“I loved reading about your first experiences with Elena! I remember seeing her dance at some event in Santa Fe ages ago and taking a master class the next day. In seeing her perform I recognized her influence on your movement style (which by that time I already knew so well) - as I recognize your influence on my movement style. I realized that there was this “dance lineage” of which I was a member, so I feel somehow connected to Elena although my contact with her has been almost non-existent. It’s very interesting to read about what you saw in her in those club performances, and in her teaching. You certainly learned how to express all of those attributes in your own dance so beautifully and powerfully, and in your own way, and also then took it to a whole new level. You have always been the model belly dancer to whom all others are compared (and found seriously lacking)!”

“Thank you for describing where you have been, and Fazil’s in particular, as I went to the Christmas party in December, and tried to fill in blanks, to imagine the history that I sensed there, that I smelled there. I met David there, a gray haired dancer who said he lived on the block, and had been dancing there, since it was called Michael’s (I see from the article you sent from the Times, that , that would be the 1940’s). I was drawn to other older folks at the party–people who looked as if they were part of the place, me imagining their lives, their dance stories–there was a long white haired ponytailed male tap dancer dressed in cowboy gear–black leather hat–tapping away by himself, in his cowboy boots, in the room full of dancers at the party. What is his story I wondered?

I swore I would come back and take class with Elena before Fazil’s closed, but instead satisfy my hungry body and mental curiosity of your article of your experience not so long ago, in 1985, at Fazil’s.”

Love,
Carol