Hello out there.

I've been going on and on about setting up a Blog on this website and have finally taken the plunge. Why a Blog on Belly Dance NY? Well, as most of you are aware, this website was on hiatus for a couple of months. I disappeared it in the dead of night on Groundhog Day leaving only a cryptic message embedded in a starscape. (This too will be explained but later.) I put it back up on April 11th. Why take it down? And why restore it? I took the site down because I really love dance orientale--It matters to me. And because too much of what was coming at me for the website was foolish and/or ugly and definitely not good for the dance. At least not in my eyes. I felt that to continue doing Belly Dance NY as I had been was simply to abet the trashing of something I care about.

Removing BDNY from the web solved most of my problems about the state of the dance because I didn't have to hear about it anymore. Call it the Ostrich Cure. However, comfortable as being away from it all was burying my head in the sand did nothing to make any situation except my own better. And eventually hiding out stopped working. I've got nearly twenty years in this dance, important, growth-filled, beautiful years and I can't just walk away from that. So I'm back and Belly Dance NY is back.

And now the Blog on Belly Dance NY is here too. This Blog is my gift to me, a reward for putting up with doing Belly Dance NY and a corrective for the editorial neutrality I've imposed on myself in order to handle everyone's postings. I intend to use the Blog to discuss what's going on out there--the good the bad and the deeply indifferent. Yes, because I'm a Libra or because my parents brought me up to play fair, you all will be able to respond. That's why I'm doing a Blog and not just posting an editorial page. Watch for interesting developments.