About Hilde Lund, belly dancer
My first costume, 8 years old
Ibrahim Akef in a harmonious and quiet moment
People often wonder what, when and where concerning my dance. Most often they ask the same questions, so here they are.
How long have you been dancing? How did you start with this dance?
I have always danced; I danced before I could walk. When I was little, my biggest dream was to become a ballerina. I started to take ballet classes when I was 7, and cried myself to sleep when I realised that I couldn’t step right into the lead role in the Swan Lake. My teacher taught according to the "learning by playing" principle, and I hated to play bunny and squirrel, it was so unfeminine. When I understood that I couldn’t dance the lead part in the Swan Lake right away, I dressed up in my beautiful nightgown and danced around like a butterfly in a flower field.
When I was 10 years old, the ballet school staged the show Coppelia. It is about a doll workshop, with many different dolls, among others a belly dance doll, and soldier dolls. I was not allowed to dance the belly dancer part; I was cast as a soldier in a brown uniform. It was awful to look at the beautiful sequined pants of the belly-doll, when I was dressed in an unfeminine jacket and hat. To comfort myself, I went home and made a belly dance outfit for my doll, and danced on my own in front of the mirror. My mother was worried I would wear the mirror out completely. There were no courses in belly dance in Norway at the time, so I had to get inspiration from seconds of belly dance clips on the TV every now and then. I figured out that there are circles, eights, camels and shimmies, and I found different moves that worked quite well.
In the 6th grade some friends and I made a scene depicting a harem, for the end of the year show. We were 3 dancers, a sheikh and slaves with palm leaves. The parents laughed, but I am still proud of this show. I doubt whether there was anything Oriental about the whole thing, though.
At 17, I finally found a belly dance course and signed up immediately. I thought the teacher was unbelievably beautiful and astonishing, and that she danced like a goddess. Luckily I had figured out some of the basic movements on my own in advance, because she wasn't a great teacher. She said, “do like this and that”, and when we didn’t understand she said we were stupid Norwegians who couldn’t manage anything. She was Lebanese herself, and she forgot to realise that the reason why stupid Norwegians came to her class, was that we didn’t know how to dance, but we wanted to learn. As I already had figured out several movements on my own, I quickly understood how things were supposed to look like, and I soon became the best student in the class, by far. The teacher said all the time: “Look at Hilde, see how it is supposed to be done.” So I was in for a big shock when I came to my first ‘proper’ workshop, taught by Swedish teacher Ulrika Hellqvist. Everyone in the room seemed to know twice as much as me and looked as gracious as could be, while I stood in a corner and didn’t manage a thing. I was terrified. Ulrika was strict, and she spoke about “correct", "authentic", music and styles, none of which I even knew existed. I suddenly realised that there is something called Oriental, and something called folklore, and that you HAVE to know a lot about this before you can even BELIEVE that you can dance. I went home and cried, and lost all self-confidence and joy of dancing. It took many years before I dared making my own choreographies, I was afraid it wouldn’t be correct enough. Today I am very happy that I got this deep respect for the dance and the tradition thrown in my face. I believe it makes me a better dancer and teacher.
Where did you learn to dance?
I have mainly learned to dance in Egypt. I studied Arabic at the University, and went to the Middle East to continue my studies. When I came to Cairo, I met Ibrahim Akef. He is an institution in the Egyptian dance world. He is an unbelievably old and toothless man, who has danced and taught dance all his life. He is a fearsome teacher, very strict, and with a fierce temper. And he is expensive. I couldn’t afford both dance and Arabic classes, so I had an easy choice to make. The first times I went to Cairo I only studied with Ibrahim, but when his hands more often than not ended up under my training clothes, I couldn’t take it any longer and found a lady teacher instead. Her name is Raqia Hassan, and she has been my teacher ever since. She is a wonderful teacher. I started with a month of intensive drilling of technique, and later I have worked mainly with choreographies. That is an excellent way to learn about different styles. When I learned about Saidi, I went to every teacher I could find, and learned a saidi choreography from each of them. Then I would see what they all do the same, and assume that that is the core of this style, and in addition I would get a lot of personal tricks to vary my own dance with. This I have done with other styles as well, such as Oriental, balady, khaligi and milaya.
In addition to travelling extensively to Egypt, I have travelled quite a lot to Stockholm, and studied with Kay Artle, Lena Helt and Ulrika Hellqvist.
Do you work with anything else besides the dance?
I am so lucky that I am a full-time belly dancer. I don’t see how I would have time to have an extra job. Also, I don’t have any education other than dance; a mere degree in Arabic is not providing any job.
The actual dance part of my job consists of teaching and performing. I have the regular weekly classes, Saturday workshops, private lessons, intensive courses for parties and weekend workshops. I have to make new choreographies constantly, and that is time consuming. I still suffer from anxiety of not doing it correctly. In addition to teaching, I do performances. After I have stopped dancing in restaurants, I dance in private parties and for companies or cultural events. I dance solo most of the time, but I also dance regularly with Lee and Michelle. The last years we have worked on different projects, the biggest being our show “A Journey Along the Nile”. We have staged it in Oslo, Bergen, Arendal, Inderøya and Trondheim. We also have a course together every year,” The Summer Workshop”. These projects are all very inspiring but time consuming.
The other part of my job consists of paperwork and phone calls. I am still not rich enough to hire a secretary, so I do this job too. I do my own accounting, administer my studio, and sometimes clean there. I write my little news magazine Navlenytt, and even though it is a rather small publication, it takes time to finish an edition.
Article published in “Navlenytt”, January 2000