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Ashland sisters Dondi (left)
and Titanya Dahlin share a love of belly dancing. Ashland Daily Tidings
~DENISE BARATTA |
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Belly,
Belly Good
By Troy Heie
Ashland Daily Tidings
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| Their work takes them to exotic locales
around the globe, from smoke-filled tavernas to high-class resorts where they practice the
ancient art of belly dancing. And they're Ashland
High grads.
Titanya and Dondi Dahlin,
AHS graduates, are not your ordinary alumni. The sisters, daughters of well-known holistic
healer and part-time Ashland resident Donna Eden, returned to the city last week to visit
their mother.
And it was a simple message from mom that played a large
part in Dondi's safe return to the United States from her latest belly dancing job in
Amman, the capital of Jordan.
"She told me not to travel after the 10th (of
September)," Dondi said. "She had a feeling."
The feeling was frighteningly accurate. A day after Dondi
arrived in the U.S., unthinkable terror struck on the East Coast.
Now Dondi is mulling contract offers in December in the
United Arab Emirates and Oman, two oil-rich nations in the Persian Gulf roughly 500 miles
from the Afghanistan border. She has heard enough about Osama bin Laden during her two
visits to the Middle East since 1998 to know that she must be careful in deciding whether
to return this winter.
"I have to wait to see what happens on their end (in
the Gulf)," she said. "Osama bin Laden has said he will target Americans
wherever they are. That's a bit scary."
Dondi finished a four-week stint at the Regency Palace
resort in Jordan last month. It was her third trip to the region as a professional belly
dancer. She first went to the United Arab Emirates in 1998 on a belly dancing contract and
then traveled last spring to perform and teach in Turkey.
The Dahlin sisters began their dancing quest early on, both
learning Polynesian dance techniques at the ages of 5 and 8. They grew up in Southern
California but moved to Ashland in 1980, where they furthered their dance repertoire by
studying Middle Eastern dance from two local teachers, Kristy Gault and Loucianne Estes. |
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| They were hooked. After
graduating from Ashland High, the sisters would find themselves in places like Germany,
Switzerland and Australia, dancing the days away for good money. But mastering the art of belly dancing is their mission, and understanding
its roots in Old World cultures is one of the most important aspects of their lives, they
say.
Today, Dondi is based in San Diego where she primarily
dances in Middle Eastern restaurants while not on a foreign junket. She enjoys traveling,
even if it's to some of the world's political hotspots. |
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Dondi Dahlin
in one of her costumes. |
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"I'm interested in totally immersing myself in a culture," she said. "I'm
prideful to be an American, but for me it's important to understand how people live in
other parts of the world."She refuses to take
unnecessary risks. Dondi is furnished with a bodyguard while on overseas contracts, and
she knows what areas in each foreign country or city she should avoid.
While on her latest trip in Jordan, her agent promoted
Dondi at the Regency Palace as a "Brazilian belly dancer" because of her olive
skin, instead of tipping off anyone through the local press that an American was dancing
in the capital.
"But I was treated like a queen in Amman. It's like
you're a movie star," she said. "Eighty percent of the people in Amman are
Palestinian and they were warm and kind. But one of my good Palestinian friends said to me
while I was there, `To see a fair-skinned, light-eyed girl belly dancing is like an alien
dancing in front of us.'"
However, Dondi has honed her craft so well that locals in
Middle Eastern countries have praised her work, she said.
She has succeeded so much that her client list around the
world includes Omar Sharif, Jimmy Buffet and Peter Fonda, according to her Web site.
She strives to overcome the American misconceptions about
belly dancing, fostered by years of overly erotic scenes from movies and television shows,
she said.
However, Dondi has received offers of diamond necklaces
and room keys to large amounts of cash while performing at some locations, but she
maintains a strict adherence to her art, she says.
"In some places, where women from Romania and other
parts of the world are coming in to belly dance there is a lot of money to be made not
just belly dancing," she said. "It's all getting mixed up." |
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Titanya sees herself as the teacher of the craft. She owns the
Nightingale and Rose performing arts company in Boulder, Colo., where her one-woman
production, "Scheherazade - The Veil Behind the Blade," an adaptation of
"Arabian Nights," has played to sold-out crowds since 1993. |
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| "Belly dancing is from the Goddess
Times, when women were respected," she said. In
fact, the origins of the dance came from women in villages preparing for childbirth. The
movement of the stomach muscles promoted an easy birth, and since then the art form - in
most regions - has stayed true to its Old World roots. |
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And it is in explaining these Old World lessons that Titanya feels her calling, she says."I feel like I have a message. I truly feel like a messenger
because I believe it is important to help people understand these different cultures
through drama.
"This is a craft that draws stories from the
ancients. After all, it is considered the oldest form of dance," she said.
The sisters' next big venture in the U.S. is a one-week
workshop in Helena, Montana in June 2002. The workshop, held at a resort, will feature
Middle Eastern dancing sessions, plus healing workshops which will borrow techniques from
the works of the Dahlins' mother. |
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Ashland Daily Tidings
~ Tuesday, October 9, 2001
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