Not too long ago I was covering classes at Serena Studios on a Wednesday night. It was a lovely two hours and afterward my teenaged daughter and I started making our way home. Upon checking the time I realized that we had missed the last express bus back to my neighborhood in Queens...so off to the "A" train we went. Usually I am not fond of taking the subway in the evening but with not many choices left to me it was the "A" train or nothing.

Allow me to digress for a moment...I am constantly re-furbishing my costumes. It is an obsessive (and very enjoyable) activity for me! I am constantly changing, re-arranging, re-doing, you name it, the ornamentation/accessories of my costumes. Nothing is more fun than to see my seamstress' face when I tell her we are going to do "this, that and the other thing" on a costume that we really just worked on not too long before. What can I say? It's FUN!!! I do the costumes in the same order each time and they are on my shelf in that order. By the time I finish touching up the last costume I am back to the first one again seeing what can be done. I like to buy used costumes and completely re-make them...giving them new life. I've also been known to dismantle new ones, too. Get a hobby? No thanks, I already have one! :-P

ANYWAY...getting back to the "A" train. There we were on the "A" train and I had some beadwork with me. I am in the process of adding pearl sleeves to my white costume. This costume was made for me at least 15-20 years ago and has been re-done quite a few times since then. It's a little discolored (but very comfortable) and has tremendous sentimental value to me. Soooooooo...there I was stringing pearls and faceted beads onto my waxed dental floss (the "cadillac" of threads for fringe beading) when the train LURCHED and my bag of pearls fell off my lap. Well, needless to say now we had a zillion pearls rolling all over the floor in a moving train. The train was not that crowded to begin with so I had quite an audience watching me as I strung pearls and the occasional faceted bead onto the floss. After the bag dropped and we arrived at the next stop my daughter got up and started picking up pearls for me giggling the whole time because the pearls were still rolling all over our side of the train car. Then the train started again and she decided to keep trying to pick up the pearls. Now she's laughing like crazy trying to catch the pearls and I'm trying to get her to sit down before she falls and hurts herself from the movement of the train. Well...that's when the passengers on the train started getting "involved". The people who were seated started catching pearls with their shoes, hands, packages, whatever they had handy. The people who were standing started getting out of the way of the pearls. By the time a few stops went by half the passengers on my side of the car was either chasing pearls or bending down with my daughter and picking up pearls. What a scene! It was the most endearing thing to see... Needless to say this started conversation, also. I explained that I was re-furbishing a belly dance costume and that was it! What a flurry of conversation! I started getting inquiries for classes and questions about the dance form. I am dancing almost thirty years and it never ceases to amaze me how misinformed the public continues to be about our wonderful dance form (ah, but that is an old story and fodder for another article in the future). Dear reader, I can tell you this...the passengers of the "A" train got quite an education that evening and I'm sure Serena Studios got some inquiries the next day. I have to tell you that it was the most enjoyable train ride I've ever taken. So, in conclusion, the "Pearls" on the "A" train weren't only the ones I had in a plastic bag... New York raqs!

Laylamary