Still, more than their fair share are located on unnamed roads, marked by unlit signposts. I'm driving around what looks to be a park, there are no streetlamps, plenty of humps in the road and the occasional sudden turn. As I approach a T-junction I can't decide whether to opt for the visitors car park or to follow the noise of the party. Another pair of headlights approaches and a man with a walkie talkie gets out. "Are you Mia?" he asks. "I am", I reply, impressed. "Follow me" he says and escorts my car to the car park. I'm then led by two more security men who know my name to an empty gate house - curtainless, windowful.

I crouch down into a dark corner & change into my costume. It's my new red one, simple red with draped fabric and strings of glass beads, 1940s style Cairo with a hint bollywood. In the stark bathroom I put on my make up, my hand moving slowly, my mind focused. This part is my ritual, a quiet time to focus before the performance. My phone rings and I drop my liquid eyeliner into the sink. Its the client asking if i'm on my way, having missed my call on arrival. We'll come and fetch you she tells me. Thank you, I say, my answer a little clipped.

I have always maintained I don't get nervous before gigs. But my need to be quiet and stress-free ahead of a show indicates otherwise, and can sometimes make me seem detatched. Yet this is the nature of true performance, it requires an extreme level of focus and I need to purge my mind of worldly thoughts in order to be present for every moment of the show: listening intently to the music, sensing my way around and interacting with a room full of strangers. My friend, a violinist, says that, that musicians live for the high of the performance and everything in between is filler before the next one. My sufi teacher calls this heightened state the intelligence of the heart, a level of focus that bypasses the censorship of the brain, it is a satisfying - sometimes ecstatic - combination of alertness and relaxation.

The phone rings again and this time the entire content of my make-up bag avalanches into the sink. It's a number I don't know and I don't pick up. "Maya?" comes a voice from the stairs, "are you ready?". I emerge defeated from the bathroom, "hi, nice to meet you". We shake hands. These are investment bankers and the type is so familiar to me, from my former career, despite my costuming I go into "client facing" mode. I invite them to sit on the sofa and we make small talk about their jobs, the financial markets, they confessing their real aspirations as they hear of my transformation from the City to sequins. We almost forget about the performance as we discuss the history of belly dance and I share my insights. The girl is Muslim, intelligent, someone I could have gone to school with, her parents immigrants, eager for her to get an education and be succesful where they struggled. Her amibitions in a box never opened.

I suggest we go down to the party and we walk together over the gravel and stone steps to the main hall, me in my gold dance shoes with soft leather soles. The DJ is irritable. He wants to know which tracks to play from my CD, I tell him play them all until I say stop. DJs and restaurant managers do not like this. They are used to being in control. Many a time, usually just as I coax the most reticent person in the room to get up and dance, my music has cut out, dead and suddenly Celebrate Good Times blasts out accompanied by the flash of 3 coloured disco lights. Once at an Indian wedding the DJ MCed over my entire performance, introducing me as being all the way from Saudi Arabia and saying I wanted every male in the room to get up and dance with me. Then after a 4 minute song he cut the music and said "thank you and goodbye to the belly dancer". Outside the girl who had booked me was really apologetic, "I'm sorry" she said helplessly, "the DJ just took over". Obviously this post-modernist feminist belly dancer wasn't taking that. I went back in and insisted my CD be played again and got all the ladies up on the dancefloor. The personal is political after all.

Back at the wedding the security man is lingering, I am testing the flagstone floor for turnability, fidgeting and assessing the space. I want to get on with it. "Are you nervous? You seem nervous" he says with a French accent. "I don't get nervous" I say and glare at him. "How much longer" I ask the tetchy DJ, "when everyone is back in the room" he answers as we watch a trickle of people return from the buffet, he mutters about how nothig is running to plan.

The theme colour of the night is red, there are red chiffon drapes, red lights and everyone is wearing red, including me. I'm impressed that I unknowingly honed into the vibe of my clients - now that's service. The atmosphere is formal and a little stilted and I can't wait to break it apart with my performance. I love this, the ability to move energy, to tranform a room from cold to hot, from still to buzzing - this is the essence of what I do. Transformation through dance. One of my drama teachers once asked us, what acting was. It is daring to expose your vulnerability and your true self, demonstrating your freedom on stage in order that others may feel more free was his answer.

Its a tricky one but after the music has started I gradually start to melt the crowd, I'm not sure what to do about the headscarfed ladies on one side but I include them anyway. The ice finally cracks as I invite the bride up and she begins to work her hips and her parents nod approvingly. We have permission to go for it and its not long before the table of English girls are up and stomping around, hips twitching.

The DJ stops my music abruptly and I smile nonchalantly, beaming at him and then the audience. As Celebrate Good Times takes over everyone gets up to dance, in a circle facing inwards. Now I am on the outside and I begin to feel self conscious. My work is done and I slink away silently into the night, alone. Another good deed completed by the belly dance lone ranger. Until the next time.