The Gilded Serpent presents

Belly dancing in cyberspace -
The LiveJournal
Belly dancing Community
by Lilly

On February 2001 I discovered a web phenomena called "blogging", the activity of writing and maintaining  a "blog". A blog is defined as a website with dated entries.

It is analogous to keeping a public diary,  and asking people to comment on it. Additionally, a blogger will usually have links to other bloggers,  and when all of them write together in a threaded format, they form a community.

When I first started blogging, I still thought the idea of keeping personal pages was not something that  is easily done, considering that most of my online work up to that point had been professional and academic.

Enter LiveJournal. LiveJournal is a website that allows one to easily create and maintain a "live journal", a diary that can be updated on a regular basis, and where people can network around similar  interests.

In 2001, when I first joined, I had returned to belly dancing after a long hiatus, and since I always  enjoyed bringing people together, I started the livejournal "Belly dancing Community". I did very little  to promote the community, leaving it for people to find it through the search functions of LiveJournal. 

Since then, the community has grown to include 458 people from around the globe who share the love of  belly dancing, and range in experience from beginners to professional dancers and instructors.

On the community, we discuss anything from costuming, to make-up, to announcements of upcoming events.  Many members also post reports about their dance gigs, and reviews of concerts and workshops that they have recently attended. Perhaps some of the most common questions come from newcomers who would like to  start dancing, but don't know where to start. Members will usually refer them to sites such as GildedSerpent.com and Shira.net, two of the most helpful sites out there to locate dancers and find out what's going on in the community.

If you want to learn what the Belly dance Superstars were like with Lollapallooza, or what it was like to  dance with them, then join us! If you also want to learn how to play Kasiklar (Turkish Spoons), then come  read about the history of this fun art form, then join us. Introduce yourself, register for an account on  LiveJournal, and start posting! We'll see you in cyberspace!

• To register on LiveJournal: http://www.livejournal.com/create.bml
  ($5/2 months, $15/6 months, $25/1 year)
• The Bellydancing Community: http://www.livejournal.com/community/bellydancing
  You can see all the entries there.
• Here's one specific entry: http://www.livejournal.com/community/bellydancing/320538.html
  where Shan is talking about Mayas.
• Here's the link with my personal journal:
  http://www.livejournal.com/users/sara_wolfe/