Belly Dancing and Beating the Odds: How one woman’s passion helped her overcome breast cancer. Yvette Cowles

and fellow dancers, really got me through a difficult time and made me determined to get better so I could perform again.

      Just as importantly, the dancing helped me reconnect with my body. Like a number of women I’ve spoken to, I couldn’t help feeling that my body had let me down. How dare it do this to me! My complex about my weight, my generous bottom and other perceived defaults, was now compounded by concerns about the big dent in my breast and the ugly scar in my armpit. But allowing myself to enjoy the flowing and sensuous movements made me feel better about myself; it was a relief to know that I could still feel womanly.

      Once I’d been through the treatment, I tried to put the whole cancer episode behind me. I was still taking tamoxifen, but other than that, I just needed to attend regular check-ups and have an annual mammogram. The consultant said that there was a 25–40 per cent chance of the cancer coming back, but I preferred to ignore those statistics. Back then there wasn’t a great deal of support for younger women with breast cancer and my circumstances were different from those of the older women I’d met. Rather than dwell on what I saw as an unfortunate ‘blip’, I wanted to move on and get on with my life. Up to that point, I’d felt invincible; no matter how much I punished my body, it always bounced back. I had to hope that this time would be no different.

Chapter 3

       Escape to France

      My dancing and publishing careers both went from strength to strength. I was promoted to Non-Fiction Marketing Director and enjoyed all the kudos that went with it – the big campaigns, the launch parties, working with some of the biggest names in publishing. Every day was different, with new challenges and new experiences; I never knew what to expect. I loved my job and couldn’t have been happier.

      At the same time I was pursuing my love of dance. I taught regular classes at Jacksons Lane in North London and organised shows and parties for my students. I hosted workshops for international teachers and I went to courses with top dancers in Paris, Berlin, New York and San Francisco. I met some fantastic women and inspirational dancers – my network of belly dance buddies had gone global!

      Over the years I have been to Egypt many times, but it was my first visit to Cairo, irresistible to any belly dancer, that made an indelible impression on me. I went on a trip organised by a work colleague, whose father was general manager of the Cairo Sheraton Hotel. From the moment the plane touched down, I was dazzled: the smells, the noise, the colours and the vibrancy of the city, that some in our party found quite overwhelming, were all magical to me. One evening, a member of our party suggested that we went to a belly dance show at the hotel’s night club, as the dancer-in-residence was apparently ‘Egypt’s biggest star’. After the meal a seemingly endless succession of singers, folkloric dancers and entertainers took to the stage. Then, at 3am, the dancer appeared. It was Fifi Abdou herself! She was older and considerably less svelte than on the grainy videos I had seen of her, but even more compelling in the flesh; the archetypal maalima or boss woman, with a relaxed yet commanding style – and the best shimmy in the business.

      For the next two hours Fifi danced, entertained, sang, smoked a shisha pipe and told jokes, through a variety of costume changes, from a startling purple and yellow bedlah to a fitted baladi dress to the man’s traditional galabeya she wore to perform the raqs el tahtib or men’s stick dance. There were undoubtedly more elegant and refined dancers, but none with her energy, exuberance and sheer joie de vivre. I idolised her for her dancing, and for dragging herself up from poverty to become not just Egypt’s best-paid belly dancer, but the richest woman in Egypt. Fifi had dealt with a number of obstacles along the way; the fundamentalists who regularly denounced her and the ‘morality police’ who decided that her movements were so lewd that they threw her into jail more than once. Undaunted by such setbacks, she continued to do what she loved most. What a woman! I would have been happy with an ounce of her nerve and courage.

      I returned from Egypt even more inspired. I longed to perform on a proper stage, with professional sound and lighting, and a captive audience. Then, as so often has happened, the opportunity presented itself. I was invited to join Josephine Wise’s Masriat Dance Company as a soloist, and to be involved in my first theatrical show. Thanks to Jo, I even had the opportunity to perform in an opera, Bizet’s Djamileh at the Linbury Studio of the Royal Opera House. And not many belly dancers can claim that!

      Very few of my gigs were that glamorous. But even the grotty ones make me smile to look back on. I – and my boyfriends over the years – were never keen on cabaret or restaurant work, but I did sometimes cover for friends at gigs when they were double-booked or needed time off. It wasn’t my natural habitat; publishing is a female-friendly industry, and I was used to being treated with a degree of respect. Here, I found that some of the managers and waiters were patronising and sexist. They would ‘accidentally’ walk in on you while you were changing in the cupboard they had thoughtfully provided and make you hang around for hours before you got paid. I also hated the enthusiasm with which some men tried to stick money down my costume and even found myself backing off when they approached with a note (rather foolish given how little I was being paid). But I did enjoy getting people up to dance, particularly the women. I remember one New Year’s Eve in Grayshott dancing on tables and then leading a conga around the village green, while the restaurant kept my boyfriend happy by giving him a slap-up meal and unlimited drinks.