Eshe continues to travel the world. She is currently staying in Cairo, Egypt, reputed by some as the birthplace of belly dance.

It's a moving yoga, or a massage for your insides. It promotes body-awareness and body-acceptance. It's full of variation, with slow, serpentine movements and earth-shaking shimmies.

And for one Ancaster resident, belly dancing is the journey of a lifetime, with no end in sight.

Known mainly by her stage name, Eshe, the exotic local performer is making her presence known on an international stage.

Eshe performed with the Steeltown Sirens House of Burlesque at the Casbah on Oct. 6.

Born in Hamilton, Eshe, 26, moved to the Scenic Woods subdivision of Ancaster at age eight. She attended Grange Public School, Ancaster Senior and Ancaster High before completing her sociology degree at McMaster University.

After her sophomore year, with funds running short, Eshe gave up her two part-time retail jobs to teach English in Japan. She returned home a year later to complete her studies. But not long after graduation, Eshe returned to Japan for three years, where she discovered the joy of belly dancing.

She found an ad in a weekly Tokyo entertainment magazine for free belly dance lessons and responded via e-mail. "There weren't any free classes on my days off from being an English teacher, so I had to sign up for four lessons," she recalled. "Even though my teacher was a bit of a kook - she'd roll around on the floor and say 'I'm a snake! Be a snake with me!' and hiss at us - I still fell in love with the dance."

Eshe is a Swahili word, meaning life. "I wanted a name that started with E like my mother's," Eshe explained. "Some people believe the dance originated from birthing rituals. I wanted to honour those ties with my dance name."

Eshe continues to travel the world. She is currently staying in Cairo, Egypt, reputed by some as the birthplace of belly dance.

She's studying with the country's top belly dance instructor, Raqia Hassan.

"She has taught most of the current hot dancers in Cairo and many from around the world," Eshe explained.

Belly dance is now one of the top three dances in Japan, along with flamenco and hula. "A lot of belly dance in Japan is very experimental and out-there," Eshe said.

This summer, Eshe performed in Kamakura with Tokyo's premier belly dance troupe, Samanyolu. The group's name means Milky Way in Turkish. They performed to honor the Asian celestial Tanabata -the seventh day of the seventh month.

"When I first began dancing I used to go to their shows and dream about sharing the stage with them," Eshe said. "I thought it was an impossible dream, akin to lip-syncing with your hairbrush along with the radio."

World-wide journey

While belly dancing has taken her on a world-wide journey, Eshe has never planned on becoming an international star.

"I just focus on dance and the rest just comes," she explained. "My first spot in Japan's biggest belly dance festival, Maharajan, came because another girl backed out and my teacher noticed how dedicated I was. I'd only been dancing for three months, but I was crazy about dance and she believed in me. I was thrilled to be asked and worked hard to learn the choreographies."

Eshe's first costume was a rolled up T-shirt, a 100-yen headscarf, a hippy-style sarong and a coined hip scarf from her teacher.

"I'd be completely embarrassed to wear the same thing on stage now, but I love watching that video because it reminds me of falling hard and fast for belly dance," she said.

In Japan, Eshe was initially granted a lot of opportunities because she was a foreigner. Several restaurants and night clubs wanted an exotic feel, and in Japan, a blonde girl is exotic.

"The extra opportunities did help me improve my stage skills quickly," Eshe said. "Every time you take the stage and every time there is a music mishap or a G-rated wardrobe malfunction is a learning prospect. You also have to learn how to wow the crowd every time, because the audience has a long memory."

Unlike the choreographed routines she learned with Raqia Hassan, Eshe's own shows are completely improvised.

"I don't always know what's going to happen or how the audience is going to react," she explained. "At my last show in Tokyo, the venue owner let the audience go one person over capacity and the whole sell-out crowd got on their knees in a big circle around me. It was really touching and totally unexpected."

The roots of belly dance are widely disputed. Some believe it originated in India, Eshe noted, while others believe it was Turkey or Egypt. Belly dance has been turned on its head lately, Eshe points out. "Nothing is off-limits as far as fusion goes. In the past few shows I've done my friends have performed to James Bond soundtracks, traditional Scottish Country dance tunes, and Spanish hip-hop fusion to name a few," she said.

Eshe is also active with her charity group, called the Afet Collective. Afet means catastrophically beautiful in Turkish. The group is comprised of Eshe's seven favourite dancers from four countries, Australia, America, Japan and Canada. This year, Eshe has organized three shows and raised over $1,500 for a Tokyo women's shelter called HELP - Housing in the Emergency of Love and Peace. The shelter assists about 200 women each year, including victims of domestic violence. Eshe's charity work has been featured in the Japan Times, the country's oldest English newspaper.

"There was a time in my life when I thought I was going to have to live at a women's shelter," Eshe admits. "Friends stepped in and helped my family. Since then, I've felt strongly about working with and for women's charities, specifically those that aid abused women."

Last year, Eshe auditioned and was accepted as a member of PURE, which stands for Public Urban Ritual Experiment, Tokyo. PURE chapters can be found around the world. PURE aims to spread healing and peace through music and dance. The Tokyo group has sponsored scholarships for underprivileged children in southeast Asia.

"That work is important to me as I've spent time in my travels witnessing poverty among youth in the Third World," Eshe noted. "I've had orphans in Cambodia share candy and jokes with me and I've been cooked for in a refugee camp in Thailand. Those kind of kindnesses touch your soul and make you need to give back."