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Seed Newsvine
When Mary Ann Keller and Judy Travers went to Pocono Medical Center proposing Focus on Healing — a Lebed method of therapeutic movement — they were told by their Breast Cancer Survivor group that what they really wanted to learn was belly dancing.
Not the music that they had heard at every other therapy session.
CALENDAR COMING
The 2007 calendar will be available later this month at local restaurants, businesses and dance classes. A price has not been set. For a list of where to find the calendar, check healingbellydance.com as it becomes available. To make a donation or apply for a sponsorship, call 570 646-7351.
Not movements that their bodies had already practiced.
So belly dancing was what they got. And with the dance came for some a vehicle toward reclaiming what it meant to be feminine.
Now, in light of October honoring Breast Cancer Awareness, the group has decided to create a calendar to benefit the Pennsylvania Breast Cancer Coalition. And it is looking for sponsors to help meet its $3,000 goal. All proceeds will go directly to the PBCC benefiting local women.
Belly dancers from the age of 5 through 80, survivors, mothers and daughters will be featured on the calendar pages along with their insights on breast cancer and dance.
As Travers' mantra goes "¦ "You don't need breasts to belly dance — just a belly button."
While cancer can take away a breast, Keller says these women have strength. "Why do we need them breasts anyway?" Keller says one student asked her. "Outside breastfeeding, of course, what's the point?"
Mary Ann just laughed, "The funny thing is that I think she's right."
After treatments, some survivors no longer have hair. So they wear headwraps as part of their dancing costume. "They feel pretty for the first time in a long time," Keller said. She grew inspired by watching women who go to chemotherapy in the morning and still attend her dance class in the evening.
"My bad day meant nothing," she says. "I thank God for their strength."
Not just breast cancer survivors dance with Keller and Travers. They also teach women with multiple sclerosis, and students with juvenile arthritis. Women and girls of all walks of life — both healthy and ill — are joining belly dance classes. "The one thing that we have in common is that we are all female," Keller's daughter Rachel said. "It's a wonderful bond."
Keller remembers trying an aerobics class at a gym — and feeling that she couldn't keep up with the competition. Competition to have the best Lycra. Competition to move the fastest.
"I wasn't the most coordinated," she said. With belly dance, she found her antidote.
"Here we only focus on ourselves and there is no competition. It is so healing, physically as well as mentally."
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