To celebrate the heart and soul of our community, we’ve been interviewing some of our ZeoT students. It’s our privilege to dance with so many different and wonderful women and we’ve loved finding out more about their lives, their passions and, of course, their love of dance.⠀

belly dance Zürich — *Still from „pagan*feeling*fusion part1“. Photo: Sasha*

I’m Sasha and I’ve lived in Zurich six years. I grew up “on the move“ between cultures and big societal changes, namely the break down of Soviet Union, the early beginnings of today’s Ukraine and later, immigration into the Central European societal and cultural norms of Germany and Austria. To deal with those changes, I tried to find something fundamental that we all share, no matter where our roots were. Through arts, music, psychology and spirituality I could find important clues on this quest and - funnily enough – ended up studying medicine. Nowadays I work passionately as a psychiatrist and psychoanalytical psychotherapist and feel grateful to support my patients through building safe, consistent spaces for transformation for and with them. I love to investigate the stories we tell ourselves about our bodies, sex, gender, feelings, relationships and how all this interacts and creates our world. I try to raise awareness of the importance of mental health, and especially of the specific psychic needs of women and LGBTQIA+ people.

Next to my job, art remains vital to me: as an important pillar of my personal expression and tool for investigation. It was always difficult for me to choose a specific discipline, so I keep on changing between different techniques. I’m a photographer, and I also enjoy to create music. But dance accompanies me since my childhood. As far as I can remember – since I was three or four years old - I always wanted to dance. When people ask me, when I started to dance, I say that I don’t know. My parents loved music, so there was always music in our house. I dance since I can think.

dance Zürich — How did you find your way to ZeoT?

Why did you start dancing? Why belly dance?

While I was still at med school I saw a video of Rachel Brice and Illan performing at Tribal Fest 12 to Aphex Twin. I was absolutely hooked by these movements. Still it took me many years to finally try out belly dance myself. While participating in a seminar on embodiment-focused therapeutic methods, another participant told me about ZeoT. And then I took destiny’s hint! It took me courage to finally try it out - there is something magical, almost forbidden about these movements. I always associated belly dance with the pelvis and the body parts that are so deeply interwoven with our perception of femininity. It has something radical to focus primarily on these body parts and to present them so freely.

“I can roll up to the studio after a long day, feel super exhausted, and still feel how my whole being enjoys the movements, the music, the atmosphere. ”

— Sasha

My experience with belly dance so far has had different stages. The first one was healing - shaking off my own high demands and confronting old memories of the drill jazz dance classes in my teenage years. Due to my irregular work back then I couldn’t manage to come to the trainings regularly at first. I found it hard to accept that I struggled to remember the choreography and to remain at a stable level of performance. But the overall accepting atmosphere in the studio helped me accept this and to come to the studio whenever I could, and perform how I could, no matter if I was already tired after a nightshift or full of energy.

In parallel I re-wrote my relationship with the mirror – it turned from a strict, demanding teacher into a helpful colleague who gives me hints about my expression that I might miss otherwise. The general attitude in the studio and the wonderful teachers of ZeoT really helped with that too.

After this healing process was more or less done, I found myself at the stage of fun and collecting more and more new skills. This is the stage I see myself at now. I try out new things, and I love to explore all that’s possible. I can roll up to the studio after a long day, feel super exhausted, and still feel how my whole being enjoys the movements, the music, the atmosphere. I feel such a strong connection with life when I dance.

I enjoy how much awareness I gained through belly dance for body parts that we usually neglect in our every day life. You might know your face, maybe your hands, but how often have you consciously felt your hips, pelvic floor or belly? How much tension or relaxation is there? I can say I’m best buddies with my hips, bum and belly now!

Another thing I love about belly dance is the play with polarities – “connection vs. isolation“, “flowy-ness vs. stiffness“, etc. We express so much through isolating specific movements in specific body parts, and then there are moments again, where everything is one whole flow. It’s a dance of clear borders and one total connection. We need both, right?

My favourite style is Tribal Fusion - for many reasons. Tribal fusion and its related styles are spaces where we dare to play wildly and freely. In TF we mix contemporary music with movements from different cultures and centuries. I’m aware of the risk of a sliding borderline of cultural appropriation here. But only since I dance belly dance myself I started to consciously gather information about the story of dancing and specifically about the cultures that inspire me to certain moves and looks. In my perception, TF mirrors our western society almost with irony. What do I mean? For example - a yoga session in the morning, a coffee afterwards, falafel sandwich for lunch and dinner at a Thai place. These were at least 4 cultures in one day. We hardly notice it anymore. We hardly think about the origin of the things we use during a day or who invented them. In contrast, in TF we try to consciously celebrate this “citizen of the planet-space“ in a heritage-respecting way. Personally TF allows me to explore and to play with my Ukrainian roots and to mix with care.

In addition, people with different genders are dancing Tribal Fusion. This made me even more reflect, what „femininity“ means nowadays - and what it means to me? The more I dance, the more I connect with my own unique body, and with my very own expression of gender.

Now I feel in me the next stage growing - to perform belly dance. I’m excited to participate in the ZeoT show in May 2022 with our Tribal Fusion group under the guidance of Simone.

A project I just started is „pagan*feeling*fusion“, a dance contemplation on the connection between my feelings, the seasons of the year and the old, pagan festivities of western and eastern Europe. Recently I created the first piece, a dance to Onuka’s „Na samoti“ (love this track!!!).

**If you could invite anyone for dinner, who would that be?**

**And why them?**

If I could invite someone for dinner, it would be my great-grandmothers when they were still young and full of dreams and visions for their lives. I was lucky enough to come to know all of them when I was a kid, and I’m left with intense and moving memories of them. All of them survived incredibly difficult times, violence and fundamental changes, which shaped them a great deal. I’d love to know who they were before that and what guided them through their lives. And I’d want to thank them for their endurance, trust and ability to love.