Many Reasons to Love Jill Parker's Dance Classes

Jill Parker's Tribal Belly Dance classes at ODC Dance School are a classic San Francisco experience: They're welcoming, weird, diverse, sweaty, trance-inducing, and somehow both very straight and very gay. "I love the thrill of seeing others excited about the history, music, costumes, festivals, performers, and technique associated with the dance," Parker tells us.

Jill Parker

​Some students love to feel they're in a place where it's okay to actually have a belly, some come to gain the inevitable boost in sexy points, and some just want a great workout.

TK

​They all get what they want, plus the caring yet hands-off instruction of the charismatic Parker. She's internationally revered for having made a historically and culturally informed contribution to the nature of modern bellydance -- she's known as the "founder of the modern tribal fusion belly dance movement."
"I find belly dance intoxicating: The music, movements, and adornment come together in a way that affects me profoundly," she says, "And I love sharing this dance that I care about so deeply about with my students. Teaching is my calling!"

Sadly, not all of Parker's classes take place in gently sunlit redwood groves, but they're still amazing.

​A typical beginning class is diverse in age, gender, size, race, and level of dance experience, and that's the way the teacher likes it: "I enjoy watching students experience healing, finding self-love and body acceptance as they see themselves in a new way and start to feel beautiful." She's inspiring rather than demanding -- "Dance is a necessary creative and passionate form of self expression for me," -- and if you could see the smiles on the post-class faces, you'd probably want to try it yourself.

Jill Parker's Beginning Tribal Belly Dance classes are Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday at 1 p.m. at ODC Dance Commons; check in for other scheduled classes in other locations.