Finding harmony in Palmer

PALMER -- In the basement of a store on Alaska Street in Palmer, a small group of women don magenta, emerald and blue hip scarves adorned with jingling coins or shimmering beads, concentrating on making their hips swivel in level figure-eight formations.

With eyes focused on the wall of mirrors in front of them, instructor Rose Engeln leads the group through the motions of a basic folk-style bellydance. Downtown Palmer may be a long way from the Middle East where most agree folk bellydancing got its start, but it's clear from the dancers' concentration, shared laughter at mistakes and celebrations of successes that Engeln's style of bellydancing is sending down roots in this Alaska community.

Engeln is nearly as unlikely an Alaskan as is the bellydancing she teaches. This East Coast native has a background strong in theater and dance, with training at the Interlochen Arts Academy. The academy, where students must audition to be accepted, has a history of turning out big names such as Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys and actors Meredith Baxter of "Family Ties" fame and Dermot Mulroney of "My Best Friend's Wedding." At the academy, Engeln majored in theater and minored in dance, winning the coveted "gifted youth" award, an award bestowed on a student whom 70 percent of the faculty has agreed deserves the recognition.

After years of training both there and at the American Academy of Arts and New York University's Circle in the Square, Engeln reached the conclusion that performance theater wasn't for her.

"I came to the conclusion, after all that schooling and all that money, that I hated the business of theater," Engeln said. "I loved the craft … but I didn't think I had the edge for it."

Engeln left the performance mecca of New York and settled in the San Francisco area, where she plugged in to the variety of dance and folk music classes available. For several years she studied under one main teacher, the former choreographer for the Ballet of the Congo, a performance group depicting traditional folk West African dance sanctioned by the Congolese government. Studying drum rhythms and dance throughout the '80s, Engeln said she learned much of what her instructor recorded through his travels across the Congo.

"I personally know more about the Congolese culture than many people in the Congo," Engeln said. But the accelerated rhythm and large movements of the dancing, she said, left a need for a more fine-tuned style of dance that would help her concentrate on refining her motion.

"African dance is an incredible amount of exertion," Engeln said. "I wanted to do something that was more subtle, quieter."

Turning to bellydance, Engeln said there was no shortage of styles and techniques to choose from.

"Presently, there's probably about 150 teachers in the Bay area alone," Engeln said. "All the teachers have sort of a specific style to what they do because bellydance is a folk dance."

Some instructors focus on cabaret-style dancing, with larger movements designed to go across a stage or throughout a room. Others bring other elements in -- sword dancing, snake dancing and dancing with veils, for example. Ultimately, bellydancing is more of a practiced art in American today than it is in the Middle East, and all of it is very different than what has been shown on film and in movies.

"One thing that's incorrect that comes from movies is that bellydance is the sort of thing that's done for men in a harem," Engeln said with a laugh. "That's probably an American man's dream -- it has more to do with, I guess, a sacredness of the body. It's done for yourself, being aware of your body."

A string of what seemed to be coincidences led Engeln to a recurring summer job at a fly-fishing resort in Alaska. After working there for a few years, she decided to make Alaska her year-round home, settling in Palmer. The decision to start up a bellydancing class and an African drumming class, she said, was made for somewhat selfish reasons -- she missed it.

"I love to move my body," Engeln said. "It provides exercise, but also an exercise that I love. I'm enjoying myself. It's a very spiritual thing to dance, for me -- it makes me feel good … That's why I started the class -- because I wanted to dance and I wanted to drum."

Engeln currently has three eight-week classes going -- a beginning and an intermediate bellydance class and an African drumming class. Her intermediate group, she said, performed during the Colony Christmas celebration. Another performance is in the works at Vagabond Blues, she said, but no date has been set.

It's been interesting, Engeln said, to see how the classes were received in this conservative area of Alaska, and how the participants evolved through the eight weeks.

"A really key thing that people say in my class is that it's really hard to look at yourself [in the mirror] for an hour," Engeln said. Some people, she said, are shy about the performance aspect of the class. But performance is purely optional -- the class is about more than that.

"You don't have to perform -- that's really not what it's about," Engeln said. "It's more about having pride in yourself as a human being -- about loving yourself."