“Flex like a horse… A well-trained horse!” Moon Belly Dance Studio owner Kandice Grossman gives some humorous encouragement to her intermediate belly dancing class. A couple members laugh, breaking what had been until then a wall of stone faces locked in concentration.
Kandice is the face and sole owner of Moon Belly, and she has been since she started the business eight years ago. Her studio offers classes primarily in belly dancing, but also in yoga, grace and dance movement, ballet, and core conditioning as well. Various classes can provide a home to beginner, intermediate and advanced belly dancers in kind.
“It’s become kind of like my family,” said Jessie Holdinghaus, an intermediate level dancer who has been dancing at Moon Belly for five years. “I joke that this is a combination of my exercise, my artistic expression and my therapy.”
The dance company, then, is more than simply a good workout. The intimate environment of Moon Belly draws the dancers together and instills a level of confidence that, according to six-year member Nicole Beasley, carries beyond the studio into the real world.
“(Dancers will) come back and tell stories in their life, something that is personal, that they weren’t able to do before,” she said. “It’s really great to see that power of confidence and knowledge being tapped into by so many women.”
Of course, that’s not to say that it isn’t a great workout, too.
“I don’t think anyone who goes to the gym regularly and runs regularly will be able to do any of these (dances),” beginning dancer Krishna Ramesh said. “You have to be flexible.”
The dance takes quite a toll on — you guessed it — a dancer’s belly. The result? It tones both your lower and upper abdominals, according to Ramesh. Since belly dancing is largely associated with female dancers, this leads to a lot of sexual connotations that come with belly dancing, a stereotype that Kandice is eager to dismiss. She does note, however, that the movements of belly dance make “every female body look good doing it.”
Beasley agrees.
“It can be as sexual or as unsexual as the dancer would want,” she said. “The more comfortable you are within your own body, the more sensuality that you can exude and therein can come in and out of the sexuality, depending on what you want to do.”
The dance may be empowering, fun and a great workout, and it may bring dancers together, but that doesn’t make the business side of it any less arduous for Kandice. In the course of the studio’s lifespan, the Moon Belly founder has had to pick up shop and move three separate times. In just a few weeks, she’ll bring that number to four.
The recession, she said, is beginning to affect the studio, and her usual 80-85 students per week has dwindled to a mere 30 “on a really good week.” To save costs, she’s choosing not to resign her lease at its current central Columbia location on St. James Street, instead choosing to begin renting out a smaller to-be-determined location elsewhere. The downsize has its drawbacks — Moon Belly will no longer be equipped to carry its yoga, grace and dance movement, ballet and core conditioning classes — but it’s not all bad for Kandice.
“I’m kind of excited actually to not be so focused on being a business owner,” she said. “It was kind of exciting for the first couple of years, but I’m really much more of an artist and dancer and teacher. What I have definitely learned is that I’m not really a business owner.”
And despite the move, the Moon Belly family seems to have no interest in moving their business elsewhere.
“We’ll be able to do all the fun things without having to worry about our leader being stressed out by the business aspect of it,” said Holdinghaus, who has never danced anywhere else.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she added.
Find Moon Belly:
300 St. James St. Suite 101
Columbia, Mo 65201
