To watch Arlene Van den Berg dance is to watch poetry of the body in movement.
Sensual and mesmerizing, it is as if her hips have a life of their own, responding to the rhythm of ancient drum beats; slowly, quickly, slowly again, in a dance as old as time. Her body interprets the rhythms, tells a story, all the while exalting the female form, leaving the watcher believing she creates the music – not simply dances to it.
Arlene is a professional belly dancer and instructor, and a two-time breast cancer survivor. If losing a breast and undergoing reconstructive surgery has made her feel any less sensual or capable, she is quick to assure it has done nothing of the sort.
Dancing has been a part of her life for four decades, and nothing, not even cancer, will keep Arlene from doing what she has spent a lifetime feeling passionate about.
“I love doing this. I will keep going until I can’t,” she says with a brilliant smile.
Her love affair with belly dance began at 19. Long before the dancing began, however, music had already been an important fixture in her life, beginning at age six with accordion training. After that, it was snare drum in a marching band.
“Music has always been a part of my life. I really can’t remember a time when it wasn’t,” says Arlene. “I just have always had this deep affinity for music.”
That proclivity pushed her into her next direction – dance. Without any prior training, she decided she wanted to join a studio and learn something. Anything. She thumbed through the yellow pages looking for dance studios, and what she found changed her life.
When she saw the advertisements for belly dance, it caught her eye.
“I thought it sounded good. I went to class and saw the ladies in costume, and my mouth just dropped,” she reminisces. “It was love at first sight.”
She decided to try the classes, and a great love affair began.
“I was very shy, I just wanted something to do for fitness, I never thought of doing this professionally,” she laughs. Yet that is precisely what happened. Dance lessons eventually gave way to performing for private birthday parties and evening events in restaurants, with her instructor mentoring her along the way.
“My first performance by myself was at a student show and I was petrified,” she laughs. Arlene remembered wearing the coin bra, belt, and flowing skirts and even though she was scared, something definitely ignited within her. Her instructor saw it, too; saw something in the young Arlene and convinced her to dance professionally, teaching her everything she knew. The love of the dance and this art form was honed over time.
“It really was an embracing of the customs and traditions, which made me feel better about my body and being a woman,” she says.
Eventually, Arlene became an instructor in her own right, enjoying teaching, and watching her students come as beginners and develop their own love for the art and grow in it. She performed in shows, attended conventions, and travelled to Egypt several times, all for the love of the dance.
But her journey in dance stammered in October 2009 when a mammogram revealed a mass in one breast. She embarked on a treatment of four rounds of chemotherapy, following a lumpectomy, and then radiation.
Through it all – the pain, the nausea, and the mental battles – she kept dancing. It was something she refused to give up.
“I wanted to do it because dancing is my happy spot. Being surrounded by positive things helped, and seeing the smiles on my students’ faces at the beginning of class just made me forget for a while what was going on. I was mad at this thing, very mad, but it wasn’t going to take away my dancing,” she says firmly.
With the last round of chemotherapy behind her, Arlene embarked on her new lease on life, dancing and teaching full time and getting into the (hip) swing of things again. Sadly, her recovery lasted only three years, when the cancer returned to the same breast, forcing a mastectomy, and another round of chemo and radiation.
“I was devastated. As a woman, your breasts are a part of you. They are part of your womanhood.”
As a professional dancer with a career that celebrates womanhood, Arlene’s breast removal was a difficult process. But she was determined, however, to fight with everything she had to move beyond the experience, and revel in her cherished womanhood again.
As soon as she was well enough, she was dancing, teaching, and letting the music heal her. As it did in her childhood, music took a central role in her life.
“I am feeling great now, feeling beautiful,” she says with that same brilliant smile. “I truly feel at my best. And when I’m dancing, I feel happy.”
A passion for belly dance that has spanned most of her life shows no sign of diminishing. At 59, she continues to move beautifully and sensually – telling the story of a powerful woman.
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